Research interest

My main research interest concerns the relation between teaching and learning the concept of rate in lower secondary school. It comprehends what students need to learn to be able to calculate, express and use rate of change in various situations and with regard to different types of questions. It also concerns how rate of change can be addressed and handled in teaching mathematics to offer students possibilities to gain knowledge about this specific content.

My research is theoretically based on variation theory and has been framed by a close collaboration with practicing teachers. Understanding rate of change is essential for students’ abilities to handle everyday situations as well as further mathematics. For example, it constitutes one important foundation for the concept of derivative.

Biography

I graduated from teacher education in mathematics and science at Karlstad university in 2002. Since 2000 I have been teaching these subjects in grades 7-9, although since 2013 in mathematics only. For a year I also taught mathematics in upper secondary school. Between 2010 and 2014 I worked part-time with teacher education and in-service training for mathematics teachers. In 2013 - 2015 I was engaged in the training of education supervisors connected to the Swedish national in-service training program Matematiklyftet. In spring 2015 I entered the National research school in Learning study at Jönköping University and simultaneously continued to work part-time as practising teacher and head teacher in mathematics.

In February 2020 I defended my licentiate thesis Rate as the relation
of changes in two quantities: A variation theory perspective of learning rate of change. Since 2015 I have been connected to the research group for Mathematics Education Research (MER) at Jönköping university. I am currently a lecturer in mathematics didactics at University of Borås and connected to the research group SONOMA.

Publications

Håkansson, P. (2020). Rate as the Relation of Changes in two Quantities – a Variation Theory Perspective of Rate of Change (Licentiatuppsats i didaktik, Research reports, 12). Jönköping: School of Education and Communication.

Gunnarsson, R., Runesson Kempe, U. & Håkansson, P. (2019). Identifying What Is Critical for Learning ‘Rate of Change’: Experiences from a Learning Study in Sweden. I R. Huang, A. Takahashi & J.P. Da Ponte (Red.), Theory and practice of lesson study in mathematics. An
international perspective. Basel. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Håkansson, P. & Gunnarsson, R. (2018). Frågan är vad frågan gör - olika frågeställningars betydelse för hur elever uttrycker och använder förändringstakt i matematik. Forskning om undervisning och lärande, 6(2), 44-62.

Håkansson, P. & Gunnarsson, R. (2018). What is critical in order to learn the average rate of change? I E. Bergqvist, M. Österholm, C. Granberg, & L. Sumpter (Red.), Proceedings of the 42nd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, (Vol. 5, p. 55). Umeå, Sweden: PME.

Håkansson, P. & Gunnarsson, R. (2017). Key Aspects of expressing the rate of change in lower secondary school mathematics. I Kaur, B., Ho, W.K., Toh, T.L., & Choy, B.H. (Red.), Proceedings of the 41st Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, (Vol. 1, p. 202). Singapore: PME

Researcher's publications in DiVA (Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet)