MRME Collaboration Event, Warwick 260107 Presentation...
Transcript of MRME Collaboration Event, Warwick 260107 Presentation...
MRME Collaboration Event, Warwick 260107Presentation – Elena Nardi and Paola Iannone
INTRODUCTION
In this session we draw on our work with the mathematicians at UEA and elsewherein order to consider issues of collaboration between mathematicians andmathematics educationalists and thus engage with the question in the title of thesymposium 'Mathematicians and Mathematics Educationalists: Can wecollaborate?’
The title of our presentation is ‘Yes!’ and we substantiate this claim in two parts: PART I: Present issues that mathematicians have raised regarding collaborationwith mathematics educators in our interviews with them. We draw on a relevantchapter from Elena’s upcoming book
NARDI E (2007, in press) Amongst Mathematicians: Teaching and LearningMathematics at University Level , USA: Springer
and the material summarised in our PME28 paper
NARDI E and IANNONE P (2004) On the Fragile, Yet Crucial RelationshipBetween Mathematicians and Researchers in Mathematics Education,Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the International Group forPsychology in Mathematics Education, 1418 July 2004, Bergen, Norway.Volume III, p401408.
PART II: Present an outcome of our recent work
NARDI E & IANNONE P (2006) How To Prove It: a brief guide for teachingProof to mathematics undergraduates. Commissioned by the HigherEducation Academy (Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Researchbranch). ISBN 9780953998388
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as a good example of how this collaboration can work. We present the guide aswell as mathematicians' evaluative comments on the guide that we collected in thecourse of its production.
All three (the book, the paper and the booklet) come from a series of studies fundedby the Nuffield Foundation, the Learning and Teaching Support Network and theHigher Education Academy. In these we conducted halfday interviews with groupsof mathematicians from six mathematics departments in the UK. The overall aimwas to explore mathematicians’ perspectives on the teaching and learning ofmathematics at university level. Preparation for the interviews took place through aDataset that interviewees had been asked to read and comment on prior to theinterview. Each Dataset contained data examples and a brief literature review on aparticular learning theme. These themes were:
Mathematical Reasoning: Proof and Proving Techniques Mathematical Concepts: Functions and LimitsMediating Mathematical Meaning: Words, Symbols and Diagrams
Discussion in the interviews also branched out to issues of Pedagogy as well asissues of Educational Research, and particularly, the relationship between our twocommunities, M, that of mathematicians and, RME, that of mathematics educators.The views on the latter is what we draw on here. Elena is doing Part I and Paola isdoing Part II.
Part I: Elena Nardi
STRUCTURE
So what issues have the mathematicians raised in these interviews regardingcollaboration with mathematics educators? In the next few minutes In what follows Isummarise – with almost crude determination! their views under the followingheadings:
1. Benefits
(i) Benefits from using mathematics education research(ii) Benefits from engaging with mathematics education research
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2. Reflection and critique of the practices of RME – on the ways RME…
(i) Do Research (an evaluation of Qualitative Inquiry and conditionsunder which it could work for mathematicians)
a. …currentlyb. … and other ways RME could be doing it!
(ii) Theorise(iii)Write(iv)Disseminate
Some separate but relevant issues the interviewees raised included Stereotypes(stereotypical representation of mathematicians in educational research) andGender (the complexity of the issue of participation of women in mathematics andits representation in educational research) but it is outside the scope of thispresentation to include these here.
I note that there is an increasingly substantial amount of writing on the issue we areexploring here. I am using 30 pieces of this writing as the theoretical/historical basisfor the chapter my presentation here draws on. The following five have influencedthe creation of the chapter particularly strongly:
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Artigue, M. (1998). Research in mathematics education through the eyes ofmathematicians. In A. Sierpinska & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), MathematicsEducation as a research domain: a search for identity (pp. 477 490).Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Goldin, G. A. (2003). Developing complex understandings: on the relation ofmathematics education research to mathematics. Educational Studies inMathematics, 54(2/3), 171 202.
Ralston, A. (2004). Research mathematicians and mathematics education: acritique. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 51, 403 411.
Sfard, A. (1998a). A mathematician's view of research in mathematics education: aninterview with Shimshon A. Amitsur. In A. Sierpinska & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.),Mathematics Education as a research domain: a search for identity (pp. 445 458). Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Sfard, A. (1998b). The many faces of mathematics: do mathematicians andresearchers in mathematics education speak about the same thing? In A.Sierpinska & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), Mathematics Education as a researchdomain: a search for identity (pp. 491 512). Dordrecht / Boston / London:Kluwer Academic Publishers.
All ‘quotations’ I am presenting are adapted from the text in the book chapter. Thetext in the book is written in the format of a dialogue between two characters M andRME. Dialogues are entirely datagrounded compositions. I am presenting these astriggers for discussion and further reflection.
BENEFITS I Benefits from using mathematics education research
The value of educational research I: offering solutions to problems
M: I would be interested in recommendations, in good ideas on how to overcomethe problems. The solutions!
The value of educational research II: articulating problems
M: … my background drives my preference towards the experimental methodbut my emphasis is clearly on identifying sources of difficulty, helpingstudents overcome difficulty, boosting confidence, achieving learning.
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… beyond generic teacher training there is a domain specific need tounderstand these problems.
The value of educational research III: contentspecific ‘teacher training’
M: … there is a need to translate those into specific recommendations formathematics… [UK university training courses for new lecturers] are oftenbogged down to epitomizing the worst aspects of professional education bybeing contentless... the difference between the specific, the meaningful andthe vague is a big one! And I am not saying that talking across variousdisciplines cannot be illuminating…
BENEFITS II Benefits from engaging with mathematics education research
The value of engagement with educational research I: the potent experience ofparticipation in a collaborative study
M: … there are things I will teach differently. There are things I understand betterof mathematics students. I appreciate the questioning aspects of thediscussion and I realise how one should be liaising with the other lecturersand discussing what things we are doing that confuse them.
Openness, diversity, written feedback, spoken word, communication
The value of engagement with educational research II: a ‘reality check’ of studentdifficulty
M: … discussing the examples is a very good starting point, and a wellstructured one. By seeing these often terrifying pieces of writing I am facedwith the harsh reality of student difficulty …
The value of engagement with educational research III: acquaintance withilluminating theoretical constructs
M: …Say you have someone who has to run classes and for some reason oranother their view of mathematics is instrumental… Suppose that such aperson one day meets Concept Image and all that. All of a sudden he learns
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that these things are all out there and that changes that person’s professionalview entirely…
REFLECTION AND CRITIQUE OF THE PRACTICES OF RME I – Doing Research (an evaluation of Qualitative Inquiry and conditions under which it could work formathematicians)
Yes, there was extensive discussion in the interviews of the substantially differentepistemologies of the two communities. Yes, there was initially a preference forquantitative, experiementbased, generalisable and readily applicable pedagogicalrecommendations. And yes, there was often exasperation with the perceived aschaotic absence of unified theoretical frameworks, established/shared definitionswithin RME. However there was also acknowledgement of institutional resistanceto allowing educational research to influence reform of practice at universitylevel. And we did note a shift in the course of the study, a shift towards a moremethodologically open preference, more embracing of, for example, naturalisticqualitative methods. Here I list seven characteristics / evaluative comments onthose:
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Openness, diversity of perspectives
M: … an occasion to … talk about the beliefs I already hold… I appreciate therichness and diversity of views exchanged … and I do not necessarily thinkwe need to come up with one right one.
Mathematical specificity
M: …a good starting point because [this type of research] is very mathematicallyspecific…
Mathematical common grounds
M: … if I had serious anxiety that there was no common ground, it would haverapidly started to feel this could be a waste of time; or that you would end uphaving nothing interesting to say ... To me the fact that we both understoodwhat we were talking about made a huge difference.
The power of an evocative transcript
M: … real people struggling with a real difficulty, in real time…these data wouldclick with [lecturers’] own experiences.
Quantitative data: diminished returns…
M: … somehow the quantitative story about learning is devoid of meaning. A tickbox of the average understanding of the concept of group among thestudents is a figure that has absolutely no meaning at all in it, in comparisonwith exploring the individual detailed discourse of each student …
Reform of practice can only follow from reflection and meticulous analysis ofcurrent practice
M: … If we were sort of on the fly during the process changing how, for example,we presented certain concepts, what we would be saying would change veryrapidly and we would be somehow observing something, while participating init … it would be like trying to hit a moving target.
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Carefully constructed, focused openness
M: …has elements of control where that is appropriate, and uncontrol wherealso appropriate. … we have stayed clear of the unhelpful smudging togetherof parameters that your naturalistic data is sometimes in danger of pushing ustowards. I would hate this if it was all vague and unfocused.
