Ryan

Duffy A few lessons into our unit on logarithms, my mentor teacher and I noticed that students did not fully understand the relationship between a log and an exponential function. Together with Kelly Maisel, we created an activity that was intended to help students connect these concepts they had to first find the inverse of y = log 2 x and then provide a convincing argument (not necessarily a proof) for their answer.
I began the lesson with a brief overview of inverse functions (e.g., The inverse of

y = x + 2 is y = x 2) and demonstrated that graphing inverse functions always creates a

line of symmetry along y = x (Video, 8:35). This was intended to provide students with a
tool they could use while working on the task if they were not immediately able to visual

approach the problem algebraically. After this introduction, students worked in groups of
3-4 for the majority of the hour before a brief discussion at the end, which summarized each groups findings (33:40). This discussion was much less productive than I had envisioned. It was clear that many students did not have a solid grasp on the concept of an inverse knowledge that I had assumed students would already be fairly familiar with. One group confidently claimed, I know our [solution] is right (33:46) because they had merely created a graph that had reflectional symmetry ( y = log 2 x ). These students did not seem to mind that the line of symmetry was along the x-axis (not y = x ), and they
were not concerned with composing the function with its supposed inverse (Solution A).

Other students translated the equation into exponential form but failed to find its inverse
(Solution B), again suggesting that they did not fully understand the concept. Even for those who were able to come up with the correct answer, the explanations were always procedural in nature (Solution C) or based solely off of the visual demonstration I had

Ryan Duffy provided at the start of class (36:00, 37:20). It was clear to me that very few (if any) had actually made the conceptual connection between logarithmic and exponential functions. Additionally, the discussion was difficult to facilitate because I ended up doing most of the explaining (34:30, 37:34-38:40, 43:00)! Students have not been accustomed to communicating their ideas for very long, so it was much easier in the moment to put words in their mouths and ensure that the class was following their logic. I do not believe this had the explanatory effect I was hoping for, however, as at the end of class, several students still seemed as confused as when we had begun (39:16-49:10). Reflecting on this class period, the most valuable lesson I learned was not make assumptions about students prior knowledge. In order for students to really explore inverse functions in all of the depth we had anticipated (e.g., composing functions, graphing functions, picking sample points, etc.), they would have needed to have the relevant information fresh in their memories. Their lack of knowledge prevented them from exploring the task in deeper, more meaningful ways and led many students to give up rather quickly. When we talked after the lesson, my lesson study team discussed the need to think more broadly about anticipated solution methods. Because we were certain that students would quickly recognize the correct answer, we had not given much thought to those students who might have approached the problem from a non-exponential perspective or had trouble understanding inverse functions. We also discussed the need to provide more structure to our lessons. While we were careful to make sure the task was open-ended enough to be challenging and cognitively demanding, the task (and the supporting questions I asked as I circulated the classroom) seemed too vague and abstract to

Ryan Duffy effectively promote learning. These are key focus areas that we hope to work on in our next lesson study and that form the basis for the majority of the revisions made to our lesson plan.

Ryan Duffy Student Solutions Solution A This group tested the same set of x- values for both the original function and their candidate for its inverse. They did not realize that an inverse function takes the y values from the original function and maps them back to the original x- values.

Solution B This group did not create an inverse function but instead just translated the original into exponential form. Shown here is the part of their poster that restates the rule they were referencing. The incorrect notation used in the logarithm suggests a lack of understanding in this translation process as well. Solution C

This group did not provide any evidence for how they moved from the exponential form of the original equation (in orange) to the correct inverse equation (in green). It is therefore likely that they followed the switch the x and y procedure that they had learned previously, without understanding why.