Dr. Kien Lim is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso. He received his B.Eng. Electrical from the National University of Singapore, his M.S. Mathematics from the University of Wyoming, and his Ph.D. Mathematics and Science Education jointly from the University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University. His research interests are mainly on students’ ways of thinking and cognitive disposition, and instructional strategies to advance students’ ways of thinking. For his dissertation, he explored the viability of characterizing students’ acts of anticipating as a means to describe the way they solve problems involving algebraic inequalities and equations. He is currently investigating pre-service teachers’ overuse of the proportional algorithm to solve missing value problems. He is especially interested in understanding the phenomenon of students’ propensity to act out the first thing that comes to mind. In his teaching, he is exploring various ways, such as use of intellectual-need provoking tasks and predictions, to address this phenomenon.
Articles
Co-variation and Invariance in Proportional and Non-proportional Situations (Pre-print version of "Burning the Candle at Just One End"), Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School (2009)
In learning proportions students must understand what makes a situation proportional. If all the missing-value...
Intellectual-Need-Provoking Tasks (Pre-print Version), Matematics Teaching in the Middle School (2009)
According to Harel's Necessity Principle (1998) “students are most likely to learn when they see...
Advancing pre-service teachers’ mathematical sophistication via mathematical tasks, EduMath (2008)
This article is based on the seminar that the author presented for the Hong Kong...
Developing Mathematical Habits of Mind (with Selden Annie), MAA Focus (2008)
A Project NeXT panel on “Helping Students Develop Mathematical Habits of Mind without Compromising Key...
Dissertation
Students’ Mental Acts of Anticipating in Solving Problems involving Algebraic Inequalities and Equations, The Selected Works of Kien Lim (2006)
Anticipating is the mental act of conceiving a certain expectation without performing a sequence of...
Conference Proceedings
Mathematical Knowledge for Pre-service Teachers, Proceedings of the US-Sino Workshop on Mathematics and Science Education: Common Priorities that Promote Collaborative Research (2008)
This presentation highlights Harel's notion of ways of thinking and its importance to learning mathematics.
Improving Students’ Algebraic Thinking: The Case of Talia, Proceedings of the Thirty-first Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (2007)
This paper presents the case of an 11th grader, Talia, who demonstrated improvement in her...
Characterizing Students’ Thinking: Algebraic Inequalities and Equations, Proceedings of the Twenty-eight Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (2006)
This paper presents the findings of a study that explores the viability of using students’...
Others
Mathematical Habits of Mind: A Working Group at the 2009 PME-NA Conference (2009)
The idea of “mathematical habits of mind” has been introduced to emphasize the need to...
Helping Students Develop Mathematical Habits of Mind: A Joint Panel Session at the 2009 JMM Conference (with Kristin Camenga), Joint Mathematics Meeting (2009)
Cuoco, Goldenberg, and Mark advocate habits of mind as an organizing principle for a mathematics...
The Use of Prediction in Mathematics Classrooms: A Discussion Group at the 2007 PME-NA Conference (with Ok-Kyeong Kim, Francisco Cordero, Gabriela Buendía, and Lisa Kasmer), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the Int. Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (2007)
The role of prediction in the teaching and learning of mathematics has not received much...