Contact Information
School of Education, Room 3111University of Michigan
610 East University
Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1259
Tel: (734) 647 0628
Fax: (734) 763 1368
Email: vmesa@umich.edu
I am interested in understanding the role that resources play in developing teaching expertise in undergraduate mathematics. I investigate the nature of the use of instructional resources and concentrate on understanding the conditions under which resources get used (or dismissed). I have analyzed textbooks from the perspective of the opportunities to learn that they afford students.
Currently I am investigating the nature of mathematics teaching in community colleges, paying attention to how instruction is organized, delivered, and sustained. In a literature review of the relationship between instruction and success in community colleges, I found that current definitions of instruction and current measures of success limit the possibility of seeing instruction as an object of research. I am also studying how faculty new to inquiry based learning in undergraduate mathematics learn to use the method in their courses.
I am interested in questions of students' retention in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics programs, in particular concerning instruction and curriculum. I have been involved in several evaluation projects with various departments and schools at the university: the DHSP, the Inquiry Based Learning Project, and the Applied Honors Calculus sequence on engineering students' academic achievement. I teach graduate courses on research methods on math curriculum and learning and on research on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics undergraduate teaching and learning.