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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) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:39AM (3 children)
Find a cool technical project the kids want to have and let them build it from (relative) scratch. They'll find out the hard way they need math and then you can help out..
1 hour to motivate, 39 hours to harvest that motivation.
And of course all that test training got to go together with least common denominator education level. Start reasoning and show in the flesh real world examples of application.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:01PM (1 child)
Or they go online and find somebody that already solved all the hard problems. Which is...also a useful skill, but presents a challenge for designing projects that actually accomplish what you want. The most likely outcome is also the worst possible: idiot teachers trying to punish online research.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:04PM
Idiots will always mess up whatever they come in contact with :p
Anyway, one can usually find an online solution but rarely the exact solution you need to have. Just try to find a source code for DMA on microcontrollers to feeding them with external data at high speed. All trigger modes has to be correct, configuration, wiring etc. Then there's the chip errata....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:00PM
When I took pre-calc we built solar cookers using the information we had about parabolas to place the focus where we wanted to heat the meat.
A bit more complicated would be building a parabaloid and then using it to talk with somebody on the other side of the classroom.