David Bressoud, mathematician and former president of the MAA, will give a talk on his vision of how to teach Calculus at the pedagogical seminar at the Centre for mathematical sciences in Lund.

Abstract: Far too many students emerge from Calculus with little sense of why it is considered foundational to modern science. The problem is that students experience it as a collection of arcane procedures to be mastered and a repertoire of toy problems to which appropriate procedures are applied. They are assessed on how quickly they can identify the problem type and accurately execute the procedures. An alternate approach is to build an understanding of functions as establishing a relationship between variables that vary in tandem, of integration as embodying accumulation when the rate of accumulation varies as a function of time or distance, and differentiation as the ratio of rates of change of linked variables. In other words, the goal is to approach Calculus as a means of modeling dynamic situations. This talk will present concrete examples that are being implemented at a variety of colleges and universities.

About the speaker: David Bressoud is an American mathematician who works in number theory, combinatorics, and special functions. As of 2019 he is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College, Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences and a former President of the Mathematical Association of America. Since 2005 he has written a monthly online column for MAA and he has received several of the Mathematical Association of America's awards: the Distinguished Teaching Award for the Allegheny Mountain section in 1994, the Beckenbach Book Prize in 1999, and he was a George Pólya Lecturer from 2002 to 2004.

(This text was adapted from wikipedia.)