Thursday 25 August 2016

Early models 


I'm giving a presentation next week and was looking through some old material to prepare. I came across some early attempts to model the factors that might extend between school and adult experiences with mathematics. There is some explanatory use in the diagrams but they need to be re-worked and represented better.  

Here is the original.  I'll post these so I can track the progression of the new versions.


What my findings suggest is that the four interrelated beliefs are developed during school and go on to create a beliefs system (perhaps schema) which frames how tertiary mathematics is experienced by the learner. This extends into real world tasks also. Essentially, the belief system acts either as an affordance, or as a constraint. Unfortunately, for many learners it acts as a constraint and in many cases perpetuates cycles of mathematical failure.   

1 comment:

  1. making interventions... costly time consuming exercises with limited payoff... but... that doesn't mean that we shouldn't stop doing them because... well just because we need to keep trying... giving up on these learners would acknowledge... something like unacceptable deterministic, genetic, and environmental factors ... which in turn... well, it's a slippery slope...

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