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Using contextualized tasks to engage students in meaningful and worthwhile mathematics learning
Clarke, Doug Roche, Anne
Clarke, Doug
Roche, Anne
Author
Abstract
A teacher’s choice and use of tasks are major determinants of the nature and quality of students’ learning. Teachers of 11–15 year-olds in a project called Task Types and Mathematics Learning used a range of contextualized tasks and reported affordances and disadvantages of the use of such tasks. We offer a rationale for the use of contextualized tasks, examples of tasks providing insightful student thinking, and teacher feedback on affordances and constraints of the use of these tasks. For three different types of tasks, students provided feedback on the relative extent to which they enjoyed, learned from, and found difficult each type of task, respectively. Finally, we report on a follow up project which studied teacher actions supporting persistence on cognitively demanding contextualized tasks. Findings inform our understanding of the teacher’s role in providing engaging and worthwhile mathematics for all students.
Keywords
Contextualized tasks, Mathematical learning, Teacher’s role, Task types, Task exemplars, Cognitively demanding tasks
Date
2018
Type
Journal article
Journal
The Journal of Mathematical Behavior
Book
Volume
51
Issue
Page Range
95-108
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Education
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled