1.2.2 Content School mathematics curricula often focus on lists of content objectives in areas like number, arithmetic, statistics, measurement, geometry, trigonometry, and algebra. A typical list of content objectives might contain over one hundred objectives to be introduced or revisited and learned each year. These can be seen as hierarchical in nature but many textbooks do not attempt to organise the objectives in ways that enable the bigger underpinning ideas to become apparent to the pupils. In addit
Learning outcomes After studying this unit, you should: understand some current issues in mathematics education, such as the relationship of mathematics content to mathematics processes.
understand a variety of approaches to the teaching of mathematics such as 'do-talk-record' be able to approach mathematical problems and tasks in a flexible way.
Introduction This unit is aimed at teachers who wish to review how they go about the practice of teaching maths, those who are considering becoming maths teachers, or those who are studying maths courses and would like to understand more about the teaching process. This unit is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Teaching mathematical thinking at Key Stage 3 (ME624) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other cour
Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence All materials included in this unit are derived from content originated at the Open University.
1.2 Audio files
The following files accompany the exercise in Section 4.2
Clicking on 'View document' below opens an extract from Section 4.2 of the unit (PDF, 1.7 MB) which accompanies the audio clips, also below. Listen to each of them in turn with the extracted pages open (you may like to print them out). Work on the problems at the appropriate places – you'll find the answers at the foot of this page. Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should: be able to perform basic algebraic manipulation with complex numbers; understand the geometric interpretation of complex numbers; know methods of finding the nth roots of complex numbers and the solutions of simple polynomial equations. 1.6.5 RSS RSS (‘Really Simple Syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’) newsfeeds supply headlines, links, and article summaries from various websites. By using RSS ‘feedreader’ software you can gather together a range of feeds and read them in one place: they come to you, rather than you having to go out and look for breaking news. The range of RSS feeds on offer is growing daily. There is probably a feed to cover all aspects of your life where you might need the latest information, and you may 1.6.4 Blogs Technorati reports that over 100 000 new ‘blogs’ are created each day. Because these online diaries offer instant publishing opportunities, you potentially have access to a wealth of knowledge from commentators and experts (if they blog) in a wide range of fields. Most internet searches will turn up results from blogs, but there are some blog-specific search engines such as: Blogdigger 1.4.4 O is for Objectivity One of the characteristics of ‘good’ information is that it should be balanced and present both sides of an argument or issue. This way the reader is left to weigh up the evidence and make a decision. In reality, we recognise that no information is truly objective. This means that the onus is on you, the reader, to develop a critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read, and to take account of this when you interpret the information. In some cases, authors may be 1.4.3 R is for Relevance Relevance is an important factor to consider when you are evaluating information. It isn’t so much a property of the information itself but of the relationship it has with your question or your ‘information need’. For example, if you are writing an essay about the Consumer Price Index a book or website about how the Ancient Egyptians drew circles would not be relevant. So there are a number of ways in which a piece of information may not be relevant to your query: 1.4.2 P is for Presentation By presentation, we mean, the way in which the information is communicated. You might want to ask yourself: Is the language clear and easy to understand? Is the information clearly laid out so that it is easy to read? Are the fonts large enough and clear? Are the colours effective? (e.g. white or yellow on black can be difficult to read) If there are graphics or photos, do they help 1.4.1 PROMPT There is so much information available on the internet on every topic imaginable. But how do you know if it is any good? And if you find a lot more information than you really need, how do you decide what to keep and who to discard? In this section we are going to introduce a simple checklist to help you to judge the quality of the information you find. Before we do this, spend a few minutes thinking about what is meant by information quality. 1.3.9 Summary There is a lot of information available on maths and statistics via the internet. Try the activities below to start exploring what is available. Use the Author(s): 1.3.8 Choosing the right tool for the job Before searching it is always a good idea to check what the source you have chosen covers to make sure it will unearth information that matches your search need (you will notice that all the resources we’ve covered in this guide have short descriptions to enable you to decide which to use). Some of the decision makers, depending on the context of your search might be: Does it have full text? Does it cover the right subject? 1.3.7 Internet resources There are many websites where you will find useful information on maths and statistics. With all information on the internet you need to make a judgement on its reliability.
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