Integrating assessment and feedback to overcome barriers to learning at the passive/active interface in mathematics courses

Abstract

This paper pays particular attention to the passive/active interface in mathematics, which has its own special dynamics and tension and can form an impenetrable learning barrier. Though psychological and invisible, this barrier is common but largely neglected in traditional methods of teaching mathematics. The purpose of this brief paper is to draw attention to this interface, and illustrate strategies for overcoming it, by means of a case study from recent teaching by the author.