Robinson Article Response

MAED 314-301

ROBINSON ARTICLE RESPONSE

Goal: Write a 200 word response to the Robinson Article.

In the Heather J. Robinson's article, titled "Using Research to Analyze, Inform, and Assess Changes in Instruction", there were a number of points she made that I felt were especially important. The first was the opening statement:

"My vision for my classroom has always been one where students actively participate in the learning process by being engaged in enriching and meaningful learning activities that help make mathematics relevant and realistic - rather than an abstract "thing" out there to intimidate and use to separate the 'haves' from the 'have nots.'"

When I attended high school, my teachers made an effort to include "real world" word problems in our tests, which forced us to make the mental connection between word problems and mathematical concepts. I found greatly helped in my understanding, and encouraged me to minor in mathematics upon reaching high school.

A second statement of Heather J. Robinson's really struck a chord, as I thought back to my Grade 12 mathematics provincial exam:

"My students were able to perform mathematical operations with functions such as evaluating, adding, and multiplying functions, but I honestly was not sure that they ever understood what a function is and or how it might be applied."

Because our program at NVSS was a "work at your own pace" system, the students were self-taught, and usually we taught ourselves enough to pass the exam and progress on to the next topic, but no more. When I went to write the Grade 12 provincial exam, I found that there were a large number of questions that dealt with visual representations of logarithm and exponential functions, which was the one area that I was weakest. Because of this, I did very poorly on the exam, and spent the majority of the next summer relearning the material so that I could rewrite the exam.

I have mentioned several times in our MAED314a class that I support Instructional Learning with a focus on practical applications, however I believe that I should clarify that statement by explicitly stating that when students commit to learning higher level mathematics (Math 11 and 12), there should be more of a focus on relational understanding. However, I still support all students having a strong instrumental understanding, and relational understanding should be slowly introduced at successive grades.