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posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-royal-road-to-understanding-students dept.

Oxford researchers are taking part in an international study to film the teaching of quadratic equations for secondary school pupils. The hope is that lessons will be learned on how to bring out the best in pupils learning about mathematics.

Over the next few months, video cameras will appear in secondary schools across England that have chosen to take part in an international study to observe maths lessons focused on quadratic equations. Researchers from the University of Oxford have joined forces with the Education Development Trust to undertake the study in England, which will involve up to 85 schools from different parts of the country. The research team has to enlist 85 teachers and around 1,200 pupils, so they can analyse video footage of different teaching practices and pupils' responses to assess what works best. Schools in Oxfordshire will be among those approached about taking part in the pilot.

The research project is led by Education Development Trust, working with Dr Jenni Ingram and Professor Pam Sammons from the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. They will analyse how pupils' attitudes toward quadratic equations are linked with their progress and results, and observe how teachers' attitudes and methods affect outcomes.

Dr Ingram said: "We believe this study will improve our understanding of the relationships between a range of teaching practices and various student outcomes, including their enjoyment of mathematics, mathematical knowledge and engagement with learning."

Or you could watch Khan Academy.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:22PM (18 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:22PM (#485313) Journal

    Hell, on that subject, teach more kids what a logical converse is, and fewer what the Taylor expansion for a sine function is.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:44PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:44PM (#485334)

    Taylor series are from calculus, how many kids are actually being shown that without having had at least pre-calculus? Also, logical converse is something from statistics which is one of those things they like to sneak into algebra even though it's not given adequate time and energy for students to grasp. Around here, they no longer expect that of pre-college students as it doesn't actually help with math.

    If they're showing kids things that are taught in calculus 3 before they've graduated from high school there's all sorts of other things that need to be fixed first and avoiding the quadratic formula would be rather low on the list.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:58PM (1 child)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:58PM (#485346) Journal

      I, personally, first got it in 10th grade pre-calc as a magic formula just in case I ever needed to calculate a sine function by hand. It was a complete waste at the time, because it was seriously just rote bullshit without the context of what a Taylor expansion meant.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:36PM (#485417)

        That's normal, the memory comes from understanding and connection. Magic math is easily forgotten or messed up.

    • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:59PM (8 children)

      by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:59PM (#485349)

      If they're showing kids things that are taught in calculus 3 before they've graduated from high school there's all sorts of other things that need to be fixed first and avoiding the quadratic formula would be rather low on the list.

      I have studied the human body for 25+ years now. From basic biology classes to pre-med to medical school to residency to continuing education and work experience. I'm pretty much an expert in how humans are put together and how they fall apart, and even how they can be patched together again for a while. Yet you (who for argument's sake aren't in the medical profession) own a human body and you seem to work it just fine. You have a pretty solid empirical knowledge of what your capabilities and limitations are as well as knowing how to care for and maintain that body (although you might not necessarily apply it).

      The point I'm making is that somehow math teachers assume that just because there is a logical progression in mathematics, every successive step built on the previous one, more or less, then the teaching of mathematics MUST assume the same sequence and every single step must be taught. Mathematicians fail to grasp the fact that the human brain is still by far the greatest abstraction tool around. You don't NEED to suffer through geometry and trig to understand calculus, for example. Just like you're perfectly fine living in and taking care of your body without knowing absolutely all the gory details, someone can learn advanced or interesting concepts - CONCEPTS - without slogging through all the background work.

      If you're going to choose a career in math, then you have to go back and re-visit all those concepts. But for the general population gloss over the boring stuff and focus on the interesting stuff. That's how you'll get people to learn. But this is also much harder to evaluate since it becomes qualitative instead of quantitative. It's much easier to put a tick on 5.2 than to grade an essay, for example.

      Therefore students of mathematics tend to suffer because of the laziness and lack of imagination of math teachers. Not only that, but those who end up liking mathematics are the ones who either enjoy suffering, or enjoy making others suffer....

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:06PM (7 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:06PM (#485401)

        There's a transition that has to take place. These are foundational skills, the students absolutely have to know this stuff and there's not much point in making them work for it. It's far more important that they develop a positive experience and some necessary skills.

        Later on is the time to have students generalizing and improvising. It's also a matter of time, There's no real time to learn this incorrectly and then relearn it.

