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How educators...

... can make their students feel proud of their Math achievements?

Training course for trainers

How to use this artifact?

This artifact aims at providing tools and materials to trainers of educators working in non-formal educational contexts to:

  • Promote children’s mathematical competencies
  • Raise children’s self-efficacy in mathematics.
You can navigate along the slides with the navigation tools and through the links of different pages. In some slides you can find additional information in a overlying layer. All tools and materials are an adaptation of the work of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in the STEAM4U project.

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

But, as educators, how can we change them?

You must certainly have heard these statements at some point...

Mathematics and I are the opposite

Maths aren't just my thing

I'm not good at maths

Maths are necessary... but they are not for all heads

STEP 1:

Help educators to be more aware of students' needs

STEP 2

STEP 3

Help educators to make good informed decisions

Click to see an example

Click to see our proposal

Click to see our proposal

Help educators to evaluate their actions

Help your educators to develop their teaching abilities in 3 steps:

Click to see an example

Click to see our proposal

Click to see an example

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Help educators to be more aware of students' needs

Involve educators in a didactic reflexion about the contents, processes and strategies that we can be developed with particular maths teaching resources (games, videogames, manipulative material, simulation, etc.).The aim of this first step is to put educators in the shoes of their students in a particular situation to identify students needs at two levels: math competences and self-efficacy in STEM

It is important to choose good examples that allow educators to engage in a rich discussion of these 2 levels:

Improve students’ Mathematical competence

Improve students’ Self-efficacy

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STEP 1

After this discussion, an educator will be committed to use some of the teaching resources to attend the students' needs being identified. This educator will act as a model for the second step of the training

Playing TRIDIO to being aware about contents, process and acttitudes that sudents' can build playing it.

Connecting the content, process and actitudes that we build playing TRIDIO with the reality

Imagining how we transform our experience with TRIDIO in a classroom activity

Imagining how we transform our experience with TRIDIO in a classroom activity

1 Mathematical Analysis

Didactic Analysis

a) Selection of the problemb) Preliminary mathematical analysis of the possible strategies to solve the problemc) Anticipation of classroom managment

a) Identify the processes to work (e.g. Problem Solving)b) Identify competences to developc) Do a rubric to evaluate the competences

a) Communication and argumentation about the strategies to solve the problems(genetion of learning opportunitues)

a) Assessment of the processes of resolution and constuction matemathical meanings b) Extension of the strategies to solve the problem

Using Tridio game as an educational tool. An example based on the work of Artés, Badillo, García, Morera y Prat (2015)

Help educators to be more aware of students' needs

STEP 1

2 Didactical Analysis

3 Classroom management

+ info

4 Evaluation

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Back to the overveiw of the training

In this phase the trainer should make explicit and make educators aware of the structure of the training (Mathematical Analysis, Didactic Analysis, Classroom Management, Evaluation). This structure can help educators to design new mathematical sequences and make better informed decisions.

After any educational proposal it is essential to evaluate if students have developed the competences that we wanted to work and identify the level to which these competences have been developed. For this reason, it is necessary that we spend some training time thinking about it and discussing with educators.

In this moment, the trainer guiding the conversation and must stress, by asking pertinent questions, the key aspects of the activity: which is the best strategy to solve the problem, why one strategy works in a particular level of the game and not in another level, and the relevant and secondary competences we should promote playing the game with students. We recommend that educators identify these key aspects (contents, processes and attitudes that students can develop) firstly individually or in pairs and then share with others their thoughts an try to reach a consensus. As well in this phase, educators can share with others their worries about the classroom management and their strategies that they use.

It's important that, at first, educators do the educational sequence like a students do. It can help educators to know which feelings, difficulties... their students can do playing TRIDIO, imagine the 2D structure of cube… and also being aware of which strategies they are can use to solve it.

After educators do a Mathematical Analysis of the different activities it’s important that they do a Didactic Analysis. One of the aims of this analysis is that educators know which mathematical processes (argumentation, problem solving, connections and/or representation/ communication) can be work students with the sequence and the depth in which they work. Even we think that all of mathematical process are necessary to be develop by students. Usually, connection process isn’t appear in the mathematical activities. However, we think that it's important that in every sequence students connect the mathematical knowledge built playing games, solving problems… with the real world. Often it isn't easy for student to apply their mathematical knowledge to understand real world. If we don’t help them to do this connection the activity becomes an anecdote work and students forget their learnings when the activity finish.

After any educational proposal it's essential to evaluate if students have developed the competences that we want to work and identify to which level they have been developed. It is recommendable to use a worksheet to guide the discussion. If you want to see an example of rubric to evaluate competences that students could develop playing TRIDIO game you can see an example in the STEAM4U website.

(If you want to see some strategies to improve the students’ self-efficacy you can visit STEAM4U webpage). In this moment the trainer should emphasize the importance of those strategies that can help educators to improve the students' self-efficacy

Doing the sequence as if they were students allows educators to anticipate strategies to use in class and possible issues that can arise, as well as to think about what is the best way to help students. However, to help them to reflect about the classroom management and anticipate some critical situation it is highly recommendable to use a work sheet to guide the discussion (If you want to know which questions we used in the training you can visit the STEAM4U website).

Use the experience of the educator model to analyse which strategies have been used to promote both math competences and self-efficacy in STEM. Focus on the result of using such strategies regarding the aims of the activities and if other strategies could have been used instead.

STEP 2

Help educators to make good informed decisions

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It is highly recommendable to record and show some episodes of the educator model's performance. They act as a very good triggering of the discussion.Choose good (and positive) examples that allow educators to engage in a rich discussion.

After the discussion, the rest of educators will be comitted to implement the teaching resources presented and the different good strategies to promote math competences and self-efficacy in STEM.

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STEP 2

Help educators to make good informed decisions

An example from the training of volunteers of the UniX program

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Volunteers working on Math workshops were asked to analyse a colleague's performance using the following table:

Additional materials were provided to help volunteers to identify which Math contents were used

+ info about the UniX program (in Catalan)

As well, additional materials were provided to help volunteers to identify which strategies to raise self-efficacy in STEM were used

The aim of this step is to involve educators in a didactic reflexion about their own experience when using the teaching materials in their workshops

Students' self-efficacy in STEM

Own educators' self-efficacy doing an activity

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STEP 3

Help educators to evaluate their actions

It is important that educators focus on the different aspects invoved in the implementation of the teaching materials:

Mathematical competence

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1 Share with others

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STEP 3

Help educators to evaluate their actions

An example from the training of volunteers of the UniX program

+ info about the UniX program (in Catalan)

Each volunteer was asked to share 2 exemplary situations in workshops in which math knowledge was constructed and/or self-efficacy in STEAM was raised.

2 Discuss

Volunteers discussed and analysed the situations using the same table they used to analyse the volunteer model's performance

3 Conclude

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) was used to summarise the learnings