Content and Pedagogy in Teaching

Mathematics
and
Current Issues and Trends in Teaching
Mathematics
ERMA M. ORADA
Teacher I, ZAHS

Baao Community College

August 10, 2019
 Mathematics, to most, is a complex subject. The
tendency for most students is to consider the subject
as one that is boring, thus, creating lack of interest in
the topics being discussed.
What can stand in the way
of a student’s mathematical
development?
Math is a subject that can be mastered through
continuous practice.
Initially, math is not easy to understand.
But, if a student is determined to learn how to
solve math problems, his aversion to numbers is
guaranteed to disappear.

Teachers have roles to play in the advancement

of their students.
What makes a great
teacher?
Three Dimension of Mathematics Teachers
(Ezenweani, 2002)
Teachers personality
Knowledge of the subject matter
Methodology
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving,
according to Scriven according to Polya
and Paul (1987) is the (1945 & 1962), is
intellectually disciplined finding a way around a
process of actively and difficulty, around an
skillfully
obstacle, and finding a
conceptualizing,
applying, analyzing, solution to a problem
synthesizing, and/or that is unknown.
evaluating information
gathered from, or
generated by,
observation, experience,
reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a
guide to belief and
action.
 Students who truly
Students who can
understand what they
do math are doing

 Can perform
 Can explain why a formula
computations and explain
works
concepts
 Can trace the steps used
 They know the definition,
to define a concept
but they may not know
 Can explain the logic
how some ancient
behind the process they
mathematician defined
used to reach a solution
the concept.
Real World Problem Solving
Math textbooks only go so far when it comes to presenting real world
problems that require mathematical solutions.
Texts are organized around concepts, making it easy for students to
see what strategies they need to use to solve a problem. 
Critical thinking kicks in when students have a variety of options for
solving a problem.
Students apply critical thinking to find the best strategy out of many
possible methods to reach a solution.
Example:
Based on current trends in rising and falling
temperatures, predict the average high and low
temperatures for five different places on
Earth five years from now.
Asking Questions
To think critically is to follow a clear line of logical steps and
reasoning. To solve critical thinking problems, math teachers should
model the way they think when solving a problem. Students can
internalize a set of questions to ask that will help them think their
way to a solution. These questions could include:
What is the problem? What am I trying to figure out?
What do I know? What is the given information?
What do I need to know to solve the problem?
What problems like this have I solved before?
What solutions could work? What strategies will work best in this situation?
Conten
t
Numbers and Number Sense
Measurement
Geometry
Patterns and Algebra
Statistics and Probability
Numbers and Number
Sense
• include concepts of numbers, properties,
operations, estimation and their
applications.
Measurement
• includes the use of numbers and measures to
describe, understand, and compare mathematical
concrete objects. It focuses on attributes such as
length, mass and weight, capacity, time, money, and
temperature, as well as applications involving
perimeter, area, surface area, volume, and angle
measure.
Geometry
• includes properties of two- and three-dimensional
figures and their relationships, spatial
visualization, reasoning, and geometric modelling
and proofs.
Patterns and Algebra
• studies patterns, relationships, and changes among
shapes and quantities. It includes the use of
algebraic notations and symbols, equations, and
most importantly, functions, to represent and
analyze relationships.
Statistics and
Probability
• all about developing skills in collecting and
organizing data using charts, tables, and graphs;
understanding, analyzing and interpreting data;
dealing with uncertainty; and making predictions
about outcomes.
Skills and Process
Knowing and understanding
Estimating, computing and solving
Visualizing and modelling
Representing and communicating
Conjecturing, reasoning, proving and decision-making
Applying and connecting
Values and Attitudes
Accuracy
Creativity
Objectivity
Perseverance
Productivity
Mathematical Tools
Manipulative objects
Measuring devices
Calculators and computers
Smart phones and tablet PCs
Internet
Contexts
Beliefs
Environment
Language and culture
Learner’s prior knowledge and experiences
Experiential and Situated Learning
Experiential Learning as advocated by David Kolb is learning
that occurs by making sense of direct everyday experiences.
Experiential Learning theory defines learning as "the
process whereby knowledge is created through the
transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the
combination of grasping and transforming experience.“
Situated Learning, theorized by Lave and Wenger, is
learning in the same context in which concepts and theories
are applied.
Reflective Learning
Reflective Learning
refers to learning that is
facilitated by reflective
thinking.
Constructivism
Constructivism is the theory
that argues that knowledge
is constructed when the
learner is able to draw ideas
from his/her own
experiences and connect
them to new ideas.
Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning puts

premium on active learning
achieved by working with fellow
learners as they all engage in a
shared task.
Discovery and Inquiry-based Learning
Discovery Learning and
Inquiry-based Learning
(Bruner, 1961) support the
idea that students learn
when they make use of
personal experiences to
discover facts, relationships,
and concepts.
Effective Pedagogy in Mathematics
by Glenda Anthony and Margaret Walshaw
1. An ethic of care
Caring classroom communities that are focused on
mathematical goals help develop students’ mathematical
identities and proficiencies.
Students find they are able to think, reason,
communicate, reflect upon, and critique the
mathematics they encounter; their classroom
relationships become a resource for developing their
mathematical competencies and identities.
Caring about the development of students’ mathematical
proficiency
Teachers can help create a harmonious environment by
respecting and valuing the mathematics and the cultures
that students bring to the classroom.
By ensuring safety, teachers make it easier for all their
students to get involved.
However, it is important that teachers avoid the kind of
caring relationships that encourage dependency. Rather,
they need to promote classroom relationships that allow
students to think for themselves, ask questions, and take
intellectual risks.
Caring about the development of students’ mathematical
identity
Teachers must attend to the differing needs that derive
from home environments, languages, capabilities, and
perspectives, teachers allow students to develop a positive
attitude to mathematics.
2. Arranging for learning
Effective teachers provide students with opportunities
to work both independently and collaboratively to make
sense of ideas.
Independent thinking time
Whole-class discussion
Partners and small groups
Independent thinking time
 It can be difficult to grasp a new concept or solve a problem
when distracted by the views of others. For this reason,
teachers should ensure that all students are given opportunities
to think and work quietly by themselves, where they are not
required to process the varied, sometimes conflicting
perspectives of others.
Whole-class discussion
 In whole-class discussion, teachers are the primary resource for
nurturing patterns of mathematical reasoning.
 Teachers manage, facilitate, and monitor student participation
and they record students’ solutions, emphasizing efficient ways
of doing this.
Whole-class discussion
 While ensuring that discussion retains its focus, teachers invite
students to explain their solutions to others; they also encourage
students to listen to and respect one another, accept and
evaluate different viewpoints, and engage in an exchange of
thinking and perspectives.
Partners and small groups
 Working with partners and in small groups can help students to
see themselves as mathematical learners.
 Such arrangements can often provide the emotional and practical
support that students need to clarify the nature of a task and
identify possible ways forward.
 Pairs and small groups are not only useful for enhancing
engagement; they also facilitate the exchange and testing of
ideas and encourage higher level thinking.
 In small, supportive groups, students learn how to make
conjectures and engage in mathematical argumentation and
validation.
 As participants in a group, students require freedom from
distraction and space for easy interactions.
 They need to be reasonably familiar with the focus activity and
to be held accountable for the group’s work.
 The teacher is responsible for ensuring that students
understand and adhere to the participant roles, which include
listening, writing, answering, questioning, and critically assessing.
 For maximum effectiveness groups should be small—no more
than four or five members.
 When groups include students of varying mathematical
achievement, insights come at different levels; these insights
will tend to enhance overall understandings.
3. Building on students/ thinking
Effective teachers plan mathematics learning
experiences that enable students to build on their
existing proficiencies, interests, and experiences.
In planning for learning, effective teachers put students’
current knowledge and interests at the center of their
instructional decision making.
Teachers view thinking as “understanding in progress”, they are
able to use their students’ thinking as a resource for further
learning.
Connecting learning to what students are thinking
Effective teachers take student competencies as starting
points for their planning and their moment-by-moment
decision making.
Existing competencies, including language, reading and
listening skills, ability to cope with complexity, and
mathematical reasoning, become resources to build upon.
Because they focus on the thinking that goes on when their
students are engaged in tasks, effective teachers are able
to pose new questions or design new tasks that will
challenge and extend thinking.
Using students’ misconceptions and errors as building blocks
Effective teachers view errors as a natural and often
necessary stage in a learner’s conceptual development.
They take such misconceptions and use them as building
blocks for developing deeper understandings.
Appropriate challenge

By providing appropriate challenge, effective teachers

signal their high but realistic expectations.
This means building on students’ existing thinking and, more
often than not, modifying tasks to provide alternative
pathways to understanding.
4. Worthwhile mathematical tasks
Effective teachers understand that the tasks and
examples they select influence how students come to
view, develop, use, and make sense of mathematics.
Engaging with tasks and learning experiences that allow for
original thinking about important concepts and relationships
encourage students to become proficient doers and learners of
mathematics.
Tasks should not have a single-minded focus on right answers;
they should provide opportunities for students to struggle with
ideas and to develop and use an increasingly sophisticated range
of mathematical processes
Mathematical focus
Effective teachers design learning experiences and tasks
that are based on sound and significant mathematics; they
ensure that all students are given tasks that help them
improve their understanding in the domain that is currently
the focus.
Students should not expect that tasks will always involve
practicing algorithms they have just been taught; rather,
they should expect that the tasks they are given will
require them to think with and about important
mathematical ideas.
Mathematical focus
Tasks that require students to think deeply about
mathematical ideas and connections encourage them to
think for themselves instead of always relying on their
teacher to lead the way.
Problematic Tasks
Through the tasks they pose, teachers send important
messages about what doing mathematics involves.
Effective teachers set tasks that require students to make
and test conjectures, pose problems, look for patterns, and
explore alternative solution paths.
Open-ended and modelling tasks, in particular, require
students to interpret a context and then to make sense of
the embedded mathematics.
Practice Activity
Students need opportunities to practice what they are
learning, whether it be to improve their computational
fluency, problem solving skills, or conceptual understanding.
5. Making connections
Effective teachers support students in creating
connections between different ways of solving problems,
between mathematical representations and topics, and
between mathematics and everyday experiences.
To make sense of a new concept or skill, students need to be able to
connect it to their existing mathematical understandings, in a variety
of ways. Tasks that require students to make multiple connections
within and across topics help them appreciate the interconnectedness
of different mathematical ideas and the relationships that exist
between mathematics and real life.
Supporting making connections
Effective teachers emphasize links between different
mathematical ideas.
They make new ideas accessible by progressively
introducing modifications that build on students’
understandings.
Multiple solutions and representations
• Providing students with multiple representations helps develop
both their conceptual understandings and their computational
flexibility.
• Effective teachers give their students opportunities to use an
ever increasing array of representations—and opportunities to
translate between them.
• Tasks that have more than one possible solution strategy can
be used to elicit students’ own strategies.
Multiple solutions and representations
• Effective teachers use whole class discussion as an
opportunity to select and sequence different student
approaches with the aim of making explicit links between
representations.
• By sharing solution strategies, students can develop more
powerful, fluent, and accurate mathematical thinking.
Connecting to everyday life
• When students find they can use mathematics as a tool for
solving significant problems in their everyday lives, they begin
to view it as relevant and interesting.
• Effective teachers take care that the contexts they choose
do not distract students from the task’s mathematical
purpose.
• They make the mathematical connections and goals explicit, to
support those students who are inclined to focus on context
issues at the expense of the mathematics.
• They also support students who tend to compartmentalize
problems and miss the ideas that connect them.
6. Assessment for learning
Effective teachers use a range of assessment practices
to make students’ thinking visible and support students’
learning.
In the course of regular classroom activity, they collect
information about how students learn, what they seem to know
and be able to do, and what interests them. In this way, they
know what is working and what is not, and are able to make
informed teaching and learning decisions.
Exploring students’ reasoning and probing their
understanding
• During every lesson, teachers make countless instructional decisions.
• Moment-by-moment assessment of student progress helps them
decide what questions to ask, when to intervene, and how to respond
to questions.
• They can gain a lot from observing students as they work and by
talking with them: they can gauge students’ understanding, see what
strategies they prefer, and listen to the language they use.
• Effective teachers use this information as a basis for deciding what
examples and explanations they will focus on in class discussion.
Teacher Questioning

• By asking questions, effective teachers require students to

participate in mathematical thinking and problem solving.
• By allowing sufficient time for students to explore responses in depth
and by pressing for explanation and understanding, teachers can
ensure that students are productively engaged.
• Questions are also a powerful means of assessing students’ knowledge
and exploring their thinking.
• A key indicator of good questioning is how teachers listen to student
responses..
• Effective teachers pay attention not only to whether an answer is correct,
but also to the student’s mathematical thinking.
• They know that a wrong answer might indicate unexpected thinking rather
than lack of understanding; equally, a correct answer may be arrived at via
faulty thinking.
• To explore students’ thinking and encourage them to engage at a higher level,
teachers can use questions that start at the solution.
• Example: If the area of a rectangle is 24 and the perimeter is 22 cm, what are its
dimensions?
• Questions that have a variety of solutions or can be solved in more than one
way have the potential to provide valuable insight into student thinking and
reasoning.
Feedback

• Helpful feedback focuses on the task, not on marks or grades; it

explains why something is right or wrong and describes what to do
next or suggests strategies for improvement.
• Example: The feedback, I want you to go over all of them and write an equals
sign in each one gives a student information that she can use to improve her
performance.

• Effective teachers support students when they are stuck, not by

giving full solutions, but by prompting them to search for more
information, try another method, or discuss the problem with
classmates.
• In response to a student who says he doesn’t understand, a teacher
might say: Well, the first part is just like the last problem. Then we
add one more variable. See if you can find out what it is. I’ll be back
in a few minutes.
• This teacher challenges the student to do further thinking before
she returns to check on progress.
Self and peer assessment

• Effective teachers provide opportunities for students to evaluate

their own work.
• These may include having students design their own test questions,
share success criteria, write mathematical journals, or present
portfolio evidence of growing understanding.
• When feedback is used to encourage continued student–student and
student–teacher dialogue, self-evaluation becomes a regular part of
the learning process and students develop greater self-awareness.
7. Mathematical Communication
Effective teachers are able to facilitate classroom
dialogue that is focused on mathematical argumentation.
Scaffolding attempts at mathematical ways of speaking and
thinking.
Developing skills of mathematical argumentation.
Scaffolding attempts at mathematical ways of
speaking and thinking

• Students need to be taught how to communicate mathematically, give

sound mathematical explanations, and justify their solutions.
• Effective teachers encourage their students to communicate their
ideas orally, in writing, and by using a variety of representations.
• Revoicing is one way of guiding students in the use of mathematical
conventions. It involves repeating, rephrasing, or expanding on
student talk.
• Teachers can use revoicing to:
highlight ideas that have come directly from students,
help develop students’ understandings that are implicit in those
ideas,
negotiate meaning with their students, and
add new ideas, or move discussion in another direction.
Developing skills of mathematical argumentation

• To guide students in the ways of mathematical argumentation,

effective teachers encourage them to take and defend positions
against alternative views; their students become accustomed to
listening to the ideas of others and using debate to resolve conflict
and arrive at common understandings.
• In the following episode, a class has been discussing the claim that
fractions can be converted into decimals. Bruno and Gina have been
developing the skills of mathematical argumentation during this
discussion. The teacher then speaks to the class:
• The teacher sustained the flow of student ideas, knowing when to
step in and out of the discussion, when to press for understanding,
when to resolve competing student claims, and when to address
misunderstandings or confusion.
• While the students were learning mathematical argumentation and
discovering what makes an argument convincing, she was listening
attentively to student ideas and information. Importantly, she
withheld her own explanations until they were needed.
8. Mathematical Language
Effective teachers shape mathematical language by
modelling appropriate terms and communicating their
meaning in ways that students understand.
Effective teachers foster students’ use and understanding of
the terminology that is endorsed by the wider mathematical
community.
They do this by making links between mathematical language,
students’ intuitive understandings, and the home language.
Explicit language instruction

• Students learn the meaning of mathematical language through explicit

“telling” and through modelling.
• Sometimes, they can be helped to grasp the meaning of a concept
through the use of words or symbols that have the same
mathematical meaning.
• In the following transcript, a teacher holds up two cereal packets,
one large and one small, and asks students to describe the difference
between them in mathematical terms.
Multilingual contexts and home language

• The teacher should model and use specialized mathematical language

in ways that let students grasp it easily. Terms such as “absolute
value”, “standard deviation”, and “very likely” typically do not have
equivalents in the language a child uses at home.
• Where the medium of instruction is different from the home
language, children can encounter considerable difficulties with
prepositions, word order, logical structures, and conditionals—and the
unfamiliar contexts in which problems are situated.
Multilingual contexts and home language

• Teachers of mathematics are often unaware of the barriers to

understanding that students from a different language and culture
must overcome.
• Language (or code) switching, in which the teacher substitutes a home
language word, phrase, or sentence for a mathematical concept, can
be a useful strategy for helping students grasp underlying meaning.
9. Tools and representations
Effective teachers carefully select tools and
representations to provide support for students’
thinking.
Effective teachers draw on a range of representations and
tools to support their students’ mathematical development.
As tools become increasingly invested with meaning, they
become increasingly useful for furthering learning.
Thinking with tools

• If tools are to offer students “thinking spaces”, helping them to

organize their mathematical reasoning and support their sensemaking,
teachers must ensure that the tools they select are used effectively.
• With the help of an appropriate tool, students can think through a
problem or test an idea that their teacher has modelled.
Communicating with tools

• Tools, both representations and virtual manipulatives, are helpful for

communicating ideas and thinking that are otherwise difficult to
describe, talk about, or write about.
• Tools do not have to be readymade; effective teachers acknowledge
the value of students generating and using their own representations,
whether these be invented notations or graphical, pictorial, tabular,
or geometric representations.
New technologies

• With guidance from teachers, technology can support independent

inquiry and shared knowledge building.
• When used for mathematical investigations and modelling activities,
technological tools can link the student with the real world, making
mathematics more accessible and relevant.
• Teachers need to make informed decisions about when and how they
use technology to support learning.
New technologies

• Effective teachers take time to share with their students the

reasoning behind these decisions; they also require them to monitor
their own use (including overuse or underuse) of technology.
• Given the pace of change, teachers need ongoing professional
development so that they can use new technologies in ways that
advance the mathematical thinking of their students.
10. Teacher knowledge
Effective teachers develop and use sound knowledge as a
basis for initiating learning and responding to the
mathematical needs of all their students.
How teachers organize classroom instruction is very much
dependent on what they know and believe about mathematics
and on what they understand about mathematics teaching and
learning.
They need knowledge to help them recognize, and then act
upon, the teaching opportunities that come up without warning.
If they understand the big ideas of mathematics, they can
represent mathematics as a coherent and connected system and
they can make sense of and manage multiple student viewpoints.
Teacher content knowledge
• Effective teachers have a sound grasp of relevant content and how to
teach it.
• They know what the big ideas are that they need to teach.
• They can think of, model, and use examples and metaphors in ways
that advance student thinking.
• They can critically evaluate students’ processes, solutions, and
understanding and give appropriate and helpful feedback.
• They can see the potential in the tasks they set; this, in turn,
contributes to sound instructional decision making.
Teacher pedagogical content knowledge
• Pedagogical content knowledge is crucial at all levels of mathematics
and with all groups of students.
• Teachers with in-depth knowledge have clear ideas about how to
build procedural proficiency and how to extend and challenge student
ideas.
• They use their knowledge to make the multiple decisions about tasks,
classroom resources, talk, and actions that feed into or arise out of
the learning process.
Teacher pedagogical content knowledge
• Teachers with limited knowledge tend to structure teaching and
learning around discrete concepts instead of creating wider
connections between facts, concepts, structures, and practices.
• To teach mathematical content effectively, teachers need a
grounded understanding of students as learners. With such
understanding, they are aware of likely conceptions and
misconceptions.
• They use this awareness to make instructional decisions that
strengthen conceptual understanding.
Teacher knowledge in action
Enhancing teacher knowledge
• The development of teacher knowledge is greatly enhanced by
efforts within the wider educational community.
• Teachers need the support of others—particularly material, systems,
and human and emotional support.
• While teachers can learn a great deal by working together with a
group of supportive mathematics colleagues, professional
development initiatives are often a necessary catalyst for major
change.
Categories of teachers (Adepoju, 1995)
Those who know mathematics but do not know how to
teach it.
Those who know how to teach mathematics but do not
know much mathematics.
Those who do not know mathematics and do not know
how to teach it.
Those who know mathematics and know how to teach
it.
Challenges in the Preparation of K-12
Teachers of Mathematics
Teaching teachers is substantive work. We can learn from
one another and from research.
Mathematics teacher preparation is situated in a much
larger arena. Engagement with the larger teacher
preparation infrastructure is critical.
“… all Filipino students have the capacity to learn
mathematics. But it takes good teachers to inspire and
excite students to do math.”

“Show your students that anyone can

be a math person.”
References:
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/critical-thinking-math-problems-examples-and-activities.html