>
> I am a new teacher with a background in psychology. I teach 6th and 7th
>grade mathematics, I would like to know If I can use child psychology to
make
>my math class a little more interesting and if so what techniques can I
use??
> HELP!! pleasee!! Thank you for listening Anil
>
You might be interested in John Anderson's work on teaching mathematics.
He is particularly interested in the way that children, when confronted
with a problem that requires knowledge of a mathematical operation they
don't know, will misapply an operation that they do know or invent an
operation of their own. (He calls these computational bugs.)
An example of this is from multicolumn subtraction (hopefully, your
students have mastered this):
Suppose a student hasn't learned operations associated with borrowing and
is confronted with the problem:
932
- 718
The first thing the student must do is deal with the problem of subtracting
a large number from a smaller number. The student might solve the problem
of not knowing how to subtract 8 from 2 by doing something he/she does
know, which is how to subtract 2 from 8 (putting down a 6) or decide that
since 8 is larger than 2, they will have nothing left and put down 0. Of
course, these answers are wrong. Anderson argues that an important part of
teaching mathematics resides in identifying buggy operations by examining
students' errors and correcting these mistaken operations. (Focus on the
thinking process that produced the wrong answer rather than just identify
an answer as wrong - provide feedback about incorrect operations rather
than just incorrect answers.)
A second tool that psychology has to offer concerns student motivation and
interest in mathematics. Careful use of reinforcement can shape student
interest and behavior. I once had a statistics professor who tried this
with disasterous results. He thought allowing students to collect one m&m
when they collected their weekly homework in statistics was reinforcing!
His efforts were uniformly ridiculed and scorned by the class.
Lastly, consider what we know about the value of distributed practice.
I've noticed many mathematics textbooks incorporate this principle in the
homework problems with periodic mixed reviews that provide repeated
practice for concepts learned earlier. (Lately, I've been seeing
mathematics from the parent-helping-child-with-homework perspective.)
Good luck with your teaching.
Claudia
________________________________________________________
Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology Phone: (850) 474 - 3163
University of West Florida FAX: (850) 857 - 6060
Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751
Web: http://www.uwf.edu/psych/stanny.html
