|
Midlands Mathematics Education Seminars |
|
Mailing listTo receive updates on new seminars in the series, subscribe to our mailing list.
Future seminarsDetails of forthcoming events in the series.
Local ContactsJanet Ainley Lara Alcock Nick Clarke Jenni Ingram Kirsty Wilson |
Seminar Archive1st December 2011, University of WarwickEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Paul Andrews (University of Cambridge) Title: Challenging the myth of PISA achievement as the basis for warranted policy borrowing Abstract: It seems that over the last few years PISA and its repeats have acquired the status of benchmark for an educational system's effectiveness. So pervasive has this become that over the last decade more than one hundred envoys have visited Finland to examine how that country has achieved repeated PISA success. In this talk I propose to examine, through the exploitation of documentary and video evidence, the extent to which PISA success can be construed as an indicator of systemic educational quality. The implications of the analysis for policy borrowing will also be discussed. Time: 5.00pm Location: WT0.05, Westwood Teaching Building, Westwood Campus, University of Warwick. Details of how to get to Warwick are available here. The Westwood Teaching Building is number 58 on this map. Contact: Jenni Ingram [email] 3rd November 2011, University of BirminghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Howard Tanner, Sonia Jones, Angella Cooze & Ishmael Lewis (Swansea Metropolitan University) Title: Developing Literacy and Numeracy Thinking Skills in Secondary Schools Abstract: Dr Howard Tanner will report on the progress of an action research project which aims to investigate the teaching and management of thinking skills in literacy and numeracy across the curriculum. The project is based on a professional learning community established in partnership with six secondary schools across south Wales. The primary aim of this group is to participate, as co-researchers, in an action research project which seeks to evaluate and inform whole school approaches to developing thinking skills in literacy and numeracy. The project will last for the duration of the 2011/12 academic year and will be bookended by pre and post testing of that year's year 9 pupils using PISA style tests. The session will discuss the nature of mathematical literacy and the associated skills, the interpretation of those skills by teachers within the action research group and the strategies being employed in the action research schools. Time: 5.00pm
Location:
Room 422, (Fourth Floor) Education Building, Edgbaston Campus. Contact: Dave Hewitt [email] 29th June 2011, University of LeicesterEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dave Pratt, Ralph Levinson and Phillip Kent (Institute of Education) Title: Constructing a principled approach to the teaching of risk in mathematics and science
Abstract:
Even though talk about risk pervades our daily domestic and working lives, the essential nature of risk is still a matter of debate. Yet, risk is now an element of both the science and mathematics national curricula, a reflection of its perceived significance for society. Psychological research is attempting to understand how people make judgements of risk but, as educationalists, we might wish to intervene in how our students are sensitive to risk-based decision-making. Time: 5.00pm Location: School of Education, 6 University Road. This is Building 6 on the campus map. Details of how to get to the university are here. Contact: Janet Ainley [email] 10th May 2011, University of NottinghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Nicole Panorkou (Institute of Education) Title: A phenomenographic study of students' experiences of dimension Abstract: This study explored the experiences of dimension among young school children. The existing literature showed that the notion of dimension could be investigated through various perspectives: everyday life, scientific discourse, psychology, school curriculum and teaching. From this exploration, I developed an orientation of what I might consider to be an experience of dimension. A phenomenographic approach was followed, and meanings of dimension were generated from 24 students during four situations. Data were collected using clinical interviews accompanied with the design of tasks using the software Elica, physical objects, the film Flatland, and the software Google SketchUp in each of the situations respectively. The meanings generated from the first three situations were compared and grouped into theme categories. The aim of the fourth situation was to design an environment in which we might witness experiences of dimension not observed before, by building on preceding research on how modelling can foster the utility of mathematical concepts. SketchUp and its dimensional tools helped the students to form situated experiences about mathematical ideas relating to vectors and capacity. Dimensional experience was categorised as Dimension as Action, Dimension as Material, Dimension as Vector and Dimension as Capacity. An analysis of the relationship between the categories pointed to the duality of the passive or the dynamic way of experiencing dimension as well as looking within and between dimensions. These characteristics of the dimensional experiences informed the notion of dimension in general as incorporating a dual