Answer:
Advantages and disadvantages of using ‘real world’ problems in teaching
mathematics.
Agata Hoffmann
Mathematical Institute, University of Wroclaw, Poland
As teachers, we all want to make the mathematics we teach more ‘alive’, more
‘realistic’ and more ‘accessible’.
By making it more ‘alive’ we want to attract our pupils to learn mathematics, simply to make
it more interesting, even though it is not an easy subject. By making it more ‘realistic’ we
want to show that we need mathematics in everyday life, although we very often do not
realise this. By making it more ‘accessible’ we want to make mathematical skills available to
as many pupils as possible, although every one has different potentials and possibilities in
this area.
To put our principles into practice very often we try to use ‘real world’ problems in
our teaching. It is important to be aware that these problems are usually very complex, and to
solve them we need a wide range of knowledge and experience.
A good example of this is the description of movements. To do this we have to build an
appropriate mathematical model. We have to simplify the situation by excluding a lot of
unimportant elements (according to our aim) from the description, such as the kind of light or
our state of health, and by extracting important things (according to our aim) such as
emerging forces or the time/speed correlation.
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Answers & Comments
Answer:
Advantages and disadvantages of using ‘real world’ problems in teaching
mathematics.
Agata Hoffmann
Mathematical Institute, University of Wroclaw, Poland
As teachers, we all want to make the mathematics we teach more ‘alive’, more
‘realistic’ and more ‘accessible’.
By making it more ‘alive’ we want to attract our pupils to learn mathematics, simply to make
it more interesting, even though it is not an easy subject. By making it more ‘realistic’ we
want to show that we need mathematics in everyday life, although we very often do not
realise this. By making it more ‘accessible’ we want to make mathematical skills available to
as many pupils as possible, although every one has different potentials and possibilities in
this area.
To put our principles into practice very often we try to use ‘real world’ problems in
our teaching. It is important to be aware that these problems are usually very complex, and to
solve them we need a wide range of knowledge and experience.
A good example of this is the description of movements. To do this we have to build an
appropriate mathematical model. We have to simplify the situation by excluding a lot of
unimportant elements (according to our aim) from the description, such as the kind of light or
our state of health, and by extracting important things (according to our aim) such as
emerging forces or the time/speed correlation.