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August 31, 2008European group aims to make maths teaching more rigorous and inspiring |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: An attempt to re-energise mathematics teaching in Europe is being made in a new project examining a range of factors thought to influence achievement. Mathematics teaching is as vital as ever both in support of key fields such as life sciences, alternative energy development, or information technology, and also through its unique ability to develop widely applicable problem solving skills. The new project was discussed at a recent workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which brought together experts in different areas of mathematics education. "It was agreed that we would begin the process of developing a comparative project, involving between fifteen and twenty European countries, to examine the interrelatedness of the mathematics-related beliefs of teachers and students, teacher practices and student cognition," said Paul Andrews, the workshop's convenor and Senior Lecturer in Education at the Faculty of Education of Cambridge University in the UK. "To assume that the development of enthusiasm is sufficient to guarantee achievement would be naïve as there are countries in which students have little enthusiasm for mathematics but achieve relatively highly and, of course, vice versa," pointed out Andrews. European countries have to date resolved this tension in different ways, with the UK being at the vocational end of the spectrum, while Hungary has taken the purest approach with its traditions for mathematical rigour. "One of the problems of English education is that students experience a fragmented and procedural conception of mathematics, due to underlying notions of vocationalism, and so rarely come to see the subject as a coherent body of concepts and relationships which can be worth studying for the intrinsic satisfaction it can yield," said Andrews.
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