Teaching mathematics with a focus on deep understanding and anchoring it to meaningful learning

carlos84 (72)in Popular STEM • 2 months ago

Teaching is an art, anyone can teach, but not everyone will do it with passion and effectively, that is why when teaching mathematics we must seek the best teaching strategies, as it is a science of knowledge that is quite complex for many students of all educational levels.

When teaching mathematics, it is essential to consider all possible factors that make learning by students can be effective and meaningful, this means that in mathematics is not only teach to teach, it is necessary that the student can learn, and that what he learns can be applied in other branches and at all levels, that is where we can qualify our effectiveness as teachers.

The learning in mathematics obtained by the students must be significant, that is to say that it must be sustainable, that such learning lasts over time, that the learning must be of a critical nature, it means then that it can stimulate debate and reflection on certain concepts that invite to think about other theories and mathematical demonstrations.

Another aspect to consider is that we as teachers in mathematics need to know the previous knowledge that the student has, with this we can know what strategy to apply to teach the new proposed topics, it is something like the doctor when he is going to formulate a patient, to be able to know what medicine to place must know the patient's medical history. This is especially useful if the teaching that we are going to impart is of individualized form, this is possible if we have few students, and it takes an advantage, and it is that the student will feel the stimulus to learn because his teaching is being closer.

We must stimulate the student to generate their own learning style, nowadays technology is quite advanced compared to how we learned in the past, today we have access to books that can be downloaded on the web, there are educational games, in short there are a variety of supplements with what students can help to supplement their learning.

Skipping a little of the way in which the student can learn, it is necessary that as teachers we can focus on the importance of understanding and reasoning in mathematics, since we must break with the paradigm that mathematics is learned by memorizing formulas and recording in our mind rules memoristically.

As teachers we can simplify in the student the idea that he has to memorize procedures, for this we must simply inspire the ability to deep understanding of many mathematical concepts that are not difficult to learn as long as they are taught with a focus on understanding and not memorization.

For example, it is a very different thing to teach a student the formula of the distance between two points to calculate the distance of a line segment, which is:

To be able to explain the demonstration of why the distance between two points is calculated with that formula, for it must be raised any two points in the Cartesian plane with their respective coordinates, in which the distance of the line segment is the hypotenuse of the right triangle, and (y2-y1) ; (x2-x1) are the legs of the right triangle, therefore when we apply the Pythagorean theorem is:

Demonstrations in mathematics make teaching mature in the teacher and learning in the student, since the possibility of increasing understanding over memorization is constantly open.

If you want to explore the learning of demonstrations such as the distance of a line segment given the coordinates of each point, I recommend the following bibliographic reference: