Language Counts in the Teaching of Mathematics

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED WITH THE INFORMING SCIENCE INSTITUTE. Aim/Purpose................................................................................................................................................................................................. The main aim of the study is to identify some of the barriers to the integration of technology into the teaching of mathematics in high schools. Background................................................................................................................................................................................................. Writing on chalkboards as a method of transferring knowledge is a key feature of traditional approach to teaching may have been successful in the past, but the minds of the current generation vary from those of the previous generation. Today’s students are immersed in technology. They are much more up-to-date on the latest technology and gadgets. Technology has certainly changed how students access and integrate information, so it plausible that technology has also changed the way students thinks. Growing up with cutting-edge technologies has left them thinking differently than students of past generations. This call for new innovative approaches to teaching that will cater to the students of today. Of course it is not wise to discard the traditional way of teaching that the past teachers have painstakingly created because of its past and some current success. This is why it is recommended to use this approach as a base for the new ones. Thus, if there is a way to transfer the advantages of this approach of teaching to new innovative approach then teachers should do everything in their power to merge the past and the present into one innovative teaching approach. Methodology................................................................................................................................................................................................. Purposeful sampling was used to survey a total of 116 high school mathematics teachers in the former Transkei Homelands. But only 97 questionnaires were deemed usable because of the way they have answered the questions. Microsoft excel was used in the descriptive statistics Contribution................................................................................................................................................................................................. To identify some barriers that need to be addressed by stakeholders, policy makers in high school education so that high school mathematics teachers will be able to integrate technology into their classroom teaching to meet today students’ learning needs. Findings...................................................................................................................................................................................................... The results indicated that the participating teachers need to be trained and supported in the use of the new technologies applicable to teaching mathematics. Recommendations for Practitioners.......................................................................................................................................................... The Eastern Cape department of education needs to consider the lacked of technology training as a barrier to the integration of technology into the teaching of mathematics and take necessary steps to address it. Recommendation for Researchers........................................................................................................................................................... There is the need to explore in depth whether the factors of gender and age also act as barriers. Impact on Society....................................................................................................................................................................................... The research will assist stakeholders, policy makers of high school education to identify the needs of mathematics teachers. That is to say, the skill sets, experience and expertise, as well as teaching equipment and classroom design and environment required by mathematics teachers. Future Research........................................................................................................................................................................................... More work needs to be done to check whether gender, age of the teachers have some effects on their attitude towards technology integration as well as evaluate the role played by choice of teaching methodology and teaching objectives.

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Measurement introducing teaching of mathematics in elementary course

SCIENTIFIC WORK ◽

10.36719/2663-4619-2019-47-8-124-126 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (8) ◽

pp. 124-126

Author(s):

Ana Memmedova ◽

Keyword(s):

Teaching Of Mathematics

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A Simple but Efficient Concept of Blended Teaching of Mathematics for Engineering Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci11020056 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 56

Author(s):

Saray Busto ◽

Michael Dumbser ◽

Elena Gaburro

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Video Quality ◽

Lecture Hall ◽

Ex Post ◽

Teaching Of Mathematics ◽

Online Streaming ◽

The University ◽

Blended Teaching

In this article we present a case study concerning a simple but efficient technical and logistic concept for the realization of blended teaching of mathematics and its applications in theoretical mechanics that was conceived, tested and implemented at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering (DICAM) of the University of Trento, Italy, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept foresees traditional blackboard lectures with a reduced number of students physically present in the lecture hall, while the same lectures are simultaneously made available to the remaining students, who cannot be present, via high-quality low-bandwidth online streaming. The case study presented in this paper was implemented in a single University Department and was carried out with a total of n=1011 students and n=68 professors participating in the study. Based on our first key assumption that traditional blackboard lectures, including the gestures and the facial expressions of the professor, are even nowadays still a very efficient and highly appreciated means of teaching mathematics at the university, this paper deliberately does not want to propose a novel pedagogical concept of how to teach mathematics at the undergraduate level, but rather presents a technical concept of how to preserve the quality of traditional blackboard lectures even during the COVID-19 pandemic and how to make them available to the students at home via online streaming with adequate audio and video quality even at low internet bandwidth. The second key assumption of this paper is that the teaching of mathematics is a dynamic creative process that requires the physical presence of students in the lecture hall as audience so that the professor can instantaneously fine-tune the evolution of the lecture according to his/her perception of the level of attention and the facial expressions of the students. The third key assumption of this paper is that students need to have the possibility to interact with each other personally, especially in the first years at the university. We report on the necessary hardware, software and logistics, as well as on the perception of the proposed blended lectures by undergraduate students from civil and environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy, compared to traditional lectures and also compared to the pure online lectures that were needed as emergency measure at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation of the concept was carried out with the aid of quantitative internet bandwidth measurements, direct comparison of transmitted video signals and a careful analysis of ex ante and ex post online questionnaires sent to students and professors.

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