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Room for improvement in the teaching of mathematics
Mathematics teaching in primary and lower secondary school should include more realistic mathematics tasks. This emerges from new reasearch at the University of Agder.
“To give pupils basic mathematical skills, it is important to give them realistic tasks they can connect to real life situations,” says Oda Heidi Bolstad.
She refers to the research findings from her doctoral project. Bolstad recently defended her PhD thesis ‘Teaching and learning for mathematical literacy.’
She followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences with specialisation in Mathematical Sciences.
Her research focused on teaching and learning to develop mathematical literacy.
Mathematical literacy is about having the capacities and skills you need to be able to meet the mathematical challenges you encounter in modern society.
“These capacities are important. The term mathematical literacy is used by the OECD, and in a Norwegian context, we often talk about numeracy as a basic skill,” says Bolstad.
Necessary skills and deeper learning in mathematics are also key in the new curriculum from autumn 2020.
Textbooks dominate the classroom
Bolstad interviewed and observed mathematics teachers and pupils in Year 9 at three different schools. The answers she got, show that there is room for improvement in the teaching and learning of numeracy as a basic skill.
The teachers underlined the importance of practical maths activities.
“Practical and relevant mathematical tasks can be efficient for learning. Still, lessons often consist almost entirely of work on tasks from the textbook. This may indicate that teachers need to develop some strategies to introduce real world relevance to their teaching,” she says
One example is mathematical puzzles concerning age. Per is twice as old as Kari, and Arne is 8 years younger than Anne. Their ages add to 100 years. The pupils are asked to set up an equation to find out how old each of them is. According to Bolstad, such tasks present a construed situation which is difficult to relate to real life.
“In real life, you would simply ask a person their age, you wouldn’t set up eanquation,” says Bolstad.
The teacher must understand the skills
Curricula and other strategy documents contain explanations of what mathematical literacy and numeracy as a basic skill imply. But these explanations often focus on what you can do once you have these competencies, and not how to achieve them.
Bolstad thinks this may be one of the reasons that textbooks dominate the classroom.
Use of realistic situations in mathematics teaching is emphasised both by school leaders, teachers, pupils and the curriculum. But in some cases, the context can overshadow other important elements that provide basic mathematical skills. In such a way, the understanding of these skills can be narrowed down to only being about mathematics in a specific situation.
“Much of the mathematics subject content is abstract and can be difficult to relate to real-life situations,” says Bolstad.
It is therefore an important point that mathematical abilities can also be developed through work with abstract mathematics, for example through critical discussion of mathematical approaches and tools.
Teachers themselves must understand
Bolstad refers to previous research in the field in her thesis. From that, it emerges that participation in a professional community, where teachers themselves develop mathematical literacy tasks, is of great importance for their understanding of and teaching of mathematical literacy.
“This may suggest that excessive use of textbooks contibutes to a narrow understanding of mathematical literacy,” says Bolstad.
In order to build a broad understanding of this competence, teachers themselves must take part in developing, applying and revising mathematical literacy problems. That will make them better equipped to educate students for the future, according to Bolstad.
