[Maths-Education] Re: Maths-Education Digest, Vol 77, Issue 6

[Alan Rogerson]

Dear Douglas,

This is the perennial problem with all so-called objective research in 
mathematics education in as far as it concerns the actual classrooms. 
This is why I think more attention is now being given to 
participant-observer (as it is called in sociiology) styles of 
"research" where the researcher immediately assumes their presence 
changes the very situation they are looking at and hence tries to take 
this into account - a truism in sociology obviously (can we honestly 
imagine that real teachers and students will remain undisturbed when a 
"researcher" comes to visit them!?). You cannot step into the same 
classroom twice as it were!

When we worked for some 8 years on the highly innovative SMP7-13 
Individualised course in the 1970s (yes, indeed when dinosaurs roamed 
the earth) we did our best to "test" the new materials by having some 
10,000 children (I think, of that order of magnitude anyway) in many 
testing schools, half the classes doing the new materials and half not. 
But as you say below, we knew immediately that this was not enough for 
any valid objective comparison, and never would be. Different teachers, 
different children, the Hawthorn effect, and its vice versa version 
presumably, and a host of other societal factors guaranteed that our 
results were only suggestive at best.

It is surely our belief systems that drive us to produce creative and 
innovative programs, such as your Autograph, and these same belief 
systems support us in our needing no convincing that these new things DO 
work. But in addition we should be open-minded to experience and 
especially to constructive criticism.  If this clearly shows there is a 
problem then the solution is to fix it in the next edition or upgrade 
and try it again? We were doing this continually with SMP - as you do 
with revisions and upgrades of Autograph. Surely reports of such 
educational feedback of this kind would help Sarah to evaluate whether 
or not certain things in ICT have worked better or not?
Best wishes,
Alan



On 04/03/2011 15:32, maths-education-request at lists.nottingham.ac.uk wrote:
> This is a thread that has troubled me for years - how to put some flesh on
> the assertion that ICT makes a difference in mathematics.
>
> I am both a creator and a user of mathematics software, and I need no
> convincing at all.
>
> But to get hard research evidence would presumably require setting up
> control groups of identical children doing the same courses with the same
> teachers, but without the technology.  Surely this is impossible to achieve?
>
> Douglas
>
> == from Douglas Butler<  debutler at argonet.co.uk  >  ==?
> Director, iCT TRAINING CENTRE (OUNDLE)