Mathematics Education Abstracts of Presentations

Factors Influencing the Use of Dialogic Teaching in a Secondary 2 Mathematics Classroom in Singapore

Martin Andrew Jonathan

In this presentation, I will discuss my EdD research on factors which may influence the use of dialogic teaching. Two mathematics classrooms in a local secondary school were observed across five lessons. Transcription of audio recordings were analysed using the Teacher Scheme of Educational Dialogue Analysis (Hennessy, 2006) and the Monologic-Dialogic Continuum framework. Results obtained from the quantitative and qualitative analysis via each framework revealed that there was a dominance of monologic interactions during the mathematics lessons. In addition, the preliminary analysis identified five factors which had an influence on the extent of dialogue observed in these two mathematics classrooms. These were: 1) the willingness of students to engage in dialogue, 2) discrepancy in the teacher’s own perception of dialogue, 3) teachers’ teaching habits of delivering a lesson as compared to facilitating one, 4) a greater emphasis on practice questions in the design of the prescribed textbook and 5) the proportion of practice question enacted in the mathematics classroom in comparison to concept development tasks. While the prescribed textbook was discussed to be largely on point in fostering an environment for co-construction of knowledge, it was argued that a main contributor to these influencing factors resided on the inadequate training received by the teachers with regard to: 1) the use of the mathematics textbook and 2) the questioning techniques, necessary for a classroom dialogue. This in turn had implications on the teachers’ belief towards engaging dialogic teaching in their mathematics classrooms.

Use of Assessment Tasks as Impetus for Primary Math Teachers’ Reform in their Instructional Practice

Berinderjeet Kaur, Jahangeer Bin Mohamad Jahabar, Tong Cherng Luen

As part of a larger study on Big Ideas in School Mathematics (BISM), mathematics teachers in two primary schools are involved in a two-year long professional development (PD) programme. Each year the PD of the mathematics teachers began with two introductory sessions. The first engaged them in working through assessment tasks that involved the big idea of equivalence, in the first year and the big idea of proportionality in the second year. During the second sessions they worked in their grade level groups exploring, for a topic they planned to teach in the coming weeks, episodes that would illuminate the big ideas they explored in their first sessions. Using assessment tasks to kick start teachers’ PD may lead one to speculate that the programme was preparing teachers to teach to the test. Focus group discussions were carried out with groups of teachers in both schools who had planned lessons to teach for the respective big ideas. In this presentation we share findings about how the experience of working with the assessment tasks impacted their classroom practice.

Pre-service Teachers’ Views on Students’ Attitudes Towards Mathematics

Shervonne Yeo Xin Ting

In this presentation, I will discuss my Educational Research study on pre-service teachers’ views on students’ attitudes towards mathematics, and some strategies they believe are helpful to develop students’ attitudes. Research literature views the affective domain as comprising of beliefs, attitudes, and emotions, while the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum framework considers beliefs, appreciation, confidence, motivation, interest, and perseverance as various aspects of attitudes. It is believed that positive attitudes towards mathematics help students to do well in the subject. The data for my study were collected using a survey. It was found that most pre-service teachers believed that confidence is the most important category, followed by perseverance. To build students’ confidence, teachers can strive to set questions at an increasing difficulty level and help students to believe in their potential in excelling in mathematics. The category with the most suggested strategies in the survey is interest, where pre-service teachers proposed the use of games or ICT tools during lessons to engage students and to make lessons more fun.

Grade Two Students’ Approach to Solving Problems

Leow Si Hoon

Most studies in problem solving target intervention strategies, measuring their impact on learners. Yet the learner is one important element in the didactic triangle. Young children often come with their set of ideas and opinions. Do these contribute to their mathematical problem solving abilities? After posing a non-routine mathematical problem to Grade Two students, their responses are analyzed for the role of informal thinking in formal Mathematical tasks. The methodology, results and findings are presented, along with possible future research areas.

Teacher Design of Instructional Materials

Leong Yew Hoong

“It is common – but uncommon in other parts of the world – for Singapore Secondary Mathematics teachers to design instructional materials (often colloquially termed as “Worksheets”) for use in classroom teaching. This practice opens up new opportunities to study the instructional work of teachers. In this talk, the focus will be on two affordances in these fields: research, and educational design”.