Interjecting Scripting Studies into a Mathematics Education Research Program: The Case of Zero-Divisors and the Zero-Product Property

Abstract

The goals of this chapter are twofold. The first goal is to present our emerging research on students’ understanding of concepts in ring theory, specifi- cally zero-divisors and the zero-product property (ZPP). This naturally includes discussion of our methods and how findings related to the ZPP were obtained and reconfirmed. The second goal, which is the one pertinent to the theme of this book, is to present student-generated scripts as a valuable, low-cost data source which can be used in conjunction with conventional data in order to confirm known results and generate new ones. We discuss the interplay of these data sources and how they have contributed to the progress of our research