ABSTRACT
Mr. Dussan walks into his mathematics classroom on a Tuesday morning. His students are seated and take out their homework assignments. As the bell rings to start the class period, Mr. Dussan takes out his teacher’s manual and reads the answers to each of the 25 problems that had been assigned the day before. Several students have questions about the problems, so their teacher stands at the chalkboard and walks the class through each of the problems that gave the students difficulty on the homework. He then collects the assignments and instructs the students to take out their notebooks. For the next 20 minutes, he shows the class how to factor trinomials. In the process, he works through five factoring examples, from x2 + 5x + 4 to 2x2 - 5x - 3 with each example becoming increasingly difficult. At the conclusion of his lecture, Mr. Dussan tells the students to take out a sheet of paper and a pencil and assigns 30 homework problems-the odd-numbered problems from 1 through 59 on page 117. The students are told to spend the last 10 minutes of class starting on the homework, although it is evident that most of them are wasting time and avoiding the work. The bell rings, students pack up their materials and leave, and Mr. Dussan prepares to repeat this lesson in the following class period.
