REFLECTING ON EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS OF MATHEMATICAL COMPETITIONS FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

Abstract

Mathematical education is one of the basic areas of primary education. Adoption of proper mathematical notions, thinking and understanding of mathematical relations constitutes the very basic targets of mathematical education. Development of pupil’s mathematical literacy is one of the priorities of educational politics. Teachers and experts in the field of didactics both search for ways to make math lessons more attractive and effective. Organising competitions is one of the options. A wide range of primary school level mathematical competitions is held in Czech Republic. These competitions are either national, both with and without international context, regional or local. Some are aimed at gifted children, others have a popularisational character. Mathematical competitions have a wide potential. They should be further utilised by teachers, as they provide a valuable source of often unconventional problems, ideas and topics. Teachers can effectively utilize these, competition problems in regular mathematics lessons.Partial results of MCPE (Mathematical Research in Primary Education) research will be presented. The research was aimed at describing the current environment of mathematical competitions held in the Czech Republic from the perspective of both pupils and teachers in primary education, analysis of selected competition problems and suggestions for their wider educational implementation. Non-standardized questionnaire survey in combination with interviews was chosen as the research method. In this paper we focus on evaluation of mathematical competitions and their educational benefits from the perspective of primary school teachers. We will seek answers to the following research questions:- What attitudes do teachers have towards mathematical competitions? Is this attitude influenced by the teacher's personal experience of competing as a contestant?- Do teachers incorporate tasks from mathematical competitions into their teaching?165 teachers from 52 primary schools participated in the research. Overall, it can be concluded that teachers have a positive attitude towards mathematical competitions. They involve their pupils in competitions and are interested in possibilities of further use of competition tasks. However, the researchers were surprised by how few of the respondents had personal experience in taking part in mathematical competitions as active participants.