ZDM Mathematics Education
DOI 10.1007/s11858-017-0881-5
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena
with negative rates of change throughout a model development
sequence
Jonas B. Ärlebäck1 · Helen M. Doerr2 
Accepted: 3 August 2017
© FIZ Karlsruhe 2017
Abstract  In this article, we examine how a sequence of
modeling activities supported the development of students’
interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with nega-
tive average rates of change in different physical phenomena.
Research has shown that creating and interpreting models of
changing physical phenomena is difficult, even for university
level students. Furthermore, students’ reasoning about mod-
els of phenomena with negative rates of change has received
little attention in the research literature. In this study, 35
students preparing to study engineering participated in a
6-week instructional unit on average rate of change that used
a sequence of modeling activities. Using an analysis of the
students’ work, our results show that the sequence of mod-
eling activities was effective for nearly all students in reason-
ing about motion with negative rates along a straight path.
Almost all students were successful in constructing graphs
of changing phenomena and their associated rate graphs in
the contexts of motion, light dispersion and a discharging
capacitor. Some students encountered new difficulties in
interpreting and reasoning with negative rates in the con-
texts of light dispersion, and new graphical representations
emerged in students’ work in the context of the discharg-
ing capacitor with its underlying exponential structure. The
results suggest that sequences of modeling activities offer a
* Helen M. Doerr
hmdoerr@syr.edu
Jonas B. Ärlebäck
jonas.bergman.arleback@liu.se
1
Department of Mathematics, Linköping University,
SE‑581 83 Linköping, Sweden
2
Department of Mathematics, Syracuse University, Syracuse,
NY 13244, USA
structured approach for the instruction of advanced math-
ematical content.
Keywords  Model development sequences · Modeling ·
Negative rates of change · Physical phenomena
1 Introduction
The purpose of this article is to provide an account of how
a model development sequence (Lesh et al., 2003) can sup-
port the development of students’ interpretations and reason-
ing about phenomena with negative average rates of change
in different contexts. The difficulties students encounter in
learning to reason about and interpret rates of change are
well known in the research literature (Carlson et al., 2002;
Monk, 1992; Oehrtman, Carlson, & Thompson, 2008;
Thompson, 1994), and recent research highlights that rea-
soning about and interpreting phenomena involving negative
rates of change are especially challenging (Ärlebäck, Doerr
& O’Neil, 2013). Yet, it is important that students of science,
engineering and mathematics are able to interpret and reason
about changing phenomena with negative rates of change in
various contexts (Beichner, 1994; Carlson, 1998; Hestenes,
2010; McDermott, Rosenquist, & van Zee, 1987). Follow-
ing the suggestion by Carlson and colleagues (2002) to give
students opportunities to work with more extensively with
lines of inquiry focusing on change in real-world contexts,
we designed a model development sequence (Lesh et al.,
2003) to support the development of students’ capabilities
to interpret and reason about phenomena with negative rates
of change in a range of contexts. In this article, we report
our analysis of how students’ interpreted and reasoned about
negative rates of change in three contexts (motion along a
straight path, light intensity at a distance from a point source,
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and the discharge of a capacitor in a simple circuit) with dif-
ferent underlying mathematical structures as they engaged
with these contexts in a model development sequence.
2 Interpreting and reasoning about rates
of change
Much research over the last 20 years has documented the dif-
ficulties that students at different educational levels encoun-
ter when interpreting and reasoning about rates of change
(Carlson et al., 2002; Monk, 1992; Oehrtman et al., 2008;
Thompson, 1994). For example, in the context of linear
functions, a study by Nagle et al. (2013) of 65 introductory
calculus students found little evidence of covariational rea-
soning in the students’ conceptualizations of rate of change.
The complexity of interpreting and reasoning about rates of
change has proven difficult for high achieving undergraduate
mathematics students and students studying physics (Beich-
ner, 1994; Carlson, 1998; Hestenes, 2010; McDermott et al.,
1987). In a 2 year longitudinal study of ten students ages
16 to 18, Roorda, Vos and Goedhart (2015) found that even
after learning about rate of change in mathematics and phys-
ics, students had “a narrow and disconnected repertoire of
rate of change procedures” (p. 881) and a poor understand-
ing of the concept. To reason about rates of change, stu-
dents must simultaneously attend to and distinguish among
three related quantities: the value of the output of a func-
tion, the change in the values of the function’s output over
a subinterval, and the change in values of the input to the
function (Carlson et al., 2002; Johnson, 2012; Monk, 1992;
Oehrtman et al., 2008; Thompson, 1994). When reasoning
about changing phenomena, students often confuse these
three quantities (Carlson et al., 2002; Carlson, 1998; Lobato,
Hohensee, Rhodehamel, & Diamond, 2012; McDermott
et al., 1987). Reasoning about the latter two quantities is a
foundational understanding for average rates of change in
pre-calculus and instantaneous rates of change in calculus.
Reasoning involving phenomena with negative average rates
of change has proven to be even more complex and espe-
cially challenging (Ärlebäck et al., 2013).
Science, engineering and mathematics students will
encounter many contexts where they will need to interpret
and reason about physical phenomena with changing rates
of change and with negative rates of change. Indeed, Carl-
son and colleagues (2002) stress the importance and poten-
tial of using real-world dynamic events to provide students
with opportunities to develop their reasoning about chang-
ing quantities. Roorda, Vos and Goedhart (2015) suggest a
teaching approach centered around “a curriculum in which
students repeatedly work with the same concepts and pro-
cedures, but in different contexts, at a level of increasing
difficulties, with new perspectives and with possibilities for
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J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr
the weaker students to catch up” (p. 886). However, this is
potentially problematic since researchers have found that
students’ understandings of rate in one context (such as kin-
ematics or work) or in one representation (such as a table
or graph) do not necessarily translate to other contexts or
representations (Herbert & Pierce, 2011; Ibrahim & Rebello,
2012; Johnson, 2012; Oehrtman et al., 2008). Little research
has attended to the design of instruction for addressing the
challenges students encounter when interpreting and rea-
soning about changing physical phenomena across differ-
ent contexts in general, and about physical phenomena with
negative rates of change in particular.
In this study, we aim to further our understanding of how
a modeling-based approach to teaching and learning can
support students’ learning over multiple contexts, by exam-
ining the use of a model development sequence (Lesh et al.,
2003) to support students in interpreting and reasoning about
changing phenomena with negative average rates of change.
The question we investigated in this research study was: How
can the design of a model development sequence support
the development of students’ interpretations and reasoning
about negative rates of change across differing contexts of
physical phenomena?
We begin this paper by describing the theoretical per-
spective that informed the design of the sequence of model
development activities. We elaborate the specific activities
in the model development sequence, followed by a descrip-
tion of the research setting and the participants, the data
sources and our methods of analysis. We report our findings
on students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena
with negative rates of change across three contexts: motion
along a straight path, light intensity at a distance from a
point source, and the discharge of a capacitor in a simple
circuit. We conclude with a discussion of the results, their
implications, and directions for future research.
3 Theoretical perspectives on models
and modeling
Within the field of mathematics education, models and
modeling have been given a prominent role in national cur-
riculum documents and in research over the last 30 years
(Blum et al., 2007; Blum, 2015). There are many different
approaches to and perspectives on modeling in the research
literature; Julie and Mudaly (2007) broadly conceptualized
the multitude of perspectives on modeling as modeling as
self standing content or as modeling as vehicle for learning
other curricula objectives. Some perspectives on modeling
tend to bring these two objectives together. For example,
the instructional theory of Realistic Mathematics Education
(Freudenthal, 1983) emphasizes the context of the problems
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
used in learning in terms of horizontal- and vertical math-
ematization (Treffers, 1987).
In the models and modeling perspective (Lesh & Doerr,
2003), modeling is conceptualized both as a means of learn-
ing mathematics and other curricular content and of learn-
ing to do modeling per se. Students develop, modify, and
use models to make sense of particular contexts and prob-
lems by interacting with other learners in multiple cycles of
conjecturing, interpreting, describing and explaining some
problem situation. A model is defined as a system consist-
ing of elements, relationships, rules and operations that can
be used to make sense of, explain, predict or describe some
other system. A mathematical model is a model that focuses
on the structural characteristics of the system in question.
Thus, learning mathematical content occurs while students
develop a useful and generalized mathematical model that
can be used and re-used in a range of structurally similar
contexts. In this paper, we examine the models of average
rate of change that students develop and use to interpret and
reason about physical phenomena with negative average
rates of change.
3.1 Model development sequences
The models and modeling perspective offers a systematic
way to think about the design and implementation of tasks
and instruction to further students’ learning in terms of how
their models develop across instructional tasks. A model
development sequence is a carefully designed instructional
sequence of modeling tasks that aims to support the develop-
ment of students’ models (or conceptual systems) that can be
applied in a range of contexts (Doerr & English, 2003; Lesh
et al., 2003; Ärlebäck et al., 2013; Hjalmarson, Diefes-Dux,
& Moore, 2008).
A model development sequence always starts with a
model eliciting activity (MEA) and is followed by model
exploration activities and model application activities. The
MEA is designed to elicit the students’ initial ideas about
a meaningful and realistic problem situation, in such a way
that students engage in an iterative process to express, test
and revise their ways of thinking about the quantities and
relationships involved. Principles for designing MEAs
(Lesh, Hoover, Hole, Kelly & Post, 2000) have been exten-
sively used in research on students’ modeling a wide range
of contexts from primary to post-secondary schools (Eng-
lish, 2006; Koellner-Clark & Lesh, 2003; Yoon, Dreyfus
& Thomas, 2010). MEAs confront students with the need
to develop a model that they can use to describe, explain,
predict or control the behavior of meaningful problem situ-
ation. Students’ initial models (or conceptual systems) are
often not very sophisticated or useful, but these initially elic-
ited models are evaluated, revised and refined as students
discuss their approaches with other students and share their
interpretations and representations with the whole class.
While the model elicited through the MEA captures the
underlying structure of the problem situation and holds the
potential for applicability to range of structurally similar
situations, these two aspects of the initial model are further
developed through model exploration activities (MXAs) and
model application activities (MAAs).
The focus of model exploration activities is for stu-
dents to explicitly think about the underlying mathematical
structure of their elicited model by attending to different
representations and how to interpret and use those repre-
sentations purposefully and productively. The focus of the
model application activities is for students to think with their
model by applying their models in new contexts, resulting
in further adaptations of their model, and thereby extend-
ing their use of representations, refining their language for
describing phenomena, and deepening their understandings
of the phenomena and its underlying mathematical structure
(Ärlebäck et al., 2013). Through their interactions with other
students and their teachers, students simultaneously learn
mathematics and develop their proficiencies in modeling
problem situations.
4 Research design and methodology
This case study took place in a 6-week summer mathematics
course for students who were preparing to study engineering
at a mid-sized university in the United States. The course
was designed around a model development sequence aimed
at supporting students in developing their models (concep-
tual systems) of average rates of change. The sequence began
with an MEA eliciting students’ ideas about positive, nega-
tive, and changing velocity by creating position graphs with
a motion detector and their bodily motion. The students then
explored positive and negative velocity for motion along a
straight path in a computer simulation environment where
velocity graphs created motion of a simulated character.
This was followed by an investigation of how light intensity
changes with respect to the distance from a light source.
In this context, the phenomenon has distance as the inde-
pendent variable rather than time. In the final context, time
was reintroduced as the independent variable as the students
studied how voltage changes across a discharging capacitor,
an exponentially decreasing phenomenon. Across all three
contexts, students had to simultaneously attend to, coordi-
nate and distinguish among the values of the output of the
context specific functions, the change in the values of the
functions’ output over different subintervals, and the changes
in values of the input to the functions. To support students in
this endeavor, the tasks engaged students in making scatter
plots, calculating values of the average rates of change and
creating rate graphs of the different physical phenomena. In
13

all contexts, the values and graphs not only had to be created
but also interpreted in terms of the context and students had
to reason about the relationships among various quantities.
The students worked in small groups to complete the activi-
ties in the model development sequence. Class discussion
following the modeling activities focused on the relation-
ships among different representations of negative rates of
change and students’ interpretations of change in different
contexts.
The sequence was designed collaboratively by the
authors and the teacher of the summer course, and subse-
quently implemented, evaluated and re-designed, over three
consecutive years. In the following section, we present in
detail the design of the tasks and the choice of contexts
that were used over the 3 years of the teaching experiment.
As we implemented and evaluated the model development
sequence, we became increasingly aware of the difficulties
students encountered in interpreting and reasoning about
negative rates of change in contexts other than motion. In the
third year of implementation, we provided the students with
more opportunities to communicate their interpretations and
reasoning in both written work and classroom discussions.
Hence, the data for the analysis in this paper consisted of
student’s written work on in-class modeling activities, stu-
dent assessments, and pre- and posttest results from the third
year of implementation.
4.1 The design and implementation of the model
development sequence
4.1.1 Motion along a straight path model eliciting
and exploration activities
The model development sequence began with an MEA to
elicit the notion of negative velocity by using motion detec-
tors to generate position graphs of the students’ bodily
motion along a straight path. We selected this context for two
reasons. First, students’ difficulties in reasoning about nega-
tive velocity are well-known in the research literature and
are an important learning goal in both calculus and physics
(Beichner, 1994; Thornton & Sokoloff, 1998). Second, this
context provided the students with a meaningful and famil-
iar situation to reason about negative rates in terms of their
own enacted bodily motion. The context of motion provided
students with the opportunity to develop their interpretations
and reasoning about negative rates of change by sorting out
the meanings and differences between the formal language
of velocity and the everyday language of speed.
We followed the MEA with a model exploration activ-
ity using SimCalc MathWorlds, a computer simulation of
motion along a straight path (Kaput & Roschelle, 1996). The
simulation environment reversed the representational space
of the MEA, where bodily motion created a position graph.
13
J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr
In the simulation environment, students created piecewise
linear velocity graphs to generate the motion of simulated
characters. In this environment, the students explored the
linked relationship between piecewise linear velocity graphs
and their associated position graphs. This was intended to
continue to support the students in interpreting and reason-
ing about velocity when given a position graph and inter-
preting and reasoning about position when given a velocity
graph. Particular attention was paid to graphs where the
velocity was negative and where the velocity was linearly
increasing or decreasing.
4.1.2 The light intensity model application activity
The light intensity task was designed to provide the stu-
dents with an opportunity to apply their understandings of
average rate of change, initially elicited in the context of
linear motion, in a new context and one in which the inde-
pendent variable was distance rather than time, and where
the decrease in the dependent variable was non-linear (an
inverse square). The activity consisted of three parts. The
first part aimed at making explicit the students’ intuitive
and initial models about the relationship between light
intensity and the distance from a point source. The students
considered the scenario of an approaching car and sketched
a qualitative graph of how the intensity of the car’s head-
lights changed with the distance from the car. The students
wrote descriptions of the light intensity with respect to the
distance from the car and the rate at which the light inten-
sity changes with the distance from the car. Writing such a
description required the students to simultaneously reason
about the quantity of the light intensity and the rate at which
this quantity changes. This was precisely the reasoning that
the students had previously explored graphically between
the quantities of position and velocity in the simulation envi-
ronment. However, despite having had a year of physics in
high school, there was significant disagreement among the
students as to how the light intensity changed with respect
to distance from the light source, including confusion over
the role of time as a variable.
The disagreement about the behavior of light intensity
with respect to distance, was resolved by engaging stu-
dents in collecting and analyzing light intensity data with
a point source of light, a meter stick, and a light sensor.
The students interpreted the scatter plot of their data and
wrote descriptions of the intensity of the light and the rate
at which the intensity changed with respect to distance from
the light source. The students calculated the average rates
of change of the light intensity data over 1 cm intervals.
They described the average rates of change of the data over
subsequent subintervals as the distance from the light source
increased, and created a graph showing the calculated aver-
age rates of change over the 1 cm intervals.
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
In the third part of the activity, the students found a
function fitting their collected data and analyzed the aver-
age rates of change of their function over 1 cm intervals.
Due to the physical limitations of the light sensor, students
needed to construct a piecewise function, consisting of a
horizontal linear piece for the first two or three data points
and an inverse squared piece for the remainder of the data
set. Working with a partner, students wrote a report that
described the values of the light intensity in terms of a
piecewise linear and inverse squared function; computed
and interpreted average rates of change over 1 cm intervals
of distance; graphically represented these average rates of
change; and described how the values of the average rates of
change of the function, over 1 cm intervals, changed as the
distance from the light source increased.
4.1.3 The discharging capacitor model application activity
The second model application activity was an investigation
of the rate at which a fully charged capacitor in a simple
resistor–capacitor circuit discharged with respect to time,
a phenomenon which is governed by an exponential decay
function. The students built the circuits, charged a capaci-
tor, and measured the voltage drop across the capacitor as
it discharged. Students were asked to develop a model they
could use to compare the rates at which the capacitor is dis-
charging at the beginning, middle and end of a total time
interval and to interpret how the average rates of change of
the function change as time increased.
As with the light intensity model application activity, the
students engaged in several iterations of applying and inter-
preting their model of average rates of change as they rea-
soned about three quantities: (1) the values of the exponen-
tial decay function that represented the voltage drop across
the discharging capacitor; (2) the values of the average rates
of change of the voltage drop computed over 5 s intervals;
and (3) how the function values and the sequence of aver-
age rates of change values were changing as the capacitor
discharged.
4.2 Setting, participants, data sources and analysis
A total of 35 students (11 female and 24 male) preparing to
study engineering at a mid-sized university participated in
the study; 23 students had studied calculus in high school
and 12 had not studied any calculus. All students had taken
a high school course in physics. During the 6  weeks of
the course, the students and the teacher meet for 1 h and
45 min four times a week. The students worked in small
groups on the modeling activities and engaged in a whole
class discussion focused on the relationships among differ-
ent representations of negative rates of change and students’
interpretations of change in different contexts. All students
had graphing calculators that were used in the three different
contexts together with a motion detector, a light sensor and
voltage probe to collect, graph and analyze data, and transfer
data between their calculators and a computer.
To address the research question about how the model
development sequence supported the development of stu-
dents’ interpretations and reasoning about negative rates of
change across differing contexts of physical phenomena,
we report on our analysis of data from three contexts of
change: motion along a straight path, light intensity, and the
discharge of a capacitor in a simple circuit. These different
physical phenomena are modeled with different underlying
mathematical structures: piecewise linear, inverse square,
and exponential decay. Our analysis focused on those data
sources where negative rates were explicitly addressed in
order to examine how the students’ reasoned across differ-
ent contexts and about different underlying mathematical
structures.
We examined how students related the value of the output
of a function, the change in the values of the function’s out-
put over a subinterval, and the change in values of the input
to the function in terms of how the students expressed these
quantities numerically, graphically and in written language.
In each of the three contexts, the analysis focused on how
and to what extent students used these forms of representa-
tions to correctly or incorrectly describe the behaviour of
the function and the average rates of change in terms of the
phenomena.
For the context of motion along a straight path (piece-
wise linear), we analyzed three data sources: (1) students’
responses to three items from a pretest that was completed
at the beginning of the course; this provided baseline data
on the students’ reasoning with positive and negative rates in
this context; (2) students’ written work on three assessment
items given at the end of the model exploration activity; and
(3) the students’ responses to the same three items as in (1)
above from a posttest at the end of the course.
For the context of light intensity (inverse square), we ana-
lyzed two data sources: (1) the students’ graphs of how the
intensity of the car’s headlights changed with respect to the
distance from the car, and their written descriptions of how
the intensity changes with respect to the distance from the
car; and (2) the students’ written reports completed at the
end of the light intensity activity. For the first data source,
the analysis focused on capturing the students’ initial mod-
els of how the light intensity varies with distance from the
light source and students’ abilities to interpret and distin-
guish between two quantities: the intensity at a given dis-
tance and the rate at which the intensity is changing at two
given distances. The analysis of the students’ written reports
(n = 18) focused on interpretations and reasoning about how
the intensity varied with the distance from the light source
and how the average rates of change over 1 cm subintervals
13

varied, the graphs the students produced, and how students
attended to the context in their written interpretations.
For the context of the discharging circuit (exponential
decay), we report on the analysis of the data on a written
assessment item after the model application activity. The
students were given (via their graphing calculator) a numeri-
cal table of data of the voltage drop across a discharging
capacitor for 50 s. The calculator graph of this data set is
shown in Fig. 1a. Students were asked to find an equation
of the form that could be used to describe the data. The
students were also asked to (a) compute the average rate
of change over the three subintervals from t = 5 to t = 10 s,
t = 20 to t = 25 s, and t = 35 to t = 40 s respectively, and (b)
write two or three sentences that describe how the voltage
across the capacitor changes over time and how the sequence
of average rates of change of the voltage data in (a) changed
over time. Figure 1b shows the calculations of the average
rates of change over the three intervals asked for in part (a)
of the test item.
