[Maths-Education] The resource for the course

[Laurinda Brown]

My sense is that some KS3 SATs questions are interesting as was 
mentioned and that these can then positively affect the sort of diet 
students are offered. Similarly the Maths Challenge papers present 
problems to solve that could be worked on in a maths club environment. 
I can see why you would want to test at a few levels below the 
operational level of the students - but experience tells me that this 
is simply not what happens in the UK - the textbooks and therefore the 
teaching in many classrooms becomes targetted to that test rather than 
there being a sense of mastery from having developed ideas beyond the 
syllabus. I agree that Jo Boaler's PhD research says what needs to be 
said.

Laurinda Brown
University of Bristol
Graduate School of Education 

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 09:27:55 +0100 John Monaghan 
<J.D.Monaghan@education.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:

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> A quick response to Tim Rowland and then I'll keep quiet on this topic:
> 
> At 06:01 PM 9/17/01 +0100, Tim wrote:
> >Maybe it is appropriate for GCSE questions to be routine, in the sense
> suggested in the blurb? 
> 
> OK, I can go along with that. The problem that I see with the exam culture
> in education today is that exams permeate and control almost every aspect
> of classroom life. This breed of exam-based textbooks offers exam training
> in place of challenging mathematical activities. As to research I'd point
> to Jo Boaler's work rather than mine (chapter 7 of her thesis and the
> section on procedural and conceptual questions).
> 
> 
> 
> 
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----------------------
Laurinda Brown
Laurinda.Brown@bristol.ac.uk

0117-9287019