They serve to engage students in the activity of mathematical and scientific inquiry. This provides meaning for engagement, ownership of the mathematics and science being learned, and empowerment through the generation of personal agency. Technologies engage students in more powerful scientific and mathematical activity in a way that could not be approached without them. But technologies are not by nature engaging.
To achieve this quality, they must be both functional teachers and students must be able to do with them something that they could not do without them , and they must increase communication and facilitate collaboration. Second, technologies have process functions. Some of the tools available for students should free up their working memory so that they are able to concentrate on problem formulation and modeling.
If a middle school student is bogged down with computing or graphing, the big picture of number systems, functions, families of curves, etc. Other tools must provide opportunities for exploration and discovery. In a mediated learning environment, some agent teacher, peer, tool must bridge the informal knowledge of the student and the formalism of mathematical and scientific structure. Still other tools must provide ways of representing mathematical and scientific models and linking representations to make the underlying commonalties transparent Lesh, A single technology rarely has all these process functions.
However, a careful selection of tools and software as described in this article can help achieve the necessary complementarity. Two other features of cognitive technologies are necessary for the development of coherent mathematical and scientific structures.
The first is what Roschelle called epistemic fidelity. This refers to the requirement that any teaching tool must reflect and develop understandings that are true to the field of study. Two caveats are in order. Second, the sophisticated knowledge of the expert cannot be handed to students. The path taken is as much a part of expert understanding as the final product. This is, in its basic form, the engagement of students in mathematical and scientific modeling.
The vision that guides the integration of technology, science, and mathematics is the engagement of students in activity that elicits the development of mathematical and scientific models with a coherent epistemological framework. As can be inferred from these principles, the kind of software and the way it is used are also crucial elements. Common features of the software used in this program are that it can be used by middle grade students; it is user friendly; it is designed for the kind of computers available in schools; and most important, students are in control, telling the computer what to do rather than the computer telling students what to do.
The kinds of software used range from general purpose tools to specialized programs for science and mathematics learning. The particular software used can change from year to year. Typically, four or five kinds of technology are used in depth, including computer-based software and graphing calculators. Although prospective teachers become quite expert in the use of the technology, the main goal is that their future students use technology to explore concepts and solve problems in science and mathematics.
In addition to the examples given in this article, the reader may want to see the examples given by Garofalo, Drier, Harper, Timmerman, and Shockey An important emphasis of the integrated approach in TEAMS is that technology is not the only tool to be used. Prospective teachers use it in conjunction with hands-on materials, such as geoboards and polyhedra, and activities such as paper folding.
Use of natural objects and outdoor activities are also an important part of integration. The use of Internet resources is an integral part of the use of technology for prospective middle school teachers. Its function is also to provide access to potential participants and interested colleagues.
It serves both for dissemination and recruiting of new candidates for the program. The program also provides experiences for the participants to learn design and management skills using the web. On one hand, it is a means of disseminating information about our courses and activities. Another function is to let participants learn by actually developing homepages and instructional units, using multimedia applications and authoring tools. The Internet also serves as a tool to facilitate the communication of faculty, mentor teachers, and students in the course of student teaching.
Of course, there are other Internet uses important for middle grades teachers that would be impossible to describe with detail in this article. These include content understanding activities, such as archives, news sources, databases, connections to others, resources for teaching such as video, software, and communications, and electronic portfolio development such as project reports, videos of classrooms, thematic units, internships, and interactive multimedia.
One tool that has been valuable is electronic mail. Students exchange ideas and experiences with their peers and with faculty, both individually and through a listserv. E-mail has provided a forum for them to vent concerns, share experiences, and express feelings and hopes. The interchange of ideas and experiences through the server is especially important during student teaching, due to the fact that students are placed in different schools and could not interact face to face.
At the same time, students get acquainted with important aspects of technology. Prospective teachers learn to use tools, doing the same kind of exploratory activities in which their own students in the middle grades could be engaged. An important aspect of mathematical discovery is to learn how to conjecture and provide convincing evidence.
This inductive approach to mathematics should be emphasized in the middle grades. One example given to TEAMS students is to join the midpoints of consecutive sides of an arbitrary quadrilateral. They can state their conjecture and then provide evidence to convince others about their results. New York: Longman. Vygotsky, L. Thought and language. Book Google Scholar. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Woods, D. Problem solving in practice.
What research says to the science teacher Vol 2 problem Solving pp. Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.
Reprints and Permissions. Briscoe, C. J Elem Sci Edu 8, 66—87 Download citation. Issue Date : September Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Abstract This study reports our understanding of the views on problem-solving developed by prospective elementary teachers as a result of experiencing problem centered learning in an integrated math-science methods course.
References American Association for the Advancement of Science. Google Scholar Andre, T. Google Scholar Champagne, A. Article Google Scholar Cuban, L. Google Scholar Funkhouse, C. Article Google Scholar Gallagher, J. Article Google Scholar Gonzales, N. Google Scholar Good, T. Google Scholar Harty, H. Google Scholar Martins, M.
Google Scholar National Research Council. Google Scholar Pizzini, E. Article Google Scholar Resnick, L. Google Scholar Romberg, T. Google Scholar Rutherford, J. Google Scholar Shoenfeld, A. Google Scholar Tobin K. Google Scholar Vygotsky, L. Google Scholar Woods, D. Google Scholar Download references. View author publications. Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions. It also makes students start to think about why things happen, giving them a practical approach to learning and using mathematics.
Another advantage to integrating math with other subjects is a rise in test scores. Some state tests are being designed to reflect an integrated curriculum. While traditional assessments determine what students know, the CAPT test was intended to determine what students can do with that knowledge. The objective of the test is for students to be able to apply what they have learned to other situations.
Another reason to consider the integration of curriculum is because it is the way people learn. Current brain research points out that the human brain looks for patterns and interconnections as its way of making sense of things. Unfortunately, in many schools students learn one subject in one classroom and then move on to the next classroom for the next subject. By delivering the curriculum in this format, subjects lack coherence and therefore students become disconnected and disengaged.
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