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Individual gain and engagement with mathematical understanding

We examine a measure of individual student gain by preservice elementary teachers, related to Richard Hakes use of mean gain in the study of reform classes in undergraduate physics. The gain statistic assesses the amount individual students increase their test scores from initial test to final test, as a proportion of the possible increase for each student. We examine the written work in mathematics classes of preservice elementary teachers with very high gain and those with very low gain and show that these groups exhibit distinct psychological attitudes and dispositions to learning mathematics. We show a statistically significant, small, increase in average gain when course goals focus on patterns, connections, and meaning making in mathematics. A common belief is that students with low initial test scores will have higher gains, and students with high initial-test scores will have lower gains. We show that this is not correct for a cohort of preservice elementary teachers.