Mathematics Education Abstracts of Presentations

Mathematical Modelling in Schools – an applied mathematician’s lament

Ang Keng Cheng

For mathematical modelling to succeed in the classroom, teachers need to be properly prepared, suitably supported and well resourced. In reality, however, not every mathematics teacher has had formal training or experience in mathematical modelling or applied mathematics as a student. Moreover, the unpredictable nature of a mathematical modelling lesson has further discouraged teachers from planning and carrying out mathematical modelling lessons. To address these issues, the “Mathematical Modelling in Singapore: From Research to Practice” project, aimed at building relevant resources and support structures for teachers, based on past research work done and material collected over a decade, was launched. This talk discusses the motivation for the project, and the process which led to its outcomes.

A Study of Malaysian Teacher Characteristics and Grade 8 Student Engagement in Mathematics Classrooms: Evidence from TIMSS 2015

Mok Yuen Teng

This presentation, draws on the TIMSS 2015 data, and examines Malaysian teacher characteristics that relate to their quality of instruction as perceived by their students. It also explores student attitudes toward learning mathematics and investigates if the quality of instruction is significantly related to student attitudes.

Orchestrating discussions around typical problems: noticing as pedagogical reasoning?

Choy Ban Heng & Jaguthsing Dindyal

In this presentation-discussion, we will share some of our insights from an OER project looking at teacher noticing in the context of orchestrating learning experiences (OER 03/16 CBH). In particular, we will highlight some surprising findings, and propose a connection between noticing and pedagogical reasoning for discussion.

A study of the school mathematics curriculum (secondary)

Prof Berinderjeet Kaur et al.

In this presentation-discussion we will share some of our observations about the instructional core and models of instruction that guides teaching and learning of mathematics in the classes of competent secondary school mathematics teachers.