nature, as an object but also as a process. Conclusively, an examination of the four situations gave an insight into what makes a window expressive both to the student-phenomenon and the researcher-student relationship. Time: 5.00pm Location: Room A34, Dearing Building (School of Education), Jubilee Campus Contact: Steve Watson [email] 26th January 2011, Loughborough UniversityEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Andreas Stylianides (Cambridge) & Gabriel Stylianides (Oxford) Title: Engineering cognitive conflicts that support conceptual change: results from two design experiments in the domain of proof Abstract: A major idea of the "cognitive conflict" approach to mathematics teaching is that, by creating situations where students' current understandings do not hold, students will feel the need to resolve the emerging contradictions in their understandings and, with appropriate instruction, will experience conceptual change. Yet, students frequently treat contradictions as exceptions and thus experience neither a cognitive conflict nor conceptual change. We will present a theoretical framework that aims to cast light on conditions that increase the potential of contradictions to generate a cognitive conflict for students. Also, we will draw on findings from two design experiments -- a four-year design experiment in an undergraduate course in the United States and a follow-up design experiment in two Year 10 classrooms in England -- to support the proposed framework and exemplify how we applied it to engineer cognitive conflicts that supported conceptual change in the domain of proof. Time: 5.00pm Location: Mathematics Education Centre, Schofield Building, Room A128. Details of how to get to Loughborough are available here. The Schofield Building is number 59 on this map. Contact: Lara Alcock [email] 8th December 2010, University of BirminghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Alf Coles (University of Bristol) Title: Opening spaces for inquiry: how patterns of interaction emerged in one innovative secondary mathematics department Abstract: Alf will present results from his ESRC Studentship project, looking into the development of spaces for inquiry in three mathematics classrooms over an academic year, in an innovative secondary department in the UK. The data for the study includes a set of video recordings of lessons, particularly focused at the start of the year, and audio data of teacher meetings where staff looked at the videos of each other teaching. We will watch and analyse some of these video clips, using the particular way of working on video that was employed in the school. Alf will demonstrate how the rest of the data was analysed, combining insights from embodied cognition and linguistic ethnography. Implications from the study include a re-conceptualisation of metacognition, teaching strategies linked to this re-conceptualisation, and a problematising of the notion of context in the description of practice. Time: 5.00pm
Location:
Room 423b, (Fourth Floor) Education Building, Edgbaston Campus. Contact: Kirsty Wilson [email] 24th November 2010, University of WarwickEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Peter Johnston-Wilder (University of Warwick) Title: Chance Patterns Abstract: Using data drawn from interviews with learners aged 14-18, I will explore the inherent contradiction between the fact that sequences of chance outcomes follow no predictable pattern and yet in the long run aggregation leads to emergent pattern. I will explore evidence that this contradiction has implications for the development of coherent understanding about chance, probability and the notion of distribution. Time: 5.00pm Location: WT1.01, Westwood Teaching Building, Westwood Campus, University of Warwick. Details of how to get to Warwick are available here. The Westwood Teaching Building is number 58 on this map. Contact: Jenni Ingram [email] 30th June 2010, University of LeicesterEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Clare Lee (OU) and Sue Johnston-Wilder (Warwick) Title: Mathematical Resilience Abstract: In this seminar, we will discuss a positive characteristic that can be developed in learners and can help to overcome current negative attitudes to mathematics; we call this concept mathematical resilience. The term 'mathematical resilience' allows us to define that quality by which some students approach mathematics with confidence, persistence and a willingness to discuss, reflect and research. Such resilience allows learners to overcome the barriers that learning mathematics can present. We understand that all learning requires resilience but we contend that the resilience required for learning mathematics is a particular construct as a consequence of various factors including the type of teaching often used, the nature of mathematics itself and pervasive beliefs about mathematical ability being 'fixed'. Working in such a way that students are enabled to become more mathematically resilient allows learners to adapt positively to the difficulties presented by mathematics and to be in a position to consider studying mathematics beyond compulsory age. By naming and defining the construct of 'mathematical resilience', we argue that teachers and policy makers will be enabled to develop it and to measure how successful they have been in enabling their students to become mathematically resilient. This is very