Mathematics Education in Vocational Training – Challenges and Needs

Artykuł dotyczy diagnozy potrzeb kształcenia zawodowego i ustawicznego w zakresie matematyki. Przedstawia wyniki badań przeprowadzonych w ramach europejskiego Projektu NAMA wśród pracowników i uczniów z sektora zaawansowanej technologii. Celem tych badań było zidentyfikowanie pewnych ogólnych i specyficznych umiejętności numerycznych, które są potrzebne w pracy, a wymagają dalszego kształcenia. We wnioskach nakreślono też pewne rekomendacje, które powinno się wziąć pod uwagę podczas projektowania materiałów dydaktycznych dla tej grupy docelowej.This paper presents an identification of the needs of vocational training in mathematics. The results of a research within the European Project NAMA are presented. The participants were workers and trainees of the Advanced Manufacturing sector. The research was aimed to identify some general and specific numerical skills which are needed in their work and also the skills for which the participants require more training. Our conclusions include also some recommendations which should be taken into consideration while designing some learning materials for the AM sector’s workers

The Commission for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Teaching – CIEAEM64

CIEAEM 64 conference took place in Rhodes, Greece on 23-27 July 2012. It was organized by the Department of Sciences of Preschool Education and of Educational Design, Faculty of Humanities of University of the Aegean

Traits of geometrical language used by future mathematics teachers

The paper presents a research on how future mathematics teachers use mathematical language and how they transmit and communicate their reasoning. The aim of the research was to elaborate on the characteristics of geometrical language used by students during transforming verbal information into figural one and vice versa. The results show the difficulty in expressing one’s thoughts by formal language. Meanings can be easily distorted because of the use of colloquial language that causes lots of ambiguities. The conclusions driven from relevant research depict the role that intuition plays in expressing mathematical thoughts. Moreover, it is not as easy as it may appear to transform verbal information into figural one, and figural into verbal one. However, teaching and developing these competences should be an integral part of mathematics education

The Ninth and the Tenth Congress of the European Research in Mathematics Education (CERME 9 and CERME 10)

CERME is one of the largest world congresses bringing together scientists fromall continents and entirely devoted to Mathematics Education.The scientific activities of CERME conferences are always focused mainlyon common work within the so-called Thematic Working Groups(TWGs). The particular way of organising the conference gives the opportunityfor in-depth analyses of the presentations and papers and for working outcommon conclusions after many discussions

Students’ approaches while solving a non-typical geometrical problem

In the paper we present the results of two teaching episodes, which took place in two middle school classes with 13- and 14-year-old students. The students in both classes were asked to solve the same geometrical problem; then a discussion followed, in which they had to justify their solutions. In both cases the students had no prior experience in solving non-typical mathematical problems. Additionally, the students were asked to justify their answers, which is not a common characteristic of a ‘typical’ mathematics classroom at that level. The problem was chosen from a wider study, in which twenty classes from twenty different schools were analysed. One of the aims of the present study was to analyse the skills that require a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and properties. Particularly, we aimed to investigate students’ different solution methods and justifications during problem solving. The results show considerable differences among the two classes, not only concerning the depth of investigating (which was expected due to the different age groups), but also concerning the relationship between achievement (as assessed by the mathematics teacher) and success in solving the problem. These results demonstrate the need for re-directing mathematics education from a pure algorithmic to a deeper thinking approach