[IAEP] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal

[Maria Droujkova]

> 10) Open Source software critical to high quality education – education has
> to be very customised, to the kids, the teacher, the environment and the
> country – not something you can design in New York city and will fit another
> country
>
> Liping Ma argues (admittedly from small sample sizes) that many teachers
> teach elementary maths differently and *better* in China than in the USA
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/03/long-multiplication.html
>

I think education has to be customizABLE, not customized. Every
practitioner of math has to be able to make their own version of it,
based on the previous traditions - from rephrasing definitions in your
own words to finding math in your everyday life, from choosing
representation that best suites your data and your audience to
applying general principles to particular examples. Strong teachers
(including those Ma studied) are able to use timeless, universal ideas
and strategies in ways that are meaningful to themselves and their
particular students. For example, a large part of what Chinese,
Japanese or Eastern European teachers do themselves and teach their
students is creation of meaningful example spaces for each
mathematical idea and concept, including a variety of applications,
representations, connections, contexts, examples and counterexamples.
One of the most well-known part of Ma's research of these differences
included teachers searching for examples of fraction operations.

In a telling cultural experiment reported by Sfard from Israel, a
chapter quiz asked students to prove a geometry theorem from the
chapter. However, the theorem was rephrased compared to the chapter,
and letters labeling geometric figures were changed around. Recent
immigrants from Eastern Europe have not noticed the change, because it
is very normal for them - a sort of customization of material they are
taught to do for themselves. On the other hand, many kids who grew up
in Israel had difficulties recognizing or proving the theorem in its
"new" form.

How can this principle of customizable math be applied to framework development?


-- 
Cheers,
MariaD

Make math your own, to make your own math.

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