Category Archives: CupCount

12 Proposals for 1day Skype Seminars

Twelve proposals for Skype seminars

01) The Root of Mathematics, Many, dealt with by Block-Numbers, Cup-Counting and Preschool Calculus.
02) 12 Luther-like Theses about how ManyMath can Improve Math Education
03) Curing Math Dislike with one Cup and five Sticks
04) DoubleCounting rooting Proportionality – and Fractions and Percentages as PerNumbers
05) Algebraic Fractions made easy by Block-Numbers with Units
06) Algebra and Geometry, always Together, never Apart
07) Calculus in Middle School and High School
08) Mathematics, the Grammar of the Number-Language. But why teach Grammar before Language?
09) Quantitative Literature also has three Genres: Fact and Fiction and Fiddle
10) Distance Teacher Education in Mathematics by the CATS method: Count & Add in Time & Space
11) 50 years of Sterile Mathematics Education Research, Why?
12) Difference-Research, a more Successful Research Paradigm?

Heidegger Improving Math Education

HEIDEGGER IMPROVING MATH EDUCATION

After 50 years of research, mathematics education still has learning problems as witnessed by the PISA studies. So, a suspicion arises: Can we be sure that what has been undertaken is mathematics and education and research? We seek an answer in philosophy by listening to Heidegger that, wanting to establish its meaning, finds two forms of Being: that what is, and how it is. In a Heidegger universe, the core ingredients are I and It and They, where I must neglect the gossip from They to establish an authentic relationship to It. Bracketing mathematics’ gossip will allow its root, Many, to open itself and disclose a ‘many-matics’ as a grounded natural science different in many ways from the traditional self-referring set-based mathe-matics. So to improve its educational sentences, mathematics should bring its subjects to the classroom, but leave its gossip outside.

MES9 Contributions with Reviews

MES9 Contributions with Review 

Paper
A 1year pre-engineer course for young migrants, a job for critical or civilized math education
Project
Online teacher training for curing math dislike: cup&re-counting & multiplication before addition
Symposium
Debate on how to improve mathematics education
Poster
Migrant-math: cupcounting & preschool calculus

Review paper
Review project
Review symposium
Review poster

50 years of Sterile Math Ed Research

Fifty Years of Research without Improving Mathematics Education
An academic essay, February 2017

Within education, mathematics is in the front. Consequently, research has grown rapidly for fifty years to solve its many learning problems. The lack of success is shown by the PISA studies organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, showing a low level and a continuing decline in many countries. Thus, to help the former model country Sweden, OECD wrote a critical 2015 report ‘Improving Schools in Sweden, an OECD Perspective’: “PISA 2012, however, showed a stark decline in the performance of 15-year-old students in all three core subjects (reading, mathematics and science) during the last decade, with more than one out of four students not even achieving the baseline level 2 in mathematics at which students begin to demonstrate competencies to actively participate in life.”

At the CERME 10 congress in February 2017 a plenary session asked: What are the solid findings in mathematics education research? To me, the short answer is “Only one: to improve, mathematics education should ask, not what to do, but what to do differently.” Thus, to be successful, research should not study problems but look for hidden differences that might make a difference.