Planning and Delivering a Cooperative Maths Lesson

Krisztina Barczi-Veres

doi:10.12973/ejmse.3.1.9

Abstract

<p style="text-align: justify;">School education should not only provide students with content knowledge but also with effective skills that will be appropriate in their adult lives, such as the competence in solving problems individually or being able to work as a member of a team. Students should be active participants instead of passive listeners in their lessons. There is a wide variety of teaching methods that practicing teachers can choose from to make their lessons varied. The present article explains the outline of an experiment that was based on Spencer Kagan’s cooperative learning focusing on one particular lesson. The mathematics lesson was planned using cooperative teaching techniques and was taught in secondary mathematics education. We analyse how well cooperative learning can be used for improving participation and effective problem-solving in the classroom.</p>

Highlights

In a nowadays fast-changing world, the way we educate our children should equip them with knowledge and skills that will be relevant in their adult life as well (Ambrus, 2004)
Taking the aforementioned into consideration we think that the aims of our mathematics education should include teaching students to cooperate to solve problems that might be difficult for the individual and teaching them to participate actively in class discussions and problem-solving (Kagan, 2000b)
Based on the behaviour and attitude of the students in this lesson we wanted to answer the following questions: 1) How does cooperative work influence the effectiveness of problem-solving? 2) How do students respond to having to rely on each other’s knowledge rather than on the teacher’s explanations? 3) What are the possible drawbacks of applying cooperative methods in a mathematics lesson?

Summary

Introduction

In a nowadays fast-changing world, the way we educate our children should equip them with knowledge and skills that will be relevant in their adult life as well (Ambrus, 2004). Due to the pandemic situation in the previous years, many lessons had to be presented online which made it even more difficult to check how active our students were. These lessons drew attention to the fact that cooperation and active participation is not always straightforward for the students. Taking the aforementioned into consideration we think that the aims of our mathematics education should include teaching students to cooperate to solve problems that might be difficult for the individual and teaching them to participate actively in class discussions and problem-solving (Kagan, 2000b)

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion