Priming Students to Calculate Inhibits Sense-Making

Many students who struggle with math believe that doing math is remembering a rigid set of rules and procedures (Givvin et al., 2011). This may be the cause or consequence of students applying procedures without reasoning, or using buggy algorithms (Brown & Burton, 1977). If students tried to make sense of a problem, they may be able to reduce their use of buggy algorithms, but if students try to carry out procedures without reasoning, their inappropriate use of algorithms might increase. We examined this conjecture by first priming students to implement a procedure then asking them to solve a problem that required sense-making. Results indicated that when primed to use procedures to calculate, students stop engaging in sense-making and rely on recalling procedures.