My broad, general research topic is the incorporation of real-life applications into the math classroom. One potential way to conduct this study is through surveys where I would seek to find out how often and in what ways teachers incorporate real life applications. This study would rest on the assumption that incorporating applications into the classroom is a valuable teaching tool. I could pass out surveys to both teachers and students and ask how often or in what ways they use math applications. I would like to survey both the teachers and students as I am sure there is a discrepancy in what the teacher perceives and the student perceives. The teacher may overstate the incorporation of real life applications to look better as a teacher where hopefully, the student would be more truthful because they have nothing to gain or lose.
Another potential way is to conduct a correlation study in which I would determine whether a relationship exists between mathematical understanding and teacher incorporation of real-life problems. If a relationship does exist, I would determine the direction and strength of the relationship. To conduct this research study, I would need to observe classrooms where teachers incorporate real world applications and then examine the math scores of the students in that classroom or administer a test of my own to assess their understanding. As Dr. Mac says, there are an infinite number of ways to conduct a single study!
4 comments:
Sarah, I think you are very creative!! I still like this topic. I don't know if it would be necessary to interview both teachers and students. What if you asked teachers to keep a log for several weeks or to share their lesson plans for a unit or two? That would be pretty good evidence of what they taught. Surveying students might be a problem because they might well forget what they had done.
You could also survey or interview either teachers or students and ask if they can give you real-world examples of when certain topics would be used.... That would get at retention...
sarah, the idea of incorporating real-life applications of mathematics is something that definitely sounds cool. From previous classes i don't feel like i was shown a lot of opportunities math provides besides just learning theories, solving word problems, or memorizing details. I feel especially for kids who don't see a lot of value in math, having real-life applications can really show them the opportunities that math provides and brings them more into the class interaction. it seems like the teachers application or pedagogy would be an important thing to investigate to see how they are using them before seeing how students are reacting to them.
Sarah,
I definitely think this is a great topic to research. I think more often than not, kids are taught, or perceive teaching/learning to be something they do in school and that's it. But we all know, after many years of schooling (and some of us working) things you learn in the classroom can be extremely applicable to real-life situations. Learning and actually retaining the information is often much easier when real life applications are involved, so I think it would be interesting to compare the acheivement of students to how much real world teaching is done in the classroom.
I was born without creativity as well. I do think though that you have a great basic topic. If you can learn strategies from teachers who make material relevant, or learn by observing those who fail to do that, I think you will be a much better teacher. I think relevance is a very important thing when it comes to math. I never had teachers who made math relevant to me. As a consequence I don’t remember 99% of what I learned in math class. Had they shown me reasons why some of these concepts might be useful to me i’m sure i’d retain a much higher percentage of what they taught me.
I think that in addition to surveys you should really try to get your hands on lesson plans and assignments. I think those documents could prove invaluable in finding useful strategies that you can use in your own classroom.
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