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REFLECTION AND CRITIQUE OF THE PRACTICES OF RME I – Doing Research(other ways RME could be done)
Enriching the agenda of collaborative research I: self, students
M. … bring along examples myself.…ask students to do so themselves and comment on other students’ work.…a perfect role reversal, of exposing these [interviews] to the students,having lecturers thinking hard about what students are understanding …
Enriching the agenda of collaborative research II: further focal points
M: … longitudinal analysis of course work, student responses to exam papers…
REFLECTION AND CRITIQUE OF THE PRACTICES OF RME II – Theorising
[during the interviews we showed M a few examples of RME theorisation]
Suspicion towards the capacity of a ‘flowchart’ to represent the complexity ofmathematical understanding, doubt about its capacity as a descriptive andexplanatory tool
M: Does this diagram cover all the possible reasons students may haveproblems with [names topic]? Why does someone run fast or slow, or not atall? There could be thousands of reasons for this and I am not sure any suchmodel can point at all of these. And where would all the exceptional casesgo? I would struggle to get much use from this... [while acknowledging that]…a diagrammatic or concise theoretical representation may be an almostimpossible task… as Tolstoy said: all happy families are alike but unhappyfamilies are unique. You need to constantly revisit and refine these models…
REFLECTION AND CRITIQUE OF THE PRACTICES OF RME III – Writing
M: … more specific cases, examples… minimize jargonladen text… avoidindecipherable presentations
[but then again]
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… some jargon is inevitable because there are subtle concepts involved.Engaging with thoughts expressed in different languages is part of academiclife! And we do it automatically for other subjects in science, in engineeringetc….trying to understand mathematics education is actually a fun exercise,in the same way in which you can read a political essay … you can take acertain pleasure just from that!
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REFLECTION AND CRITIQUE OF THE PRACTICES OF RME IV – Disseminating
On textM: To have transcripts in front of me of what I actually said is an entirely new and
revealing medium to me…I realized the substantial differences betweenspeaking about and writing mathematics, especially in a teaching context.And I wonder whether a transcript accurately and richly enough reflects thetone, intensity etc of a conversation?
On dissemination venues – what mathematicians read…M: … the Notices of the AM… not necessarily conference papers and journal
articles…pedagogically thoughtful books say Pólya, Stewart & Tall …
Part II: Paola Iannone
In 2006 we were commissioned by the HEAMSOR to produce a guide “that willprovide support to those teaching “Proof” to Pure Mathematicians”. We decided todraw on our experience of teaching mathematics to undergraduates, on our recentcollaborative projects with mathematicians and our research in mathematicseducation to produce a booklet (called the Guide thereafter) that would be researchbased and practiceoriented. Although proof has never been the sole focus of ourresearch, it has always been one of its main themes.
Underlying the production of the Guide are the principles ofParticipatory/Partnership research; in particular the belief that integration ofinnovation in mathematics teaching at university level is only manageable if drivenand owned by the mathematicians who teach at this level. For this reason we drewvery heavily on the data gathered from the LTSN Project in the design and contentof the Guide and we decided to engage groups of mathematicians, from UEA andelsewhere in the UK and abroad, in evaluating a first draft of the Guide.
Based on our data as well as a scrutiny of relevant literature we structured theGuide as follows:
1. Introduction2. Conceptualising formal mathematical reasoning and the necessity of Proof3. “Proof” by example: syndrome or starting point?
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4. Proof by counterexample: is one as good as many?5. Proof by mathematical induction: conveying a sense of the domino effect 6. Proof by contradiction: spotting the… contradiction7. Epilogue
We designed sections 26 as follows:
• An example of students’ work illustrating the theme of the section• A dialogue from Elena’s book that refers to the theme illustrated in the
previous example• The presentation of (some) educational findings relevant to the issues
highlighted by the example• Some pedagogical recommendations relevant to the theme based on relevant
literature and on our data • References
We then wrote a “sample section” (“Proof” by example: syndrome or starting point?)and organised two group interviews with mathematicians (from UEA and from otherinstitutions) in order to evaluate the sample in the light of the Guide’s overall aims.
The “sample section was structured as follows:
Student Example:
The following problem was set to first year undergraduate students during theircourse in basic analysis and linear algebra
Let A be a nonzero nxn matrix such that A∙A=A2=0 (the zero matrix). Show that Ais not invertible. Give an example of a matrix A such that A∙A=A2=0.
