Interim Report on Project Maths
The Main Quadrangle, UCC
The Main Quadrangle, UCC
There is currently underway a revolutionary alteration in the content and teaching approach of Mathematics for Junior and Leaving Certificates named Project Maths.
This is being introduced piecemeal from 2008 to 2016 and there was a similar radical alteration in Mathematics for primary school, completed over ten years ago. The content of Project Maths is organized in five strands, Strand 1: Probability and Statistics, Strand 2: Geometry and Trigonometry, Strand 3: Numbers, Strand 4: Algebra,Strand5: Functions. To date Strands 1 and 2 have been introduced to some classes in all schools, with examinations of the new material combined with examinations on the pre-existing material during a transitional period. A considerable amount of teaching material has been produced for these two strands. TheSchoolofMathematical Sciences, UCC, has just published Interim Report on Project Maths. It runs to 64 pages and necessarily deals mainly with Strands 1 and 2.
The most significant feature of the new curriculum is an overwhelming devotion to what is referred to technically as context-based mathematics which is the solution of practical problems in the real world. Regrettably, from 1973 on, the amount of arithmetic was greatly reduced for the Intermediate/Junior and Leaving Certificates and in fact it could be safely avoided because of the choice of questions. That topic dealt totally with practical real-world problems over a wide range of fields. The Interim Report welcomes this feature of Project Maths but the authors are uneasy about the very large claims made publicly for it. It has been impelled to a large extent by the type of testing used in the international examination conducted byPISAat three-year intervals; this testing body has been organized by OECD. But there seems to be no critical appraisal in public about the merits of PISA and Irish students no longer seem to be entered for another international examining body TIMSS. The most significant feature of the radical teaching approach is that it is of constructivist type. The main drift of this is that learners construct their own knowledge and this is best done by discovery for themselves under the guidance of a teacher. This has been introduced throughout the Mathematics in primary schools in this country and is intended to apply up to and including teaching for Leaving Certificate. Both of these features have been very controversial internationally and colloquially the term THE MATH WARS which has been widespread in theUSAsince about 1990 has concerned these very aspects.
The Interim Report comments in detail on many aspects of the syllabuses, the teaching material and the examinations, and generally urges caution. It comments negatively on the rush to implementation, the drip-feed in the production of material, the huge burden being placed on the teachers and it draws attention of the need to involve mathematicians as well as those in mathematics education in the design of courses needed to be provided for the upskilling of teachers.
Copies of the Interim Report can be downloaded in pdf format from the internet site: http://www.ucc.ie/en/euclid/projectmaths/.