Investigating algorithmic and creative reasoning strategies by eye tracking

Abstract Imitative teaching and learning approaches have been dominating in mathematics education. Although more creative approaches (e.g. problem-based learning) have been proposed and implemented, a main challenge of mathematics education research is to document robust links between teaching, tasks, student activities and learning. This study investigates one aspect of such links, by contrasting tasks providing algorithmic solution templates with tasks requiring students’ constructions of solutions and relating this to students’ learning processes and outcomes. Information about students’ task solving strategies are gathered by corneal eye-tracking, which is related to subsequent post-test performances and individual variation in cognitive proficiency. Results show that students practicing by creative tasks outperform students practicing by imitative algorithmic tasks in the post-test, but also that students that perform less well on creative tasks tend to try ineffective imitative strategies.