Since a discharging capacitor is modeled by an expo-
nential decay function, the average rate of change over any
subinterval of the domain is negative. The sequence of aver-
age rates of change over the 5 s subintervals is getting less
negative and closer to zero and, hence, the sequence of aver-
age rates of change is increasing. In terms of the phenomena,
a negative average rate of change means that the voltage
across the capacitor is decreasing for that subinterval; but,
as we will show in the results below, interpreting the mean-
ing of the sequence of increasing average rates of change in
terms of the voltage is considerably more difficult.
5 Results
We found that after completing the model development
sequence nearly all students became proficient at construct-
ing graphical representations of changing phenomena and
Fig. 1  A plot of the voltage
data and calculations of three
average rates of change
13
J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr
their associated rates of change graphs in all three contexts
and across all three underlying mathematical structures:
motion along a straight path (piecewise linear functions),
light intensity (inverse square) and discharging capacitor
(exponential decay). We found that nearly all students were
able to interpret and clearly distinguish between the function
values and the values of both positive and negative rates of
change in the context of motion along a straight path. How-
ever, the student difficulties that were initially resolved in the
context of motion arose again when interpreting decreasing
non-linear functions and sequences of negative average rates
of change in the contexts of the light intensity and the dis-
charging capacitor. We elaborate and provide evidence for
these findings in the following sections.
5.1 Motion along a straight path
Our results show that most students were able to develop and
maintain the distinctions between the velocity graph and the
position graph and between velocity as a signed quantity and
speed as the magnitude of velocity. As we had anticipated
from the research literature, the students initially had dif-
ficulties in reasoning about velocity and changes in velocity
when given a position graph. Through the computer simula-
tion environment in the model exploration activity, the stu-
dents gained proficiency in reasoning about and interpreting
the graphical representations of velocity and position when
both quantities were positive. However, student difficulties in
carefully distinguishing among position, velocity and speed
re-surfaced when the rate of change of position (velocity)
was negative or linearly decreasing.
The students’ difficulties in distinguishing among
position, velocity and speed can be seen in the students’
responses to creating and interpreting a velocity graph when
given the position graph shown in Fig. 2a. Nearly all of the
students correctly constructed the corresponding velocity
graph shown in Fig. 2b. When asked to interpret the velocity
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
Fig. 2  Creating and interpreting a velocity graph from a position
graph
graph with its negative values, 44% of the students correctly
identified the greatest velocity occurring in the interval
between t = 2 and t = 4 s. However, 38% of the students iden-
tified the greatest velocity as occurring between t = 0 and
t = 2 s. These students were attending to the magnitude of the
velocity since this is the interval where the magnitude of the
velocity (speed) is the greatest. One of the students argued
that the first interval showed the greatest velocity because
the sign of the number only provided direction of the move-
ment, not how fast the object was moving. This student was
reasoning about the velocity as if it were two separate quan-
tities: a sign that indicated direction and a numerical value
that indicated how fast the object was moving. It would
appear that the student did not see the value of the velocity
as a single negative quantity that could be compared to other
negative quantities. The 18% of the students who identified
the interval between t = 4 and t = 6 s as having the greatest
velocity were correctly comparing the relative velocities of
the first and third intervals, but not regarding a value of zero
as greater than both of the negative quantities.
Students’ difficulties in the context of linearly decreas-
ing velocity were evidenced by their low scores (29% cor-
rect) on the pre-test item shown in Fig. 4 below. However,
at the conclusion of the model exploration activity, we
found that most students were able to successfully inter-
pret velocity information from a position graph and posi-
tion information from a velocity graph for both positive
and negative velocities and for constant and non-constant
velocities. On the midterm exam, 66% of the students
could correctly construct the velocity graph given a posi-
tion graph and 71% could correctly construct the posi-
tion graph given a velocity graph. This success was also
evidenced in the substantial improvement on three of the
pre- and posttest items, given at the beginning and the
end of the course. These three items address determining
the velocity and average velocity given a piecewise linear
position graph (shown in Fig. 3), interpreting a linearly
decreasing velocity graph that takes on negative values
Fig. 3  Interpreting instantaneous and average velocity from a posi-
tion graph
(shown in Fig.  4), and interpreting an object’s motion
when given a position graph (shown in Fig. 5).
In the first item, the students were asked to determine
the speed (at time t = 7 s) of a person running along a
straight path as represented by the position graph in Fig. 3.
On the pretest, only 26% of the students gave the cor-
rect answer (1.25 m/s). Rather than finding the velocity
as the slope of the second linear piece of the function
between t = 3 s and t = 15 s, 34% of the students divided
the y-value of 35 meters by t = 7 s resulting in 5 m/s; 31%
of the students gave the y value with an attached velocity
unit, 35 m/s, as the answer. On the posttest, however, 69%
of the students correctly answered this question.
On the pretest, the students were also asked to deter-
mine the average speed of the runner throughout the 15 s
race; only 40% of the students correctly answered 2 m/s.
Instead, 23% of the students averaged the two velocities
between t = 0 s and t = 3 s (5 m/s), and between t = 3 s
and t = 15 s (1.25 m/s), resulting in an average velocity of
3.125 m/s. Another 20% of the students failed to recognize
that the runner not did not start at the origin, and thus
incorrectly concluded the average velocity to be 3 m/s.
On the posttest, 77% of the students correctly answered
this question.
The second item asked students to identify which of a
set of position versus time graphs would best represent an
object’s motion as shown in the velocity graph in Fig. 4.
This item requires an understanding of how to reason about
position when given a velocity graph. On the pretest, only
29% of the students were able to correctly identify the cor-
rect position graph (alternative B). On the posttest, 71% of
the students correctly identified the position graph.
The third item asked the students to choose a written
description of the motion of an object whose position is
shown in Fig. 5, taken from Beichner (1994).
13
 J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr

Fig. 4  Interpreting position from a velocity graph

13
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
Fig. 5  Interpreting an object’s
motion when given a position
graph
On the pretest, 34% of the students selected a correct
interpretation (alternative d); the posttest results showed
that 80% of the students were able to select a correct inter-
pretation. Results reported by Beichner (1994) on this item
showed that only 37% of the students interpreted the motion
correctly after kinematics instruction. Taken together, these
three items indicate that at the end of the model develop-
ment sequence the students were able to successfully inter-
pret velocity (rate) information from position graphs and to
interpret position information from velocity graphs for both
positive and negative velocities and for changing velocities.
5.2 Light intensity
We found that the students’ initial difficulties in distinguish-
ing between the values of the function and the values of
the average rates of change of the function over subinter-
vals of the domain, that were overcome in the context of
Fig. 6  Students’ initial models
of intensity vs. distance from
light source
motion, resurfaced as students applied their developing
models of average rate of change in the new context of the
light intensity with respect to distance. The students’ initial
interpretations of the relationship between light intensity
and the distance from the light source are summarized in
Fig. 6. Although all of the students had taken a course in
high school physics, nearly all of the students (83%) drew a
linear relationship (C, D and F shown in Fig. 6) between the
intensity of light and the distance from the source. All but
one student correctly described how the intensity at 1000
yards compared to the intensity at 2000 yards based on the
graph they drew.
However, when asked to “Compare the rate at which the
intensity is changing at 1000 yards and 2000 yards”, only
half of the students (n = 17 of the 34 students) correctly
interpreted or calculated the rate of change based on their
graphical representation. For example, one student correctly
concluded from his incorrect C graph that: “The rate at
13

which the intensity is changing at 1000 yards and 2000 yards
is the same.” However, nearly half of the students (n = 16
out of the 34 students) did not compare the rate at which the
intensity was changing, but rather compared the values of
the function at the two distances. The remaining one of the
34 students simply gave an equation of a linear function that
did not correspond to his graph. Thus, for about half of the
students, their earlier distinctions, in the context of motion,
between the value of the output of the function value (e.g.,
position) and the value of its rate of change (e.g., velocity)
were not readily applied in the new context of light intensity.
In our analysis of the students’ written reports completed
at the end of the model application activity on light inten-
sity, we found that nearly all of the students’ reports (89%)
included correct interpretations of correct graphs of the
values of the light intensity as a function of the distance
from the light source (such as that shown in Fig. 7a). Nearly
all reports (89%) also included a correct graph of the aver-
age rates of change over 1 cm intervals (similar to that in
Fig. 7b). Almost half of the students (44%) described the
average rates of change (shown in Fig. 7b) as the slopes of
the line segment connecting two consecutive points.
Over half (56%) of the students correctly interpreted a
correct graph of the average rates of change of the light
intensity over 1 cm subintervals. Some students were able
to correctly interpret the values of the sequence of average
rates of change and to refer to the magnitude of those values
when describing the changing light intensity. For example,
one pair of students wrote:
Although the majority of the average rates of change
are increasing, the absolute value of average rates of
change are decreasing which tells us that as the dis-
tance from the light source increases, the intensity of
the light decreases quickly at first and then decreases
more slowly.
Fig. 7  A typical scatter plot of the light intensity data (a) and its corresponding average rate of change graph (b)
13
J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr
In this statement, the students reasoned from the graph
of the average rates of change values (shown in Fig. 7b),
and correctly articulated that the “majority” of these val-
ues are increasing, seemingly focusing on the average rate
of change values when the distance from the light source
is greater than 3 cm. This pair of students used the abso-
lute values of the negative average rates of change to give a
qualitative interpretation of the function values (“intensity
of the light”) that is “decreasing quickly at first and then
decreases more slowly.” This pair of students maintained the
distinction between the function values (the light intensity)
and the average rates of change values in their reasoning
about the light intensity. By shifting to the language of the
absolute value of the average rates of change, this pair of stu-
dents correctly interpreted how the light intensity changed:
“quickly” and then “slowly.”
Many students encountered difficulty in maintaining these
distinctions and correctly expressing them in terms of the
phenomena. In some cases, this led to contradictions within
the students’ description. For example, one pair of students
wrote:
The intensity of the light decreases at a decreasing rate
with respect to the distance from the light source, as
predicted earlier. The average rates of change increase
at a decreasing rate as distance from the light source
increases.
Within this description, the students first referred to the
rate as a “decreasing rate” and then in the second sentence
claimed that the “average rates of change increase.” Many
students who displayed this difficulty used phrases such as
“decreasing at a decreasing rate” rather than writing two
separate statements: one about the function and one about
its rate of change. Examples such as this point to the com-
plexity of expressing the ideas involved with negative rates
of change and their representations in an applied context.
