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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:53AM (2 children)
Not really, I've been doing math professionally for the better part of a decade. And the more math I do, the more I've come to understand that the real difference between the people who struggle and the people who flourish is the sheer size of the memorized library of functions and results as well as the willingness to push for a solution.
And no, I'm very familiar with the difference between being a human calculator and being good at math. I wouldn't be able to improvise and solve problems of types I'd never been presented with if I hadn't developed a great deal of mathematical thinking.
It's just like any other skill, if you aren't relying upon a great deal of stored knowledge, you're not going to be fast or efficient. If you're constantly having to re-invent the wheel you're just not going to get anywhere.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:39AM (1 child)
I've been doing math professionally for the better part of a decade.
Care to elaborate? This smacks of self-declared superiority. What I suspect is that you lack in reflective capabilities. As a matter of fact, intuition is key for mathematics. A deep intuition makes it much easier to master and memorize the wider field of mathematics. If it is easy for someone to reproduce a mathematical fact from other such facts mentally, it becomes much easier to memorize. You may or may not be better in mathematics than people around you. If it is the case and you indeed know more mathematical facts, you fail to see that the underlying reason would be a better intuition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:56PM
You've got that completely backwards. The basis for intuition is a large amount of memorized patterns. There's a process here. If you haven't already matched the equation against a list of things you already know how to do, and things that look similar to what you're wanting to do, then you're wasting a ton of energy and leaving yourself open to edge cases which only come up occasionally.
But really, intuition is the result of having a lot of these facts memorized and being able to apply them in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Adding 0 and multiplying by 1 are particularly common examples.