much a work in progress; we welcome the opportunity to discuss our first tentative steps to engage with schools in developing mathematical resilience, to measure it and their reactions to our ideas. Time: 5.00pm Location: School of Education, 6 University Road. This is Building 6 on the campus map. Details of how to get to the university are here. Contact: Sue Forsythe [email] 18th May 2010, University of NottinghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Tim Jay (Bristol) Title: Critiquing research on children's learning of mathematics Abstract: Research in mathematics learning is a diverse field, drawing on a large number of influences and disciplines. This interdisciplinarity seems like a good thing, until we come to try and make sense of questions that are either located at, or cross, disciplinary boundaries. A particularly difficult boundary to work at is that between "the individual" and "the group". A large number of theorists and commentators have between them established a rhetoric of cognitive v. sociocultural, acquisition v. participation and individual v. social. The starting point for this seminar will be a description of some of the difficulties that can be encountered when talking about children's learning of mathematics - focusing in particular on this boundary between individual and group learning. The rest of the seminar will deal with the question: what happens if we reject the individual/group dichotomy? Can we develop an approach to the research of mathematics learning that is genuinely interdisciplinary? And would this be a useful thing to do? This is very much a work in progress, and hopefully will stimulate some interesting discussion. Drawing together my own experience in psychology, philosophy, computer science and education, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to discuss the issues in this seminar with the audience. Time: 5.00pm Location: LSRI Labs, Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus. Directions to the university are available here. The Exchange Building is Building 2 on the Jubilee Campus map. The LSRI Labs are on the first floor, on the left-hand side as you exit the stairs/lifts. Contact: Camilla Gilmore [email] [other LSRI seminars] 14th April 2010, University of OxfordEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Andreas Ryve (Stockholm), Kristi Hemmi (Malardalen), Mats Borjesson (Malardalen) Title: How should school practice in mathematics teacher education be organized: University practice schools in Finland vs. partnership schools in Sweden. Abstract: How should school practice within mathematics teacher education be organized? We examine two different ways of organizing school practice by studying Sweden and Finland. More precisely, we present results from a study on how mathematics teacher educators in Sweden and Finland draw upon school practice as a resource in discourses about the development of prospective mathematics teachers' knowledge. By using data from focus groups interviews and relating them to theories of mathematics teacher education (e.g. Jaworski & Gellert, 2003) the study illuminates huge differences in ways that school practice serves as a resource in the discourse of the two countries. In Finland, school practice functions as a central resource in which prospective teachers can develop knowing whereas in Sweden school practice is hardly considered in discourses about prospective teachers' knowledge development. The findings from the study shed light on organizational aspects of school practice which have been hypothesized as being of great importance for successful mathematics teacher education (cf. Burghes, 2004; Grevholm and Bergsten, 2008). Time: 5.00pm Location: Department of Education, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY. Directions to the department can be found at this page. Contact: Anne Watson [email] 10th February 2010, Loughborough UniversityEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Neil Challis (Sheffield Hallam), Zsolt Lavicza (Cambridge), John Monaghan (Leeds) Title: Integrating technology into an UG Mathematics degree programme Abstract: As part of a wider project on technology use in university mathematics Zsolt and John looked into staff and student use of technology at Sheffield Hallam University Mathematics Department. This department is quite well known for integrating technology into the teaching and learning of mathematics. Our brief was quite open - what enables and constrains the use of technology? In the seminar Zsolt will report on the project and one aspect of data analysis and John will offer initial interpretations of this analysis. Neil, who is head of the Mathematics Department, will provide practitioner comment on both Zsolt and John's inputs. Time: 5.00pm Location: Mathematics Education Centre, Schofield Building, Room A128. Details of how to get to Loughborough are available here. The Schofield Building is number 59 on this map. Contact: Matthew Inglis [email] 9th December 2009, University of BirminghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Jeremy Hodgen and Dr Dietmar Kuchemann (King's College London) Title: Investigating the teaching and learning of algebra: has anything been learnt from research? Abstract: In this session we will talk about some analysis from the algebra strand of the ESRC-funded Increasing Competence and Confidence in Algebra and Multiplicative Structures (ICCAMS) project. In phase 1 of the project we tested representative samples of Y7, Y8 and Y9 students on several CSMS tests, including the Algebra test that was first used 30 years ago, while in phase 2 we have worked closely with eight Y8 classes and their teachers, and have interviewed small groups of students on a variety of algebra tasks. In this session we will discuss some of the interviews and also look at two textbook series that these classes happen to use. Our test results suggest that, compared to 30 years ago, there is an improvement in current students' understanding of algebra in Year 8. However, this may simply be due to the fact that algebra is now introduced earlier into the curriculum, since we found no clear improvement at the end of Year 9. Interview data suggests that students' conceptual struggles are very similar to 30 years ago. The two textbook series seem to have been heavily influenced by the National Strategy Framework document, even down to their titles. Unfortunately, the series both seem to convey, to teachers and their students, an impoverished, fragmented and procedural view of mathematics (and of algebra in particular). There is very little evidence that any of the substantial body of research on the teaching and learning of algebra has had any impact on the textbooks or the accompanying teaching guides. Time: 5.00pm
Location:
Room 422, (Fourth Floor) Education Building, Edgbaston Campus. Contact: Kirsty Wilson [email] 24th November 2009, University of WarwickEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Anne Watson (Department of Education, University of Oxford) Title: Mathematics departments making autonomous change Abstract: I will present reflections on the findings of the CMTP project which illuminate how three departments worked when initiating autonomous changes in the way they teach. The website is essentially descriptive, but we used perspectives informed by activity theory to think about what they did, and identify common and different features among their working practices. Recently I have moved from seeing the outcomes of this theoretical view as information for middle management, and thought more about establishing helpful ways of working together in our PGCE course. Although expressed like this you might think the seminar most suitable for those interested in CPD, the later work will be of interest to all mathematics educators, since I will touch on subtle mathematical differences between lessons. Time: 5.00pm Location: WT1.01, Westwood Teaching Building, Westwood Campus, University of Warwick. Details of how to get to Warwick are available here. The Westwood Teaching Building is number 58 on this map. Contact: Jenni Ingram [email] 17th June 2008, University of LeicesterEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Ian Jones (University of Nottingham) Title: The equals sign as a rule for making transformations of notation Abstract: The existing literature reports that young children tend to view the equals sign as meaning "write the result here". Previous studies have demonstrated that teaching an "is the same as" meaning leads to more flexible thinking about mathematical notation. However, these studies are limited because they do not acknowledge or teach children that the equals sign also means "can be exchanged for". I will present findings from my recent doctoral work in which pairs of Year 5 pupils worked on computer-based tasks in which the equals sign carries both "sameness" and "exchanging" meanings. I will report that the ``sameness'' meaning is useful for distinguishing equality statements by truthfulness, whereas the ``exchanging'' meaning is useful for distinguishing statements by form. Moreover, a duality of both meanings can help children connect their own mental calculation strategies with transformations of properly formed notation. Time: 5.00pm Location: School of Education, Room G001, 6 University Road. This is Building 6 on the campus map. Details of how to get to the university are here. Contact: Janet Ainley [email] 5th May 2009, University of NottinghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Jo-Anne Lefevre (Carleton University, Canada) Title: What Counts? Cognitive Factors that Predict Children's Mathematical Learning Abstract: Children's early numeracy skills are excellent predictors of their performance on conventional mathematical tasks one to two years later. In this presentation, I will describe a model of the relations among cognitive precursors, early numeracy skill, and mathematical outcomes. The model includes three precursor pathways: quantitative, linguistic, and attentional, and specifies the distinct role that these forms of knowledge play in early numeracy acquisition. Using longitudinal data from 182 children (aged between 4 and 7 years), I will show that these three pathways relate differentially to performance on conventional mathematical tasks assessed two years later. The model may be useful in understanding how and why children's mathematical abilities vary across domains such as numeration, calculation, geometry, and measurement. Time: 5.00pm Location: LSRI Labs, Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus. Directions to the university are available here. The Exchange Building is Building 2 on the Jubilee Campus map. The LSRI Labs are on the first floor, on the left-hand side as you exit the stairs/lifts. Contact: Camilla Gilmore [email] [other LSRI seminars] 11th February 2009, Loughborough UniversityEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Tim Rowland (University of Cambridge) Title: What should an undergraduate mathematics lecture look like? Abstract: A few years ago, using data from elementary mathematics teaching, my colleagues and I developed a framework (the 'Knowledge Quartet') for the description and analysis of mathematics teaching. The framework 'works' well for primary and secondary mathematics, and has been used successfully as a tool to enable teachers to reflect on the content of their teaching, in a focused way. My intention for this session is to apply the Knowledge Quartet to some examples of the things that university mathematics lecturers do when they teach undergraduates. This raises questions about ways that mathematics teaching at university necessarily differs from that at school; whether undergraduate students get mixed messages about how to learn mathematics; and whether a framework for knowledge-in-teaching developed in one phase of education can be applied to another. The 'should' in the title is intentionally provocative. Time: 5.00pm Location: Mathematics Education Centre, Schofield Building, Room A128. Details of how to get to Loughborough are available here. The Schofield Building is number 59 on this map. Contact: Matthew Inglis [email] 19th November 2008, University of WarwickEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Candia Morgan (Institute of Education, London) Title: Critical discourse analysis of curriculum documents focusing on the impact of curriculum on teacher and/or student identity Abstract: Curriculum documents, texts providing guidance for teachers and textbooks intended for classroom use not only define the mathematics that is to be taught and learnt but also construct positions for teachers and for students, suggesting the qualities they may have and the ways in which they may act. While these constructed positions do not determine the actual positions adopted in the classroom, they make a privileged contribution to the resources that participants may draw on as they work out their identities as teachers and students of mathematics. Using tools drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis, I shall examine some examples taken from the official discourse of the mathematics curriculum in order to consider the nature of the pedagogic relationships and the teacher and student positions made available. Time: 5.00pm Location: Westwood Teaching Building, Westwood Campus, University of Warwick. Details of how to get to Warwick are available here. The Westwood Teaching Building is number 58 on this map. Contact: Peter Johnston-Wilder [email] 22nd October 2008, University of BirminghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Jenni Back and Dr Christine Hirst (NCETM) Title: Learning through Teaching: exploring the narratives of teachers involved in professional development initiatives. Emerging findings from the Researching Effective CPD in Mathematics Education (RECME) Project Abstract: In this seminar we draw on data from a major research project, 'Researching Effective CPD in Mathematics Education' (RECME) in the UK, set up by the national Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM). The project is studying over thirty different continuing professional development initiatives for teachers of mathematics from many different regions of England involving over two hundred teachers of learners ranging between three years old and adults. This seminar is concerned with teachers as learners. It draws on the theoretical notion of cultural and personal knowledge (Eraut 2004), which suggests that the knowledge teachers develop in formal continuing professional development (CPD) programmes can be seen as cultural knowledge. However, in the 'hot action' (Scribner 1999) of the classroom, teachers tend to draw on their personal knowledge much more than the cultural knowledge developed in CPD activities. The question this seminar addresses is 'How and why is the cultural knowledge transformed so that it becomes part of the personal knowledge of the teacher and hence available in a usable form in classroom teaching?' Time: 5.00pm
Location:
Room 422, (Fourth Floor) Education Building, Edgbaston Campus. Contact: Kirsty Wilson [email] 19th September 2008, Loughborough UniversityEvent: Higher Education Mathematics Education Conference For information and full details, visit the conference website. 11th June 2008, University of LeicesterEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Kirsty Wilson (University of Birmingham) Title: Spreadsheets, teachers' practices and pupils' evolving meanings for algebra Abstract: This seminar will draw upon my recently completed doctoral thesis, which examined the ways in which spreadsheet experience and teachers' pedagogic practices shape pupils' construction and evolution of meanings for algebra. The presentation will focus on the development of a conceptual framework which accounts for variation in pupils' evolving meanings within a social context. I will reflect upon the methods used to make sense of and bring order to longitudinal data, and the challenge of understanding the 'bigger picture' of pupils' trajectories whilst embracing fine-grained analysis of classroom episodes. Using extracts from case studies to illustrate, I will discuss three themes that account