0000000000744193
AUTHOR
Benedetto Di Paola
HIERARCHICAL AND NON-HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING METHODS TO ANALYSE AN OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONNAIRE ON ALGEBRAIC THINKING
In recent years, some papers have tried to develop detailed models of the reasoning competences of the student populations tested, or to subdivide a sample of students into intellectually similar subgroups, by using quantitative or qualitative analysis methods. It is worth noting that research papers using quantitative analysis methods to study student responses to open-ended questionnaire can be found in Science and Physics education (Springuel et al., 2007), but the same cannot be said for research in Mathematics education. In this paper we focus on the application of hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods referred to dendrograms and k-means approaches (Everitt, et al., 2011…
An Inquiry-Based Approach to a Pedagogical Laboratory for Primary School Teacher Education
In questo articolo vengono presentati e di- scussi alcuni risultati relativi alla sperimen- tazione di due esperienze di didattica laboratoriale della fisica, una basata su me- todi di indagine scientifica e l’altra su meto- dologie didattiche più “tradizionali”, svolte durante l’A.A. 2014-15 con studenti del CdL in Scienze della Formazione Primaria del- l’Università di Palermo. I dati, analizzati tra- mite metodi quantitativi, sono stati ricavati dalla somministrazione prima, durante e do- po le attività laboratoriali, di un questionario finalizzato a comprendere gli stili di insegna- mento preferiti dagli studenti, la motivazio- ne di questi all’apprendimento/insegna- mento delle scienze …
Can we learn from “outside”? A dialogue with a Chinese teacher: the “two basics” as a meaningful approach to mathematics teaching
Since many years Confucian heritage students (Chinese ones in particular), acquire leading positions in numerous international scientific programmes and display excellent performance in international assessments as PISA or TIMMS (OECD, 2013). To understand the “reasons” of this excellence we tried to explore some aspects of the cultural background of teaching practices and classroom life in those countries. With this aim a Chinese teacher was interviewed; we asked him about principles, values and beliefs and their impact on teaching/learning Math in classroom. The paper discusses what emerged from this dialogue and in particular from the idea of the “Two Basics” mathematics teaching approac…