Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This research presents a case study at a South African University, involving students who had \nstudied mathematics in a pre-undergraduate Foundation Programme (FP) and who were currently \nin their first year of study in Information Technology (IT) at the same institution. The study \ninvestigated a possible relationship between the teaching approach used in the FP mathematics \nclassroom and the extent of students’ abilities to use important mathematical practices, such as \nusing procedures flexibly; using representation; understanding/explaining concepts; questioning; \njustifying claims; disagreeing; strategising; and generalising, in an undergraduate IT context. \nFocus group interviews and task-based interviews were used to answer three related questions: \n“To what extent are students aware of differences in teaching approaches between FP \nmathematics and undergraduate study?”; “To what extent do students believe that their \nexperiences of the teaching approaches in the Foundation Programme mathematics class have \nhelped them in undergraduate study in other courses?”; and “In what ways are the mathematical \npractices taught in the Foundation Programme used in undergraduate study in IT?” A bricolage of \nlearning theories was used as a framework for understanding the possible relationships between \nteaching approach, development of mathematical practices and learning transfer. The students in \nthe focus groups described the teaching approach used in the FP mathematics classes as studentcentred, \nwhereas many of the undergraduate IT lectures and tutorials were described as teachercentred. \nThe students felt that the approach used in the FP mathematics classroom was beneficial \nto further study, in that it taught them how to become responsible for their own learning and \nbrought about deep understanding of the mathematical concepts learned in the FP. The task-based \ninterviews showed that all students used mathematical practices to solve IT problems to a greater \nor lesser extent. The use of these mathematical practices was best understood as being influenced \nby all past cognitive, social and cultural experiences, and was therefore not a case of “transfer” in \nthe traditional sense of the word. Instead, the use of mathematical practices could be described as \nan extreme case of “cognitive accommodation” from a cognitive constructivist perspective, or a \ncase of “generality” from a situative perspective. Furthermore, an inter-relationship emerged between student-centred teaching, students’ productive disposition towards mathematics, and the \nextent of “transfer” of mathematical practices to the IT domain. This interesting relationship \nwarrants further investigation.
Author: Lynette Anne Manson
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2244405857