for variation in the pupils' trajectories. Focusing on one of these themes, the alignment between teachers' practices and pupils' meanings, I will highlight the importance of teachers 'reading' and responding to their pupils' unfolding ideas. Time: 5.00pm Location: School of Education, Room G001, 6 University Road. This is Building 6 on the campus map. Details of how to get to the university are here. Contact: Janet Ainley [email] 20th May 2008, University of NottinghamEvent: This Research Seminar was recorded, and is available to watch online. Speaker: Professor Ros Sutherland (University of Bristol) Title: Integrating ICT into Teaching and Learning Mathematics Abstract: Mathematics was one of the earlier subjects to make use of the computer in the classroom and there has been substantial research in this area at both primary and secondary level. The dynamic and symbolic nature of computer environments can provoke students to generalise and formalise and make links between their intuitive notions of mathematics and the more formal aspects of mathematical knowledge. However research has shown that these understandings do not develop spontaneously and there is a need for a teacher to support students to move between more informal knowing and the virtual world of mathematics. This presentation derives from the InterActive Education Project and is concerned with understanding how mathematics teachers and students can use digital tools for enhancing the learning of mathematics. The socio-cultural perspective which framed the research foregrounds the idea that all human action is mediated by tools, where tools are both material (for example, whiteboard, calculator, paper and pencil) and symbolic (for example, graphical representation, natural language). A socio-cultural perspective also recognises that students bring their own personal history of learning to any new situation and each students will appropriate particular mathematical tools differently. This diversity of student experience might appear to be an almost impossible challenge for the teacher, but I will argue that such diversity can be used to construct a classroom culture of inquiry in which students productively learn from each other as well as being orchestrated by the teacher. Time: 4.30pm Location: LSRI Labs, Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus. Directions to the university are available here. The Exchange Building is Building 2 on the Jubilee Campus map. The LSRI Labs are on the first floor, on the left-hand side as you exit the stairs/lifts. Contact: Camilla Gilmore [email] [other LSRI seminars] 19th March 2008, University of OxfordEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Bill Barton (University of Auckland) Title: Telling Mathematical Tales Abstract: This seminar presents some of the ideas from my recent book The Language of Mathematics: Telling Mathematical Tales. It begins by examining how different languages express mathematical ideas -- it turns out that mathematics is expressed grammatically in very different ways. In flights of fancy, these grammatical differences are expanded into mathematical worlds that are different from mathematics as we know it. The picture of mathematics that emerges is of a subject that is much more contingent, relative, and subject to human experience than is usually accepted. I demonstrate the congruence between mathematics as we know it and the English language in comparison with other languages. The second part of the talk further illustrates the conjunction between mathematical and language development, building on Devlin's concept of the Mathematical Gene. I thereby present alternative answers to conventional questions about mathematics: where it comes from, how it develops, what it does and what it means. Finally, these playful ideas imply some serious reconsideration of mathematics education practices, in particular our use of minority languages and the role of abstraction in young children's education. Time: 5.00pm Location: Seminar Room G, Department of Education, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY. Directions to the department can be found at this page. Contact: Liz Bills [email] 30th January 2008, Loughborough UniversityEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Adrian Simpson (Durham University) Title: The Transition to Independent Graduate Studies in Mathematics Abstract: This presentation will focus on some of the last work done jointly with the late Janet Duffin. In keeping with much other research in mathematics education, the presentation will focus on a 'transition': in this case, the movement from undergraduate study to independent PhD study in mathematics. The presentation reports on a study involving the entire PhD cohort of a UK university and looks at two main issues: first, the extent to which different mathematical ways of thinking are more or less compatible with the transition and second, the students' own awareness of themselves and others as potentially different kinds of learners. Time: 5.00pm Location: Mathematics Education Centre, Schofield Building, Room A128. Details of how to get to Loughborough are available here. The Schofield Building is number 59 on this map. Contact: Barbara Jaworski [email] 21st-22nd November 2007, University of NottinghamEvent: Mathematical Thinking: An Interdisciplinary Workshop Sponsors: British Academy, Nuffield Foundation and Routledge.
