Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Paper by Dr Tsanwani here.

Live blogging: Note that these are notes I’ve taken live, but will edit this today into a more readable format. I want to put this up straight away though to see if I have any obvious misunderstanding. Equations will also be put into more readable format ASAP.

MASTEC Institute created in Limpopo because students have been struggling to pass.

In service training of teachers. Training the educators.

Today talking about a small part of MASTEC: Training of educators in data handling: Statistics.

Teachers are expected to have a deep understanding of mathematical content knowledge

Research indicates that those that have majored in mathematics are not exposed much in teaching methods: Not necessarily a good understanding of teaching methods with an emphasis on meaning.

Appropriate classroom discussion is affected a lot by teacher training.

MASTEC started in 2008 in collaboration with WITS, University of Pretoria and STATSSA: They need people who have a background in teacher development.

Great concern that there are a large number of mathematics educators who have inadequate skills knowledge especially on the new curriculum.

Phases of the program:

• Phase 1: Intensive residential experience (12 weeks) for grade 10-12 teachers: Do they really understand the content? They are tested.
  Phase 2: Supported field experience with structured tasks and assignments
  Phase 3: Review and extension residential experience: Come in for another week

Currently most teacher professional development:

• Remains largely short-term and non-collaborative
• Is often unrelated to the teachers’ needs and the challenges faced by their learners
• Lasts for only a few hours (less than 8)

Teachers’ quality is a key determinant of learners’ achievement

(Schmidt 1999)

Teacher competence in statistics: Teachers focus more on procedures rather than the understanding of underlying concepts.

(Zachariades et al 2007)

Teacher confidence in statistics is a big impact.

Challenges in teaching statistics. First they have a teacher profile questionnaire. Do we understand the person that we are training.

Few current teacher training programmes adequately educate teachers for teaching statistics at school level.

Even those who have a degree in mathematics may have little understanding of statistics.

In Phase 1 of the program:

• 50 teachers
• Teachers wrote pre-tests and post-tests
• Talk here about univariate data.
• Questionnaire about the teachers rating the importance of a topic and about whether they were prepared to teach that particular topic.

Finding and discussion

A big jump from 34% to 76% in performance on univariate data over the 12 weeks.

Conclusion:

• Teacher development must continue
• The workshop has shown that the confidence of the teachers is very important
• Professional development is the key for initiating and securing change in maths instruction
• The workshop has identified the areas of school stats that the educators have not picked up even after the workshop.

Post-talk comments: Many topics are taught during the 3 months.

Question: Do the teachers pass their training on to the teachers in the schools?

Answer: Trained teachers must form clusters in their schools in collaboration with curriculum advisors.