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