        As far as the body goes, the understanding of the involved processes is rapidly changing, but how a person feels doesn't change unpredictably.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Dunbal on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:45PM (6 children)

          by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:45PM (#485424)

          the students absolutely have to know this stuff

          No they don't. Anymore than a high school biology student has to know immunohistochemistry. Right now we have a system that purports to teach the "foundation" skills you mention and the reality is we are graduating students who cannot even add or subtract. There's something seriously wrong here when you claim you want to stick to the current model which is demonstrably broken. How much benefit are students getting from doing trig or quadratic equations when division is a challenge without a calculator and fractions and percentages are some mysterious exotic country? Focus on the REAL basic stuff like arithmetic, and everything else can be glossed over or skipped entirely unless taken as electives.

          There's no real time to learn this incorrectly and then relearn it.

          Every other science does this. You don't learn PV=nRT in high school. You learn the 3 gas laws separately.

          • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)

            by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:45PM (#485495)

            > Focus on the REAL basic stuff like arithmetic, and everything else can be glossed over or skipped entirely unless taken as electives.

            Don't come complaining when the industry hires Europeans and Asians, then...

            • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:49PM (1 child)

              by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:49PM (#485500)

              I was under the impression that trend was to hire robots. Seriously, how much math does a burger flipper/retail shop employee need? Those who are motivated to learn will learn. Doesn't matter where they're from.

              • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 28 2017, @10:09PM

                by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @10:09PM (#485509)

                > how much math does a burger flipper/retail shop employee need?

                Enough to learn how interest and inflation work, so that the math doesn't turn into "how much assistance do they need to survive?"

                > Those who are motivated to learn will learn.

                Very American of you, and very wrong.

                Conversely, those not motivated to learn will turn into your problem, whether you need to pay for them, repair the damage that they cause, or deal with losing your job or retirement after they vote with their guts for lack of ever straining their brain.

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:39AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:39AM (#485584)

            That's really not a fair analogy. I've got my undergrad in the natural sciences and spend my days at work trying to figure out how to get students that are struggling from point A to point B with the least amount of time and effort possible.

            2nd degree polynomials are something that shouldn't be glossed over as they are the first exposure that students really have to numerous concepts and they serve as a reinforcing mechanism for all sorts of math. Polynomial multiplication and division, breaking up an equation into smaller pieces, having differing powers of exponents, coefficient management and even just basic masking techniques that get rather complicated later on.

            I'm a huge fan of masking out the bullshit. Realistically, there's insufficient time to explicitly teach everything, but glossing over quadratic equations is really not the place to save time. They just show up too often and in too many contexts and have too many math skills to make that an acceptable decision.

            What's more, students who don't see and do these things in that unit wind up struggling later on when those practices are put into place in more complicated expressions like exponential and trigonometric functions. Which both have a non-insignificant amount of overlap with quadratic functions.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:50AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:50AM (#485683)

            > You don't learn PV=nRT in high school

            Uh. I got the base laws and then piped up that they could be comingled because of sharing V and didn't that mean that temperature depended on pressure (roughly) and got told to shut up. Then next year we did indeed get the full ideal gas law.

            n=1

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:45PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:45PM (#485964)

            Every other science does this. You don't learn PV=nRT in high school. You learn the 3 gas laws separately.

            What are the 3 gas laws? I only know pV = NkT (or pV=nRT, but that version I learned later in university). Honestly.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:34PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:34PM (#485379)

    It doesn't make any sense.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:49PM (2 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:49PM (#485389) Journal

      I don't know. Can you imagine one human being who would have a different perspective on how to use innocuous internet modding systems than yourself?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:39PM (#485419)

        You add absolutely nothing to OP's point, and you manage to do so less eloquently.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:40PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:40PM (#485491)

          OK! That's it! I am modding your comment on the parent comment as -1 Uninteresting. I hope you will cherish this bit of information, and maybe some day boffins in the UK will video modding on SolylentNews in order to discover how to teach the maths.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:21PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:21PM (#485410) Journal
      +1 interesting is OP, way OP. I had a +5 information post and it was getting one-shot ganked by all the +3 interesting posts.
    • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:50PM

      by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:50PM (#485427)

      Modding is just allowing other people to censor what you read anyway. I've always read at -1. I think I can spot troll/inflammatory comments for myself. Don't expect it to make sense - it's done by other people.