One of the students handed in this response:
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Book excerpt: M comments on the above as follows:
M: I am often asked by students who recognize that doing the 2x2 case only mightnot be enough in the end but then again they often behave as if it is… it wasenough for Cayley and Hamilton by the way. You know, they did the case 2x2 andthen in the appendix they offered the 3x3 case. That’s it. That’s their proof! Andstudents are often happy to live in Flatland! But there is a slightly different issuehere as well: in this question I wouldn’t be surprised if they resisted the invitation toconstruct an example. They often resist hard our efforts to get them to giveexamples. They don’t like doing examples. They want somehow the characters intheir solutions to be in the question already. They don’t want to be required toconstruct any new characters! Let alone explain how these characters came to be.
(From Chapter 3 of Nardi (in press 2007) Amongst Mathematicians: Teaching andLearning Mathematics at University Level, Springer)
After this introduction to the topic of the section we summarised some findingsfrom mathematics education research we perceived as helpful in highlighting theissue under discussion. Those were:
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• The work of Healy and Hoyles (2000) with 14/15 years old students on proof (inHealy, L., & Hoyles, C.: (2000) A study of proof conceptions in Algebra. Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education, 31(4), 396 – 428).
• The work of Harel and Sowder (1998) and the notion of Proof Scheme (in Harel,G. and Sowder, L.: (1998) ‘Students’ proof schemes: Results from exploratorystudies’, in E. Dubinsky, A. Schoenfeld and J. Kaput (eds.), Research inCollegiate Mathematics Education, III, American Mathematical Society,Providence, RI, pp. 234–283).
• Some of the work that has been done around the idea of generic examples (forexample in Mason, J. H.: (2002) Mathematics teaching practice. A guide foruniversity and College lecturers, Horwood Publishing Series in Mathematics andApplications).
• The idea of transparent pseudo proof (in MovshovitzHadar N.:(1998)Transparent pseudoproofs – abridge to formal proofs. Proceedings of theInternational Conference on the Teaching of Mathematics, University of Aegean,Samos, Greece, New York: John Wiley and Sons).
After this we introduced a pedagogical discussion and some examples thatillustrated some of the above ideas. One of those examples was:
Theorem: Show that the sum of an even number and an odd number is an oddnumber.
And the following students’ responses (these are fictional students responses thistime)
• Because for example 17=10+7• Because for example 10, which is 2x5 plus 5 is 15• Because for example 10+7=17• Because for example 10, which is 2x5 plus 7 is 17• Because for example 10, which is 2x5 plus 7 which is 3x2+1 is 2x5+(3x2+1)
=2(5+3)+1 which is odd.
After the responses we had a list of questions that those might raise: What issueeach one of this responses raise? Which one is the closest to a transparent pseudoproof? How would you, as a teacher, respond to each one of the above?
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Closing the sample section we gave a list of references to the educational findingswe had cited.
MATHEMATICIANS’ COMMENTS
The mathematicians’ comments on the sample chapter were very rich and can bedivided into two types:
• On the specific subject matter (“proof” by example) and • On the structure and content of the guide (particularly with regard to its
appeal to the target audience, the mathematicians)
Among the latter comments the mathematicians raised the following issues:
1. How to introduce the topic on each section. The mathematicians appreciatedthe concreteness of the introduction. This was students’ work, something thatthey were very familiar with.
2. Language. This is a big issue. If we were to reach the mathematicians’community we would have to leave our ‘genre speech’ behind and adopt alanguage that is accessible for people from outside our own mathematicseducation community.
3. One of the mathematicians stressed the necessity to allow the reader to shiftfrom “marking” mode to “understand why” mode (in her own words). Wethought that the dialogues after the students’ extracts would serve just this aim.
4. One of the main aims of the guide should be to allow reflection on one owns’practice. This emerged very strongly also from the LTSN data.
5. The mathematics in the sample section was scrutinised very closely. A finebalance needs to be achieved between mathematical arguments that are trivial hence can be disregarded and those which are so complex that they canobscure the pedagogical issue at stake. Much to our surprise talking of proofslike “the sum of two even number is an even number” was not considered to betoo elementary.
6. “Practice tips” like the use of the blackboard etc were not consideredimportant. There are already books that include those (see Baumslag, B. 2000Fundamentals of Teaching Mathematics at University Level, Imperial CollegePress, or Mason, J. H.: (2002) Mathematics teaching practice. A guide foruniversity and College lecturers, Horwood Publishing Series in Mathematics and
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Applications.) and the mathematicians thought that putting the emphasis oncontent (proof) rather than delivery of content (don’t stand in front of theblackboard when you speak etc) in much preferable.
We believe the Guide accommodates the above comments and offers a good example ofproductive ways in which collaborative consideration of pedagogical issues can takeplace.
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