EDGS 646 Index

For detailed course information, please choose from the following selection:

1. Course Schedule
2. Aims
3. Texts and readings
4. Classroom Access
5. Criteria for Assessment of Assignments
6. About the Assignments
7. Assignment 1
8. Assignment 2
9. Assignment 3
10. Getting to know the literature
11. Class list

You may also download this information in Microsoft Word format if you wish to read and print it at your leisure.

Course Outline (Macintosh)

Course Outline (Windows)

---

Welcome to EDGS 646 Teaching Mathematics Through a Problem-posing and Problem-solving Approach.

I hope that you will find the subject both stimulating and rewarding. This unit represents a new and innovative approach to post-graduate education, taking advantage of newly available technology to provide what we believe will be a most effective and efficient educational experience. In particular, it is intended that the course materials will be utilised in an interactive and paper-free form, an experience which, to the best of our knowledge, is not available at present from any other Australian tertiary institution.

EDGS 646 Staff, 1996

Lecturers-in-charge:

Ken Clements	Stephen Arnold
Work: (049) 217 081	Work: (049) 216 728
Fax: (049) 216 895	Fax: (049) 216 895
e-mail: EDMAC@cc.newcastle.edu.au	e-mail: crsma@cc.newcastle.edu.au

It is impossible to cover all aspects of teaching mathematics through a problem-posing and problem-solving approach in a one-semester subject, so please don't expect this subject to provide an exhaustive account of everything associated with the subject.

As for all graduate mathematics education subjects offered by the University of Newcastle, students will be collaboratively involved in participatory research investigations. Such collaboration is most valuable when it is informed by previous action and by knowledge of the pertinent literatures. Thus, in this subject it is our aim to involve you so that you will become acquainted with ideas that underpin the problem-solving literature. Many of these ideas are summarised in Clements, M. A., & Ellerton, N. F. (1991), Polya, Krutetskii and the Restaurant Problem. Geelong: Deakin University.

EDGS 646 definitely involves both practical and theoretical considerations. In particular, it is important for students to become problem posers and problem solvers themselves: to be able to create an interesting problem situation which more or less demands a solution; to feel the frustration of not knowing how to start to solve a mathematics problem which confronts them, but nevertheless to want to solve it; and, having attempted to nut out strategies for solving a problem, then to talk about the problem to others and to find out that they are approaching it in totally different ways. We all need to be able to tackle problems in ways that are not suggested by the problem statement; to experience the joy of reaching solutions; and to reflect back on what we thought and what we did, and how this might inform our teaching.

From the outset, note that our emphasis is not on your always getting a "correct" answer. For example, you could still achieve an HD for Assignment 1, even if you don't develop a "correct" solution to the problem that you tackle.

Courses | Software | Readings | Links | Comments?

© 1996: The University of Newcastle: Faculty of Education

---