Symposium—Towards Innovative Practices in Mathematics Education: Teachers’ and Students’ Choice and Use of Digital Resources

Abstract

AbstractIn this symposium we investigate students’ agency of selecting and using (digital) resources for developing their own learning paths. For that, we first review the literature related to students’ selection and use of resources in mathematics education in different pedagogical settings (presentation 1). Second, we develop insights from the different studies that participate in this symposium (presentation 2–6), at school as well as at university level. Results show that attempts have been made to provide students opportunities to develop agency of their mathematics learning, in particular with the development and provision of numerous digital tools and learning resources at university level and related to innovative pedagogical approaches. At the same time, it is not obvious how these tools and resources help students to develop deeper conceptual understandings. Certainly, students often ‘demand’ more student-centered and autonomous education approaches (e.g., at university level), also in mathematics education. Further, it seems that authentic problem-based education approaches are more motivating for students. These ‘innovative’ approaches necessitate particular types of structure and support for students. Moreover, they require different ways of providing resources that students can and want to interact with, and that help students to navigate through the curriculum to develop their own learning paths. At the same time, teachers also need support on how to orchestrate student learning with the available resources in such environments, so to be able to attend to students’ individual needs. The symposium comprised altogether six presentations:Birgit Pepin & Sebastian Rezat: Students’ agency of selecting and using (digital) resources for developing their own learning paths: An overviewAnnalisa Cusi & Agnese I. Telloni: Learning through digital curriculum resource design: students’ reflections on their role as designersVilma Mesa, Lelia Burley-Sanford, Xinyi Hao, & Carlos Quiroz: Interactive features in university textbooks and their use by teachers and studentsSebastian Rezat: Fostering university students’ reading and understanding of mathematical text in a flipped classroom approach with a digital marking toolBirgit Pepin & Ulises Salinas: Challenge/problem-based mathematics learning at university level: The case of the modeling weekFarzad Radmehr: Problem-posing: An inclusive activity for improving teaching and learning of mathematics at university level