Those who need most maths support receive the least
News: Oct 25, 2011
As part of her doctoral thesis, Åse Hansson from the University of Gothenburg studied mathematics teaching among 8th graders. She found that teachers seem to take less responsibility for students’ learning in classes that are more likely to need extra support than in other classes.
‘This finding, coupled with the fact that Swedish students for a long time have been forced to take a great deal of responsibility for their own mathematics learning, may have contributed to the negative development of math skills in Swedish schools,’ says Hansson.
Hansson’s study shows that when teachers take responsibility for students’ mathematics learning through actively teaching and guidance, there is a positive effect on student performance. She has developed a model to describe the teaching responsibility and to explore the link between this responsibility and maths performance. The link between group composition and the way in which the teaching responsibility has been carried out was also studied. Mathematics teaching is often classified as either teacher or student centred, alternatively as either old-fashioned blackboard teaching or independent student work.
Actively support students
Yet Hansson’s study also shows that the concept of teaching responsibility is complex and multidimensional. Both the teacher’s and the student’s parts in the learning process need to be addressed.
‘Besides highlighting and explaining relevant mathematics content and actively supporting the students in their maths learning, the teacher must hand over the responsibility to the students for their own construction of knowledge,’ says Hansson.
Her study indicates that maths performance goes down if students are put in charge of large parts of the learning process. However, it is indeed important that they are handed over the responsibility for their own construction of knowledge. Knowledge cannot be transferred from the teacher to the student if the student is to truly understand the content.
‘But it is the responsibility of the teacher to support the student’s learning process and make the knowledge generalisable and useful outside of school. My study points to positive effects on maths performance when a teacher takes this responsibility,’ says Hansson.
Pedagogical segregation
Teaching in a multilingual classroom requires that the teacher adapts to each student’s need for maths support. Yet the study shows that this is not typically done. Instead, teachers are taking less responsibility for student learning in groups with a high proportion of immigrant students or students with low socioeconomic status than they do in other student groups, a situation that can be considered pedagogical segregation. The reason for this is beyond the scope of Hansson’s study.
She further points out that the lower performance among immigrant students is not due to less ambition, since these students actually tend to show a higher level of ambition than other students.
Not only good old blackboard teaching
‘By strengthening the teaching responsibility and making the maths teaching more equal, the negative development of maths skills could be turned around without implementing a bunch of additional measures. It really comes down to reclaiming the teaching responsibility , which – and I want to emphasise this – does not imply a total return to old-fashioned blackboard teaching,’ says Hansson.
Åse Hansson’s study is a secondary analysis of large-scale Swedish student and teacher data from TIMSS, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.
Åse Hansson wrote her thesis within the framework of the research school in educational science at the Centre for Educational Science and Teacher Research, CUL, University of Gothenburg.
Read the thesis (in Swedish with abstract in English)>>
Åse Hansson defended her doctoral thesis Ansvar för matematiklärande. Effekter av undervisningsansvar i det flerspråkiga klassrummet (Responsibility for mathematics learning. Effects of instructional responsibility in the multilingual classroom) at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies on Friday 28 October.
For more information: Åse Hansson: +46 (0)31 786 22 13, +46 (0)705 94 28 73, ase.hansson@ped.gu.se