One of the eternal quandaries in education is how to assess the amount of knowledge transferred during the teaching process. It is more common today for a timed written test to be a large component of assessment but perhaps the oldest form is the oral examination (or viva voce) (Huxham, Campbell, & Westward, 2012). Oral examinations still occur for the doctoral thesis, the legal moot court and many postgraduate medical programmes (Joughin 2007). In mathematics service units at tertiary level, students anticipate that the assessment may consist of written tests and/or assignments, online quizzes, and a final examination. In my experience as an educator, I have observed students spend many hours wondering and predicting their final grade. They peruse previous tests/examinations to ascertain their choice of questions to answer, the content of their allowable test/examination notes and use a myriad of mathematical ideas to predict their final grade. Students from a variety of disciplines are required to have a degree of mathematical thinking and knowledge which they will later apply in their chosen field. Since most mathematics service units are positioned in the first year, the relevance to their degree course is not readily appreciated. Students with non-mathematical majors require a broad knowledge rather than deep theoretical comprehension of mathematics. The written solution can hide the true intention of the author as incorrect reasoning or misconception can be masked by a correct answer (Mitchell & Horne, 2011). The spoken word leaves room for these to be clarified. This exploratory paper will examine the proposal of oral presentations in tutorials as part of the assessment in mathematics service units.
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...mathematics: an alternative assessment technique, Primus: Problems, Resources and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, 16(3), 243-256.
Rettig, M. (2005) Using the multiple intelligences to enhance instruction for the young children and young children with disabilities, Early Childhood Education Journal, 132 (4), 255-259.
Szirony, G.M., Pearson, L.C., Burgin, J.S., Murray, G.C., and Elrod, L.M. (2007) Brain hemisphere dominance and vocational preference: A preliminary analysis, Work, 29(4), 323-9.
Warren, J. (2008) How does the brain process music?, Clinical Medicine, 8(1), 32-36. Downloaded February 26, 2008, from Health & Medical Complete database.
White, A. (2004) Impact of student motivation on teaching and learning, The Agricultural Education Magazine, 76(4), 14.
Wilde, O. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Isobel Murray (editor).
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When a teacher from Tryhard high school decides to voice her/he’s distaste about the success of the students from the previous year in mathematics, a few students decide to take matters into their own hand. Using the scores of the previous years they started to analyses the documents and see if the teacher was wrong.
This essay is the first of three short reflexive papers intended to identify the issues and implications that result from viewing mathematics education through a semiotic lens. By mathematics education I mean to include consideration of mathematics itself as a discipline of on-going human activity, the teaching and learning of mathematics, and any research that contributes to our understanding of these preceding enterprises. More specifically my current interests are in disentangling the confusion among the mathematics education community regarding the epistemological foundations of mathematics, the meaning and usefulness of constructivism as a theory of learning, and how these two issues are related to the learning and teaching of formal mathematical proof. Because I have found interdisciplinary approaches to the study of most anything both more fruitful and more enjoyable, I will employ such strategies in these papers. As a result, it may not always be clear that mathematics education is my main concern--please rest assured that it is and that if I gain insight of value in that domain I will do my best to render to Caesar what is his.
Barr, C., Doyle, M., Clifford, J., De Leo,T., Dubeau, C. (2003). "There is More to Math: A Framework for Learning and Math Instruction” Waterloo Catholic District School Board
Many seem to think of mathematics as being nothing more than a series of numbers and formulas that they must learn, in order to pass a particular requirement for their college degree. They rarely, if ever, stop to think about the importance of mathematics and how it actually affects them and the people around them. It is ...
Howard Gardner is the “John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero” (Gardner bio, Multiple Intelligences and Education, MI Theory, and Project Zero). As director of Project Zero, it provided and environment that Gardner could begin the exploration of human cognition (Multiple Intelligences and Education). Project Zero colleagues have been designing assessment and the use of multiple intelligences (MI) to realize more personalized curriculum, instruction, and teaching methods; and the quality of crossing traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought in education (Gardner bio). MI theories offer tools to educators that will allow more people to master learning in an effective way and to help people “achieve their potential at the workplace, in occupations, and in the service of the wider world” (Gardner papers).
The brain is a very powerful organ, no doubt. It tells your body how to react and what to do. But what happens when you listen to music? How does your brain react? Let’s take a look.
Visser, B. A., Ashton, M. C., & Vernon, P. A. (2006). g and the measurement of multiple intelligences: A response to Gardner. Intelligence, 34(5), 507-510.
The theory advanced by Howard Gardner referred to as Multiple Intelligences, suggests that there are varying degrees of intelligence that an individual possess. Gardner proposed that there are seven forms of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinaesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal. This theory proposes that teaching and learning should be based on an individual’s different and unique form of intelligence, (Armstrong, 2009). The traditional teaching method encompasses and focuses on verbal linguistic and mathematical logical intelligence. However, the theory by Gardner suggests that there are five other forms of
Music and the Brain. (n.d.). Music and the Brain. Retrieved April 25, 2014, from http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/research/highlights/rh-music-and-brain-2011.html
Using literacy strategies in the mathematics classroom leads to successful students. “The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 1989) define mathematical literacy as an “individual's ability to explore, to conjecture, and to reason logically, as well as to use a variety of mathematical methods effectively to solve problems." Exploring, making conjectures, and being able to reason logically, all stem from the early roots of literacy. Authors Matthews and Rainer (2001) discusses how teachers have questioned the system of incorporating literacy with mathematics in the last couple of years. It started from the need to develop a specific framework, which combines both literacy and mathematics together. Research was conducted through
...S. and Stepelman, J. (2010). Teaching Secondary Mathematics: Techniques and Enrichment Units. 8th Ed. Merrill Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, NJ.
A somewhat underused strategy for teaching mathematics is that of guided discovery. With this strategy, the student arrives at an understanding of a new mathematical concept on his or her own. An activity is given in which "students sequentially uncover layers of mathematical information one step at a time and learn new mathematics" (Gerver & Sgroi, 2003). This way, instead of simply being told the procedure for solving a problem, the student can develop the steps mainly on his own with only a little guidance from the teacher.
Malcolm, Shirley, and Treisman, Uri. “Calculus Success for All Students.” Calculus for a New Century: A Pump not a Filter, Steen, Lynn (ed.). Mathematical Association of America: Washington, DC, 1987.
To the students, the result of this study can help them be aware of their own difficulties and serve as their guide to have a better result in solving mathematical problems.
Weinberger, Norman M. “Music and the Brain.” Scientific American Special Edition 16.3 (2006): 36-43. Health Source- Consumer Edition. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.