vimothy
yurp
This is very Bourdieu!
qt
- Thread starter don_quixote
- Start date
This is very Bourdieu!
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Granted, but it is best that it is assumed that A-level students are considering continuing their studies (it would be bad to force A-level entrants to make a non-Uni/Uni track choice, for instance) and thus that their learning is organised in such a way as to anticipate difficulties and ease their future progress (ie. so that uni students aren't hit with a dispiriting slew of remedial courses in their first year).
One might also expect universities to be less politically motivated than the government and their examinations to be more resistant to grade inflation (as inflation reduces university entrants' level of preparedness and makes judgements on comparative preparedness more difficult).
As it is, A-levels' quality is decreasing and degree courses are having to respond in kind (remedial work has limited efficacy).
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
I asked my PGCE Maths lecturer how primary Maths concept X* might be best taught so as to tie in with, ease the teaching of, secondary Maths concept Y. He replied, 'Oh, we don't have to worry about that, it's nothing to do with us.'
* I find it annoying that trainees aren't given a booklet of empirically-tried and trusted concept explanations (this is kind of what the Strategies attempted to do, but failed to due to lack of focus). We don't even go into the nuts and bolts of subject explanation on post-training courses; instead we fiddle with endless quirky starters. *heroically* I shall start a blog to share concept explanation 'scripts' that can be depended on.
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vimothy
yurp
The maths educationalists that I work with are big into very slow teaching of concepts (not procedures), where the students direct the learning (to a degree), make lots of mistakes and then explore why those mistakes are mistakes. The procedures are only ways into the concepts, after all. We only saw this open style in one college that was in such a poor area, no one gave a fck about league tables.
matt b
Indexing all opinion
There has been research conducted that suggested that grade inflation also exists in universities too- it's worth about 1 classification since the mid-1990s iirc (students as customers etc).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7511601.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...stood-up-against-dumbing-down-of-degrees.html
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vimothy
yurp
BTW: No university places for 50,000 with good grades (austerity measures already kicking in)
matt b
Indexing all opinion
Also caused by recession- more applications last year and this year. Lots of failed applications last year re-applying
matt b
Indexing all opinion
Yep. Will be the toughest competition ever for places this year.
Hearing rumours of clearing lasting an hour!
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
This sounds like Maths teaching in Far East primary schools.
The thing that I think is crucial is ensuring that the procedures that come out of this exploratory phase (the exploratory phase in my teaching is normally Socratic reasoning-style and thus perhaps not as flexible as it could be) make sense - that there is a logical connection. For instance, value added investigating dividing by large numbers may then be lost if one settles/has to settle on using the traditional long division algorithm (which I would imagine is very hard to explain 'properly' ie. what is 'really' happening?).
I'll put something up somewhere to show how I settled on teaching long division (unlike the traditional procedure, we seemed to end up with a procedure that made intuitive sense and could be mastered by children two to three years 'early').
don_quixote
Trent End
i don't think there's been major mistakes, maths classrooms are 90x better than they were when i was at school. there's so many brilliant new things that can be done. and i'm sorry but interactive whiteboards are a gazillion times better than normal whiteboards once you know what you can do with them. if you just use them as a normal whiteboard, yes, they are not as good. but they can be used for so much more!!
strategies were full of good ideas though. most textbooks have empirically tested stuff in them, but for the real don try doug french - teaching and learning algebra. that book is basically the king of teaching all algebra.
d) the ability to bully kids into long hours with parental support
strategies were full of good ideas though. most textbooks have empirically tested stuff in them, but for the real don try doug french - teaching and learning algebra. that book is basically the king of teaching all algebra.
d) the ability to bully kids into long hours with parental support
vimothy
yurp
Maybe--there is certainly a lot of new technology, but the maths teaching is driven by the assessment.
don_quixote
Trent End
oh yeah sure, i have a scheme of work which is basically the gcse syllabus but i teach in a school which is yr 10 upwards, so it's just examsexamsexams (lol sex lol)
seems to me the problem with maths is there's so damn much of it.
seems to me the problem with maths is there's so damn much of it.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Aye, that's true, there is lots of good stuff in the strategies. The problem is that there is perhaps too much of it and the more interesting or innovative teaching strategies don't look easy enough to implement so teachers just ignore them and take refuge in their textbooks. Haven't looked at it in a while tho', so may be talking out of my proverbial, however.
Will check out Doug French - sounds good.
There's a strand within pedagogy in the US called 'Direct Instruction', which has produced books and schemes of work based on empirical research (teaching as science rather than art). Apparently our Strategies were influenced by DI, but basically chickened out of chucking out the chaff and prescribing how best to administer the wheat.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
The idea is that there is enough there for anyone to print it all out and try it out immediately in the classroom. The scriptedness also makes precise tweaking and criticism easier.
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don_quixote
Trent End
yeah, it's known as chunking i think. i'd never teach the bus shelter method. everyone prefers chunking.
don_quixote
Trent End
along those lines the box method for multiplication is something i was never taught
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Yeah, I taught them both the traditional method and box method for multiplication last time round. I think I prefer the latter as it ties in nicely with dot arrays and obv revises finding areas. Parents don't seem familiar with chunking (they saw the trad long division algorithm as the pinnacle of primary maths and I wasn't aware of any alternatives, hence the wheel reinvention
) or area multiplication so that can be an issue. Dunno what might be lost by not using the bus shelter for division at all... Converting common fractions to decimal fractions may be tricky without it (eg. sth like 2/7).
Do you get many year 7s using Napier's Bones?
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don_quixote
Trent End
i don't teach year 7, i do year 10 upwards
the box method is bloody brilliant because it applies later on to multiplying out pairs of brackets. so much easier than that old smiley face eyebrows method.
the box method is bloody brilliant because it applies later on to multiplying out pairs of brackets. so much easier than that old smiley face eyebrows method.