Teaching and Learning Mathematics (EDUC22001) Assessment 2
There are two assessed pieces of work for this course. The first is a 2000 word Portfolio, most or all of which can also help you prepare for the final Teaching and Learning Assignment. This should be handed in via Blackboard/Turnitin (Deadline: 7th November, 2024, 2pm). [50%]
This is the guide for the second Teaching and Learning mathematics Assessment, the essay (Deadline: 8th January, 2025, 2pm) [50%].
2) Final Essay
The second assignment for this course is a 2000 word essay which critically reflects on your reading of the relevant literature, and connects it to your experience of learning or teaching mathematics. The assignment should attempt to relate to some of the themes and ideas we have discussed on the course, as well as the wider mathematics education literature (Deadline: 8th January 2025, 2pm).
Possible experiences to base the assignment on:
You could base your assignment on a particular focal experience of learning (e.g. problem solving) or of assisting learning, on this course, or as a tutor, or on a course placement either in or out of school. Examples of such experiences have previously included: experience of trying to learn some new mathematics; tutoring someone within your family or friends who is attempting to learn mathematics that you could offer to help; and teaching assistance in a school. You could pair up with someone else in the class and one could reflect on the teaching experience and one (in a separate assignment!) on the learning experience. You could also teach yourself something, either through extending one of the investigations from the class (or from elsewhere), or by choosing any mathematical topic that you don’t already know well.
Possible topics to choose from (or come up with your own):
• Mathematics emotions (e.g. anxiety)
• Applying maths in the ‘real’ world (e.g. breathing statistics, vaccines, etc. )
• Using games in mathematics (e.g. countdown)
• Mathematics in the media (e.g. film)
• Instrumental and relational understanding (e.g. teaching and learning fractions)
• Freudenthal and mathematics ‘models’ (e.g. the empty number line, or Cuisinere rods, or the array model)
• Problem solving in mathematics classroom
• Mathematics and Gender (or ethnicity, class, …)
• Mathematics pedagogy and social justice
• Decolonising the mathematics curriculum (a certain topic like symmetry, Pascal’s triangle, etc. OR a wider critical debate on decolonising mathematics early years and primary curriculum)
What should be included in the assignment?
Identifying the relevant literature and your review of it (which you might have written about in assignment 1) A brief description of the activity and people involved;
A description of the experience of teaching or learning e.g. any planning, what happened, but also, how it related to the themes of the course;
Critical reflection on the process. This could include: Why you did what you did, how you felt it went, reflecting on the themes of the course in relation to what you did, what you could have done differently and any other reflections on the experience.
Key criterion: Relating any of the above to the themes of the course AND to the mathematics education literature.
All arguments have to be substantiated with evidence. Min. 10 references.