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
5.3 Discharging capacitor
In the context of the discharging capacitor we found that
83% of the students (n = 29) explicitly showed and used one
or more representations to support their written descriptions
of the behavior of the voltage and its average rates of change.
Eighteen students (51%) drew function graphs of the volt-
age over the discharging capacitor; 15 students (43%) drew
rate graphs; and 11 students (31%) made tables. Only three
students (9%) did not supply any representations to support
their descriptions.
A significant number of students had difficulty maintain-
ing the distinction between the behavior of the function and
the behavior of average rates of in the context of the dis-
charging capacitor. Only 56% of the students (n = 19) could
correctly describe both behaviors within this context. One
example of a correct student description is: “The voltage is
decreasing. The average rate of change is increasing because
it’s negative and moving towards zero. Therefore, the voltage
is decreasing at an increasing rate.” For the other 44% of the
students, the most common difficulty was to make an incor-
rect assertion about the negative average rates of change,
such as “The average rate of change of the voltage decreases
over time.” However, the students drew on a number of dif-
ferent graphical representations to support their claims about
the rates at which the voltage is changing.
One student made the graph shown in Fig. 8 of the volt-
age over the discharging capacitor that included segments
of slope-lines over three intervals, illustrating how the cal-
culated average rate of change changed as time progressed.
The student’s description accompanying the graph drew on
language of speed and velocity:
In the first 25  s. the voltage across the capacitor
decreases quickly at a high speed but in a negative
velocity. As more and more of the voltage in the capac-
Fig. 8  Function graph with segments of slope-lines drawn
itor is discharged, the graph begins to plateau. This
shows that as the voltage gets closer to 0 the average
rate of change becomes closer to 0 and is discharging
very slowly until the capacitor is fully discharged.
This student drew on the context of motion to describe
the voltage over the discharging capacitor, choosing to use
the language of speed, velocity, slowly, and quickly. The lan-
guage of speed as the magnitude of velocity seemed to help
this student to correctly interpret the rate of discharge and to
shift to the language of a “very slow” discharge to interpret
the long run behavior of the changing phenomenon.
Another student used a similar representation with slope-
triangles draw in the function graph (see Fig. 9) to illustrate
and support his description of the changing voltage across
the discharging capacitor:
Over time, the voltage across the capacitor drops and
approaches, but never reaches, zero. At first, the volt-
age across the capacitor drops drastically, reaching
1.34 in the first 14 s, but then begins to slow down
as time goes on. This decrease in the charge of volt-
age explains why the average rate of change of voltage
decreases as time passes. As shown above, the average
rate of change @ t = 5 to t = 10 is −0.392 v/s, com-
pared to the −0.006 v/s @ t = 35 to t = 40.
This student used more colloquial language such as
“drops drastically” and “begin to slow down” describing the
voltage discharge. The incorrect statement that “the average
rate of change of voltage decreases as time passes” might
be due to the student focusing on the wrong aspects of his
representation; perhaps the student was seeing the heights of
the slope-triangles as positive and successively decreasing,
despite having explicitly and correctly calculated negative
values for the slopes.
Although many of the students struggled in expressing the
behavior of the average rates of change of the voltage across
the capacitor, 56% of the students were able to carefully
and correctly interpret the rates, supported by their data and
references to graphical representations. For example, one
student correctly drew a function plot and the corresponding
rate graph, and wrote: “As time increases, the voltage across
Fig. 9  Function graph with slope-triangles drawn
13

the capacitor is decreasing. The average rate of change of the
voltage increases (getting less negative and closer to zero).
The magnitude of the average rate of change of the voltage
decreases (0.392, 0.048, 0.0062) meaning over 5 s intervals,
the capacitor loses less and less voltage.” However, some
students, even when drawing a correct corresponding rate
graph, encountered difficulty in giving a correct interpreta-
tion of their graph. For example, the student whose graphs
are shown in Fig. 10 gave the following interpretation:
The voltage across the capacitor decreases over time
at a decreasing rate. Although the [average rates of
change] are increasing from [0,40], the absolute value
is decreasing which tells us that the rate at which the
voltage across the capacitor is decreasing at a decreas-
ing rate.
The student’s first assertion that the voltage is “decreas-
ing at a decreasing rate” is an incorrect interpretation of the
data. The student then correctly stated that the values of the
sequence of average rates of change are increasing (as shown
in the graph) and that the magnitudes of those values are
decreasing. However, the student’s meaning is then obscured
by the final assertion of “decreasing at a decreasing rate.”
Some of the students used their work in finding an equa-
tion to fit the data to describe the rate at which the voltage
was changing, by interpreting the cstant 0.87 in their derived
expression y = 7.99(.87)t. Shifting their focus to the value of
the base of the exponential function allowed these students
to interpret the change in the voltage as a percentage change.
Comparing the amount of voltage across the capacitor over
consecutive seconds, one student wrote “over each 1 s inter-
val, the capacitor’s voltage decreases to 87% of the previous
voltage.” Another student correctly interpreted the constant
0.87 to mean “that at each second the voltage is 13% less
than the voltage it was the previous second” and provided
the graphical representation shown in Fig. 11.
This representation makes it clear that this student under-
stood that the amount of voltage over the capacitor decreases
by 13% each second. However, we do not know if these
students have coordinated their models of percentage change
and with their models of average rate of change.
Fig. 10  Supporting graphs
13
J. B. Ärlebäck, H. M. Doerr
6 Discussion and conclusions
An underlying assumption of this study has been the impor-
tance for science, engineering and mathematics students
to create, interpret and reason about models of changing
phenomena (Beichner, 1994; Carlson, 1998; Hestenes,
2010). However, reasoning about rates of change in gen-
eral is difficult for students (Carlson et al., 2002; Herbert &
Pierce, 2011; Johnson, 2012; Oehrtman et al., 2008), and
especially complex and challenging when the phenomena
at hand involves an average rate of change that is negative
(Ärlebäck et al., 2013). The account of the model develop-
ment sequence and its implementation illustrates how the
activities in the sequence supported the students in interpret-
ing and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of
change in different contexts. Our results provide empirical
support for the recommendations for instruction by Carlson
and colleagues (2002) and Roorda et al. (2015).
The model development sequence began with the famil-
iar context of motion along a straight path. This context
(unlike the contexts of light intensity and discharging
capacitors) has distinct words for the rate of change (veloc-
ity) and the absolute value of the rate of change (speed).
While working through a set of model exploration activi-
ties in a computer simulation environment, the students
came to recognize velocity as a signed quantity (distinct
from speed) and distinguished between the values of the
output of a position function and the values of the aver-
age rates of change of that function. Nearly all students
were successful in interpreting and distinguishing between
velocity graphs and position graphs. However, when we
shifted from the phenomenon of motion to the phenomena
of light intensity and voltage drop across a capacitor, and
in line with other researcher’s results (Herbert & Pierce,
2011; Ibrahim & Rebello, 2012), student difficulties in
interpreting and distinguishing between the function and
Fig. 11  Graphical representa-
tion of the percentage rate of
change
Students’ interpretations and reasoning about phenomena with negative rates of change…
its average rates of change re-surfaced for many of the
students.
The conceptual challenges in interpreting rates of
change reside, in part, in attending simultaneously to
the global features of the behavior of the function and in
coordinating one’s understanding of three quantities: the
change in function values, the rate of that change over
various subintervals, and changes in sequences of average
rates of change (e.g., Carlson et al., 2002; Lobato et al.,
2012). Our study shows that the difficulty of such com-
parisons becomes more complex when the rates are nega-
tive and increasing. In the case of the light intensity and
the discharging capacitor contexts, the magnitude of the
average rates of change over a sequence of subintervals
decreased, while the sequence of signed average rates of
change increased as they became less negative. For many
students, the language for describing this change in terms
of the context of light intensity and capacitance appeared
in conflict with formal mathematical language for describ-
ing that change.
The language of magnitude (or absolute value) appeared
to be helpful to some students in using clear language to
interpret changing phenomena with negative rates of change.
Unlike in the case of motion, where there are different words
for describing the signed quantity (velocity) and its magni-
tude (speed), for other phenomena, such as light intensity
and the voltage drop across a capacitor, there are no such
distinct and familiar words. This suggests that greater atten-
tion needs to be paid to the use of the language of magnitude
(or absolute value) to help students in interpreting and rea-
soning about these phenomena. Expressions like “increasing
at a decreasing rate” and “decreasing at an increasing rate”
appeared to be especially problematic for many students. It
would appear that separating such a statement about a func-
tion into two statements (one about the function increasing
and the other about the rate of change decreasing) would
help students to articulate precise mathematical formulations
about changing phenomena and to avoid the easy slip into
conflating the function and its rate of change.
In the context of the discharging capacitor (an exponen-
tial decay phenomena), the notion of percentage change
provided some students with language for dealing with
this difficulty. Referring to the constant percentage change,
students were able to express the amount of change using
everyday language of decreasing with a comparison to a
previous value. Just as importantly, the constant percentage
change provides an opportunity to express an explanatory
model of the phenomena based on fact that the amount of
discharge is directly proportional to the amount of charge
in the capacitor. Future research needs to investigate how
students can connect and coordinate this explanatory model
to the descriptive exponential decay model with its negative
and non-constant sequences of average rates of change.
This study suggests that explicit attention needs to be paid
to helping students learn to communicate about the context
of changing phenomena, not simply to calculate numerical
relationships and construct the graphical representation of
the phenomena. Although nearly all students became profi-
cient at calculating average rates of change and constructing
graphical representations of the changing phenomena and
their associated rate of change graphs in all three contexts,
some students continued to have difficulties in interpreting
such numerical results and graphs in terms of the phenom-
ena using precise, careful mathematical language. This
suggests the need for closer attention to interpreting and
reasoning about the concept of rate of change in a range of
contexts, which is in line with the suggestion by English,
Ärlebäck and Mousoulides (2016) to rethink and broaden
the perspectives of model and modeling within a multi-
disciplinary context. Based on our results, we also concur
with Roorda et al. (2015), that since motion is a familiar
experience for students, this would appear to be a useful
and productive context for introducing negative rates and
distinguishing between the magnitude of the average rate of
change (speed) and the average rate of change as a signed
quantity (velocity). However, when shifting to other con-
texts, students will likely need support to interpret and rea-
son about new contexts This paper has illustrated that model
development sequences provide a structure to organize and
plan learning and instruction through eliciting, exploring
and applying mathematical concepts.
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