Recent studies of eight and nine year old students in England are showing that children preform better in math when they don’t know the basic facts the curriculum expects them to know. It is part of England's national curriculum that children are required to know number facts 0-20 by heart at the end of Year 3, but Professor Richard Cowan of the Institute of Education is proving this ineffective. In a study of 259 eight and nine year old students, he found that none of them actually new all the number facts they were expected to know, but they were still doing very well in math class. The Institute of Education is now finding that "children succeed when they understand number concepts." Many people agree with the traditional thought that students need to know math facts before they are able to learn math principles, but with this new discovery, Cowen hopes to change this. He says, "We are not saying that fact knowledge is irrelevant, just that it develops more slowly than the national curriculum allows and that this does not jeopardize children's mathematics progress." The British Education Research Association is currently reviewing the study, and they may be able to come up with ways to helps struggling students.
It is important that studies like this are done frequently so educators can be up to date on how students are learning and displaying their knowledge. This way if the curriculum needs to be altered to benefit the children, those changes can be made. In an every growing and expanding world, children are absorbing facts from all kinds of sources. If we don't check in on their knowledge frequently, we aren’t doing our jobs of educating them efficiently. New methods to teaching are always being discovered and shared which is only helping our children. Global studies of education are important because children all over the world are being educated, and we can always share and learn new ways to present facts. It also helps us understand how students vary country to country.
No comments:
Post a Comment