Abstract
In any education system, curriculum alone cannot fulfill reform demands imposed onto teachers to help learners make meaning of subject contents they learn. This paper revisits the notion of resources as explored in a mathematics teacher professional development project that focused on algebra learning. As a way to promote the use of manipulatives in teaching and learning algebra, the project introduced algebra tiles to participating teachers and investigated how the tiles facilitated the enaction of algebraic meanings. The participating teachers learned different ways of helping learners interpret and solve algebraic problems, with the use of algebraic tiles.
Highlights
In any education system, curriculum alone as a document cannot fulfill the current reform demands imposed onto teachers in order to help learners make meaning of the subject content they are supposed to learn
In Namibia, a mathematics teacher is expected to be creative and innovative enough to ensure that the teaching of mathematics is as much learner-centered as possible
One of the main tenets argued for by those who call for learner-centred teaching is that learners should be actively engaged with the subject content as they try to relate it to their life experiences (Norman & Sphorer, 1996)
Summary
Curriculum alone cannot fulfill reform demands imposed onto teachers to help learners make meaning of subject contents they learn. The vignette above, indicates how the teacher’s response to the learners’ attempts to solve the problem does not go beyond “try-harder” suggestions and how learners fail to succeed in solving routine algebraic problems This reflects dominant practice in Namibian mathematics classrooms in which there is very little teaching for understanding (Amoonga & Kasanda, 2010) and discussions of learners’ problem solving methods and solutions rarely occur. It opens space for working with teachers on expanding their pedagogical repertoires, through, for example, the use of concrete materials and multiple representations. And material resources known as algebra tiles are discussed as explored in an action research project and how these may mediate the construction of adequate interpretations of algebraic problems
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