Still Warring After All These Years: Obstacles to a Transdisciplinary Resolution of the Math Wars

Vashchyshyn, Ilona; Chernoff, Egan J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-63624-5_8

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Gibb, 2012). In the U.S. the role of contextualised and decontextualised representations in mathematics is a central component of the heated and ongoing "math wars" (NMAP, 2008;Vashchyshyn & Chernoff, 2018). One reason the debate remains live is that the research evidence on the relative merits of decontextualisation and contextualisation, sometimes referred to as abstraction and concretisation (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching using contextualised and decontextualised representations: examining the case of differential calculus through a comparative judgement technique

Bisson

Gilmore

Inglis

et al. 2019

Research in Mathematics Education

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An ongoing debate concerns whether novel mathematical concepts are better learned using contextualised or decontextualised representations. A barrier to resolving this debate, and therefore to progress in the discipline, has been the paucity of validated methods of measuring students' understanding of mathematical concepts. We developed an innovative and efficient method for measuring, in experimental settings, students' understanding of any mathematical concept using comparative judgement. We demonstrate the method by applying it to the comparison of learning outcomes from two teaching conditions. Participants (260 15-16 year olds across six schools) were introduced to differential calculus using contextualised or decontextualised representations. We then assessed participants' comparative conceptual understanding of derivatives. We found evidence that contextualised and decontextualised representations were equally effective at promoting student learning in this context. The assessment method yielded valid and reliable results, suggesting that it offers a robust and efficient approach for the problem of assessing conceptual understanding in experimental or other comparative settings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%