“KWARC was!”

Theme: What do mathematics education researchers do, what methods and theories do they apply their work? How could research be used by mathematics teachers/ lecturers? How can education researchers and mathematics teachers work together?

An interesting introduction into education research in mathematics and how it differs from research in mathematics/ other science.

Plenary lecture by John Monaghan, University of Leeds
at the 4th European Workshop on Mathematical & Science eContents

Details on the talk:

Education researchers

• generally work in a team
• lead or support in a team
• at any time several projects will be ongoing

Education research: lots of different types …

1. action research (problem solving)
2. jobbing research (getting a government contract)
3. own interest research

1+3 tend to have research question; RQs in 1 change more often/ develop over time
2 tends to require outputs (someone else decided the focus, can be frustrating)

Research Questions
Getting the RQs right can take a lot of effort …

• setting them in practice
• getting the logic right
• ensuring feasibility (finishing at some point in time)
• requires several iterations

Example RQs in education research:

• How can research access the self-knowledge of students when using technology for learning?
• What learning results from the use of technology by students?
• How does technology use in the lives of students change and develop over time?

Methods: Data collection, analysis, interpretation

• data collection: tests, questionnaire, interviews, observations
• analysis: qualitative, quantitative (descriptive, inferential)
• no real method for data interpretation (Jeffrey Saxe’s model)

Ph.D. often do not answer: Why are you doing a questionnaire? What is the aim of the survey? How does it relate to your research questions?

Theories:

• theories in maths education have nothing to do with theories in maths/ logic (think “frameworks” or “paradigm” or “world views”)
• implicit theories: we must have a “world view” to make statements e.g. in the statement “High ability students are more attentive in class?” the world view is: “it is assumed that students can be categorized as high or low ability”
• explicit theories
• rather wide theory: activity theory
• educational theories: pedagogic codes
• narrow theories (restricted to math education) e.g. TDS

Examples of education research:

• Issues Arising When Teachers Make Extensive Use of Computer Algebra in their Mathematics Lessons
• Investigation the move from occasional to regular use of ICT in mathematics classes
• Implicit aspect of pencil and paper mathematics assessment that came to light through the use of computers: kids did lots of problems on pen&paper and using ICT

How to use education research in mathematical teaching?
see slides

This entry was posted by Christine on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under cmueller, Conferences, MSeC2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.