Understanding of Mathematics Terms with Lexical Ambiguity

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how mathematics educators understand the terms having lexical ambiguity. Five terms with lexical ambiguity, leave, times, high, continuous, and convergent were selected based on literature review and recommendations of college calculus instructors. The participants consisted of four mathematics educators at a large Midwestern university. The qualitative data were collected from open-ended items in the survey. As a result of analysis, I provided participants’ sentences with five terms showing their understanding of each term. The data analysis revealed that mathematics educators were not able to separate the meanings of the words such as leave and high when these words are frequently used in daily life, and the meanings in mathematics context are similar with that in daily context. Lexical ambiguity shown by mathematics educators can help mathematics teachers to understand the terms with lexical ambiguity and improve their instructions when those terms should be found in students’ conversations.