[Maths-Education] Research Seminars

[Candia Morgan]

Mathematical Sciences Group Research Seminar

Wednesday 30 May 2001
5pm - 6.30pm in room 677, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, 
London WC1H OAL

Actual Meanings, Possible Uses: secondary mathematics teachers and 
Cabri-Geometre

Bibi Lins, Bristol University


"In the field of Sociology of Technology some authors treat 
technology as text and users as readers (Grint and Woolgar, 1997) to 
discuss technology from an anti-essentialist viewpoint. From a 
perspective of treating software package as text and secondary 
mathematics teacher as reader, I shall discuss in this seminar some 
analysis of part of the data of my ongoing PhD project that involves 
interviews and classroom observations of two teachers from a 
secondary school in Bristol.

The teachers were interviewed both in front of and not in front of a 
computer, describing "their" Cabri and tackling a problem with it. 
Some of their mathematics lessons within a Cabri environment were 
observed, focusing on how the teachers presented their Cabri to the 
students, aiming to investigate to what extent meanings being 
produced (Lins, 1992) by teachers for Cabri are linked to their use 
and to their teaching approaches. My interest is to develop an 
approach to research which allows for a reading of meanings being 
produced by individual teachers to a software package as a way of 
making mathematics teacher education more effective".

Wine and soft drinks will be served after the seminar
ALL WELCOME
=46or further information please contact Susan Williams - e-mail: 
susan.williams@ioe.ac.uk

_________________________


Mathematical Sciences Group Research Seminar

Thursday 14 June 2001
5pm - 6.30pm in room 677, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, 
London WC1H OAL


'Project Mathematical Thinking'


Susana Carreira, New University of Lisbon, Portugal, Jeff Evans, 
Middlesex University, Steve Lerman, South Bank University, Jo=E3o 
=46ilipe Matos, University of Lisbon, Portugal, Candia Morgan, 
Institute of Education, University of London, Madalena Santos, 
CIEFCUL, Portugal, Anna Tsatsaroni, University of Patras, Greece

The seminar will report some of the work of this project, funded by 
the Portuguese Foundation of Sciences, which has drawn on a range of 
theoretical approaches, such as situated learning, discursive and 
semiotic approaches, and Bernstein's structural approach, to address 
key issues relevant to how mathematical thinking is developed, 
recognised and legitimated in school mathematics practices. We shall 
discuss the ways in which we address a particular corpus of data 
using different theoretical approaches. Our focus will be on the 
issue of 'emotion', considering how this my be conceptualised and 
identified as well as its significance within an episode of 
mathematics learning and teaching.

Wine and soft drinks will be served after the seminar
ALL WELCOME
=46or further information please contact Susan Williams - e-mail: 
susan.williams@ioe.ac.uk

_________________________________


Mathematical Sciences Group Research Seminar

Wednesday 20 June 2001
5pm - 6.30pm in room 677, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, 
London WC1H OAL


'Untaught Mental Calculation  Strategies Used by 11-year-olds in 
Different Ability Bands'

Derek Foxman (Institute of Education, University of London) and 
Meindert Beishuizen (Leiden University, The Netherlands)


The Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) at the then DES carried out 
six mathematics surveys of 11- and 15-year olds in the schools of 
England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1979 and 1987. All the 
children in the survey samples took a written test of concepts and 
skills, and subsamples took other assessments as well.  The final 
surveys included some one-to-one interviews asking children to work 
out calculations mentally, and then how they obtained their answers. 
The interviews were conducted by experienced teachers who were 
trained by the NFER research team, commissioned by the APU to carry 
out the surveys, to record the children's responses. We can be 
confident that the strategies used were untaught, for the data were 
obtained at a time that mental calculation had not yet returned to 
classrooms as the Cockcroft Report had recommended in 1982.

Since the 1980s a considerable amount of research on children's 
mental strategies has taken place and classifications of strategies 
been compiled, particularly by researchers in the Netherlands and the 
US, and, more recently, in England.  In the light of these researches 
we are carrying out a re-analysis of the APU data on the sample of 
256 11-year-olds who took the mental skills test in 1987.  This draws 
particularly on the research of Beishuizen, who worked in 
co-operation with the Freudenthal Institute, in the Netherlands.

The APU sample has been split into 3 ability bands on the basis of 
the children's scores in the written test of concepts and skills and 
the mental strategies used within bands contrasted.  There were ten 
questions in the test, some in context and others purely numerical. 
The results from these will be considered, and their possible 
implications for the teaching of mental calculation in the numeracy 
strategy discussed.

Wine and soft drinks will be served after the seminar
ALL WELCOME
=46or further information please contact Susan Williams - e-mail: 
susan.williams@ioe.ac.uk

-- 
****************************************
Dr Candia Morgan                        tel:           (+44) 020 7612 6677
Mathematical Sciences               fax:           (+44) 020 7612 6686
Institute of Education               email:          temscrm@ioe.ac.uk
University of London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H OAL