Teaching mathematics to non-mathematicians: Examples from a trial of Mathematical Modelling activities in a Year 1 Biology course

DidMat-seminar with Elena Nardi, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, UK

Abstract

This seminar will be based on an updated version of the invited lecture I gave at ICME13 on 27 July 2016 and a paper authored jointly with Olov Viirman to be presented at CERME10 in February 2017.

In this seminar I will draw on a study of university lecturers’ perspectives and practices with regard to teaching mathematics to non-mathematics specialists. I will focus particularly on a part of the study that concerns the trial of Mathematical Modelling (MM) activities in the context of a course for Y1 Biology students. Theoretically and methodologically the study takes cue from previous studies of university mathematicians’ pedagogical and epistemological perspectives and zooms in on issues that are particularly pertinent to the teaching of mathematics to non-specialists, such as: the double discontinuity between school, university and workplace mathematics; the challenges of teaching mathematical modelling at school and university levels; affect; distance from last time mathematics was studied; and, embeddedness of mathematics into other disciplines. In the seminar I discuss the non-deficit, non-prescriptive, context-specific, example-centred and mathematically-focused research design of the study which I, and my collaborators, deploy as a vehicle for the rapprochement of diverse, and often diverging, communities in university mathematics. I will include discourse analysis – particularly, Sfard’s (2008) commognitive framework – data samples from the study and I will invite participants to consider some of the MM activities the study deploys.

References

Nardi, E. (2016). Teaching mathematics to non-mathematicians: what can we learn from research on teaching mathematicians? 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME13, TSG2). Hamburg, Germany.

Sfard, A. (2008). Thinking as communicating. Human development, the growth of discourse, and mathematizing. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Viirman, O. & Nardi, E. (2017, in press). From ritual to exploration: The evolution of Biology students’ mathematical discourse through Mathematical Modelling activities. In tbc (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Conference of European Researchers in Mathematics Education (pp. tbc-tbc). Dublin City University: Ireland.

Elena Nardi is professor of mathematics education at the University of East Anglia, UK.