This article, from the March/April issue of ISTE's Learning and Leading, discusses whether math should be taught in a more technology-based, application-based, real-life relevant way. I certainly agree that it should. Especially at the high school level, it seems, math is usually taught as a series of algorithms students must learn to “solve problems” that are actually merely exercises without a basis in an actual problem situation. Even when those algorithms are applied to real-world problem situations, this is often done in a way such that the student doesn’t have to actually determine how to solve the problem, because the problem was chosen because it can be solved with the algorithm the student has been practicing. When this happens, student don’t actually learn authentic problem-solving skills. Currently, one of my main goals for improving my teaching is to incorporate more authentic problem-solving experiences into my curriculum.
I think, however, that the author of this article misses a critical point. She mentions that “Americans tend to think of themselves as good or bad at math,” whereas Asians “think that if you try hard enough, you’ll get it.” She goes on to say that as a student, she didn’t work hard at math because it was boring. I think, however, that often an even more significant demotivator for math students is a lack of confidence in their own ability to do math. If a student has labeled him/herself as “bad at math,” then he/she won’t work hard to understand it, and therefore won’t understand it! I agree that the way in which math is taught can be made more interesting and relevant, but I think that helping students discover that they can be “good at math” is equally important.
I like your thought processes, for many of us real learning take place in a setting that is problem based... something needs to get done, how do we do it? For many kids getting a real job done is the prime motivator, in my day kids who could barely add and subtract could calculate the cubic inch displacement of a drag car engine without breaking a sweat. I'm not sure what the present day analog to that situation is but good teachers will find it.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing how putting a question in a real problem situation can make mathematics so much more understandable to a student. Today I was trying to help a student understand the relationship between the fractions 1/2 and 1/4 and their decimal equivalents. He wasn't getting it. Then I asked him to think about it in terms of money (dollars and cents), and he was able to come up with the decimal equivalent of every fraction I gave him by thinking about it as a fraction of a dollar and figuring out how many cents it would be!
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