Susana Carreira, Nélia Amado

Physical artefacts and simulation for understanding Atherosclerosis: STEM education and mathematics learning in a vocational school

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

FCT, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal; UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Interest in STEM education has increased worldwide, along with the concern for developing integrated approaches to STEM education. Some researchers have drawn attention to the role of mathematics in STEM education, in arguing that a reciprocal relationship between mathematics and the other STEM disciplines is crucial to the understanding of ideas and concepts of those disciplines (English, 2016; Maass et al., 2019).

In line with the above assumptions, our research project focuses on the secondary education of students (aged 16-18) in a health assistant course in vocational education. A STEM education experience, covering a total of 40 hours, was developed in mathematics classes, on the topic of linear and quadratic functions. The STEM tasks were designed by considering the vocational context of healthcare. All proposed tasks presented real problems on basic health issues and involved simulations using physical materials.

The study addresses the research question: what are the relations established between mathematical notions and health concepts in tasks involving experimentation with physical materials?

Andrew Kercher, Anna Marie Bergman, Rina Zazkis

Star polygons: scripting tasks as a tool for recording mathematical investigations

Contact Author: Andrew Kercher (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Research indicates that investigating phenomena, rather than reproducing facts, should be a core experience in the education of prospective mathematics teachers (e.g., Da Ponte, 2007). But despite its centrality to quality teacher education, it is still unclear how best to analyze the effects of investigative tasks on teachers’ mathematical understanding and beliefs. In this study, we demonstrate the potential of scripting tasks (e.g., Zazkis & Zazkis, 2014) as one avenue for capturing mathematical progress during an investigation.