Trends in Calculus Reform

David A. Smith, Duke University

Presented to the NSF Conference/Workshop
Preparing for a New Calculus
Monticello, IL, April 23-25, 1993

Published in
Preparing for a New Calculus (Anita Solow, ed.)
MAA Notes No. 36, 1994, pp. 3-13

[Author's note: This essay is being posted to the Web in 1998, but the content has remained unchanged for nearly five years. With the exception of segmentation into several documents and addition of hyperlinks, no change has been made to the 1993 version. In particular, all time references are relative to that time.]

Some two-and-a-half years ago, I was given a charge similar to the one that led to this paper: Survey the trends and common threads in calculus reform (if any), and tell us what makes a “reformed" course a better course. The charge came in an invitation to speak to the annual meeting of NSF Principal Investigators on calculus projects, held that year in Columbus, Ohio. The response to my remarks was sufficiently supportive that I wrote down a version of the talk (supplemented by comments from other speakers at the meeting), which was subsequently published in UME Trends [7]. Rereading that article, I find that I said then many of the things I want to say now. Thus, this essay is essentially an expansion and update of a two-year-old opinion piece. This is not to say that I was especially prescient -- only that, at least for the last two years (probably longer), players and observers of the calculus reform game have, for the most part, agreed on the major components of “reform." The new things to say mostly fall into the categories of (a) refinements and (b) effects of more students and more faculty being brought under the reform umbrella.

I will state my positions under five general headings:

Conference participants had an opportunity to read an earlier draft of this paper prior to the conference and to comment on it in one of the opening sessions; my post-conference revision includes some of their very helpful contributions. At the end of the paper, following a brief summary-and-challenge section and a list of references, I include a bibliography on calculus reform extracted from the Project CALC Instructor's Guide.

| Return to Essays page |
| Movement | Content | Methodology | Students | Instructors |
| Summary | References | Bibliography |