Speakers (Keynote):
Alexandre Borovik, Peter Bryant, Marcus Giaquinto, Terezinha Nunes, David Tall. Location: National College for School Leadership, University of Nottingham For more details see the Workshop's website. 7th November 2007, University of WarwickEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Anna Sfard (University of Haifa & Institute of Education, London) Title: Thinking as communication and mathematics as discourse Abstract: In the domain of mathematics education, the term discourse seems to be these days on everybody's lips. Although traditionally regarded as only auxiliary to thinking, mathematical communication is believed to enhance mathematical learning. In my research, I am going farther than that: I conceptualize mathematics as a special form of communication. By doing this, I promote mathematical discourse from the role of a mere instructional means to that of the object of learning. During the meeting, we shall explore the implications of the communicational perspective for our vision of mechanisms of learning and teaching. To help with the task, I will present in parallel two classroom studies, one devoted to the learning of signed numbers and the other dealing with young children first introduced to school geometry. The analysis of the empirical data will be guided by three queries: (1) The question about mathematics: What is it that is supposed to change in children's discourse in the course of learning? (2) The question about teaching: What is supposed to induce the change? (3) The question about learning: What are the short- and long-term effects of the discourse-molding attempts orchestrated by the teacher? The results of these analyses will compel us to take a critical look on a number of popular pedagogical beliefs. Based on: Sfard, A. (2007). When the rules of discourse change, but nobody tells you: Making sense of mathematics learning from a cognitive standpoint. Journal for Learning Sciences, 16, 567-615. Time: 5.00pm Location: WT0.05, Westwood Teaching Building, Westwood Campus, University of Warwick. Details of how to get to Warwick are available here. The Westwood Teaching Building is number 58 on this map. Contact: Peter Johnston-Wilder [email] 3rd October 2007, University of BirminghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Jill Adler (University of the Witwatersrand & King's College London) Title: Teacher education pedagogy and mathematics for teaching Abstract: The QUANTUM research project has mathematics for teaching (MfT) as its focus. In contrast to numerous other studies that build on Shulman's seminal work on pedagogic content knowledge, QUANTUM started its research in teacher education (as opposed to classroom) practice. The past decade has seen the development of formalised subject-focused upgrading programmes for in-service teachers in South Africa, and in mathematics, the notion of PCK is articulated as key in courses in these programmes. We have studied a selection of such courses, and seen how different pedagogic approaches ('models') come to constitute MfT in different ways. While this is not surprising, it is crucial that these differences are interrogated. In this seminar I will discuss some of the data from the case studies we have done to firstly demonstrate what we see as the value of studying MfT as it is produced in pedagogic discourse inside teacher education; and secondly to raise questions about social justice and mathematics teacher education. Time: 5.00pm
Location:
Room 422, (Fourth Floor) Education Building, Edgbaston Campus. Contact: Kirsty Wilson [email] 8th May 2007, University of NottinghamEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Dave Pratt (Institute of Education, University of London) Title: Connecting design to theory and theory to design Abstract: I will propose that the perspective of knowledge-in-pieces, as formulated by Andy diSessa, can lead the designer to deep consideration of what the sense-maker already knows and how that might be mobilised in order to promote tuning towards expertise. Such an approach leads to the design of tools which (i) enable the sense-maker to appreciate the lack of explanatory power in their current understanding, and (ii) promise to build on current pieces of knowledge by mobilising and reinventing them in the pursuit of more sophisticated explanations. Examples from recent design research with 11-16 year olds in the field of stochastics will be used to illustrate these ideas. I will argue that whereas we have many examples of theoretical ideas emerging out of students' use of designed artefacts, we have few carefully articulated cases of how theoretical frameworks inform design. Work in this field is only now beginning to develop theory that elaborates designing for abstraction. Time: 4.30pm
Location:
C42, Dearing (Education) Building, Jubilee Campus, University of Nottingham Contact: Matthew Inglis [other LSRI seminars] 25th April 2007, University of LeicesterEvent: Research Seminar Speaker: Professor Ken Ruthven (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge) Title: Constructions of dynamic geometry: A study of the interpretative flexibility of educational software in classroom practice Abstract: The idea of 'interpretative flexibility' underpins new approaches to studying technological artefacts and curricular resources in use. This talk will start by reviewing the evolving design of dynamic geometry, its pioneering use within classroom projects, and early sketches of its mainstream use in ordinary classrooms. The main part of the talk will report a study of teacher-nominated examples of the successful use of dynamic geometry, conducted in professionally well-regarded mathematics departments in English secondary schools. It will place the interpretative flexibility surrounding emergent classroom practice of dynamic geometry use in a wider curricular and instrumental context. Time: 5.30pm
Location:
School of Education, 21 University Road. (Follow the signs from the door). Contact: Janet Ainley |
