Through these 2 weeks of lessons, it is rather clear that the emphasis of the course is on having teachers adopt a “teach for understanding” stance. While I agree that it is important for concepts to be thoroughly understood to allow for a meaningful learning experience, I feel that it could actually bring about more problems in the actual neighbourhood school classroom setting.
Many students are practical learners. Those who want to learn have the aim of doing well for exams. As such, they might lose interest if teachers dwell too much on the understanding of concepts like (-1) x (-1) = 1 and the rationale behind the ladder method for LCM. I can already foresee students asking questions like, ”Cher, textbook says negative times negative gives positive, I just follow and I can solve the questions. Why do you need to explain in such detail?” and “The ladder method I know how to use. But the rationale behind it, do I have to know?” These students could end up getting bored and might even lose interest in the subject, simply because such a degree understanding is not required in the syllabus. Unless the syllabus is altered and exams are geared towards testing for understanding of concepts to such depth, students will likely not learn to appreciate. Moreover, such explanation of concepts in depth might be a tad challenging and time-consuming. This might not be practical in the all-so-familiar scenario in which the syllabus has to be completed on time.
That said, I believe that such kind of “teaching for understanding” approach that allows for in-depth discussion of mathematical concepts are more suited for students in the Integrated Programme. These students bypass the O levels and have more time to engage in meaningful learning. They could thus be more receptive and in my opinion, should be the true beneficiaries of this teaching style.
Cheng Xiang
I somewhat agree with your opinion that we can use what we have learnt in tutorials can be used to inspire higher order thinking in the kids that are mathematically inclined in the better schools. However, we as teachers are still able to plan the curriculum in such a way that the weaker students can also have a chance to be exposed to these thinking processes which they may not grasp so quickly (but would be good to plant that idea of questioning intelligently). Having said that, i want to reiterate that under the realistic circumstances, we need to compromise and decide on how and what to teach our kids meaningfully since we wont possibly be able to do so for every lesson.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Ai Li