This article primarily talks about cognitive psychology (the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking") and psychology of mathematics education. In the article, the author states two reasons for the inability of Piaget's ideas to provide a platform to link cognitive psychology and mathematics education. The reasons were that Piaget was not interested in the effects of teaching on children's learning and that Piaget believed that intellectual development was due to logical thinking, which implied that mathematical learning cannot occur from a local context to a global context. The author goes on to argue that employing scientific research strategies may have "played an important role in blocking the advancement of mathematics education." Thus, the author recommends that researchers in mathematics education identify new concepts and terms that are absent in psychology for describing interactions between psychology and mathematics education.
It is interesting to note that research findings based on psychological (scientific) approach to mathematics education may not be generalizable. There could be a connection to Kilpatrick's scepticisms about research findings in mathematics education. That is, Kilpatrick seems to suggest that it is not surprising why the research outcomes are ineffective.
It is interesting to note that research findings based on psychological (scientific) approach to mathematics education may not be generalizable. There could be a connection to Kilpatrick's scepticisms about research findings in mathematics education. That is, Kilpatrick seems to suggest that it is not surprising why the research outcomes are ineffective.
In response to cognitive psychology in math education, I recall that four of us in this group took EDCP 553 last term and conducted task-based interviews with young children. I found it really interesting to study children's mathematical thinking from a metacognitive perspective and to see how psychological approaches were incorporated into math education. It is certainly true that the results I found from my interviews were not generalizable to the patterns of children's mathematical thinking in the general population. Even though I was not familiar with the related concepts of cognitive psychology involved in studying how my interviewee thought aloud mathematically at each interview, I was fully aware that my questioning, types of materials provided, and the interviewee's math background could influence her cognitive behavior in the math tasks she was engaged with. So, cognitive psychology plays an important part in the ways research is carried out in mathematics education.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting, as the idea "abcent in psychology [from] ... mathematics education" is somewhat opposite to Dick's idea that psychology sometimes plays an important role in learning math. What I think is that even though we may not "psychologically" teach math, we have to admit that it is possible that the true reason preventing a student to learn math is not about math but something else. Thus, it is possible that not only psychology but also socialogy and communication may influence the effect of teaching/learning math. A true example may be the indigineous people, whose ways of learning are strongly influenced by their culture. In this case, their students' achievement may not be examined properly under our current educational system.
ReplyDeleteIt is always fascinating to track the development of epistemological methods in academia; although qualitative methods are used for many different types of education research now, I imagine it would have been very difficult to use/justify these methods when the scientific method was the "norm" for conducting research. Granted, many aspects of the scientific method continue to be used, including in the structure of research publications (introduction, observations, analysis, conclusions). However, there is more room now for "other" methods of gathering information than there have been in the past.
ReplyDeleteThere is little doubt mathematics understanding is in some ways psychological. However, there may be too many variables to be able to conduct research in a "scientific" manner; learning depends on context as much as on the individual's ability to learn and process information. This (one would think) would allow more unique methods to be used for developing knowledge around mathematics education. I wonder if it is important to generalize mathematics education knowledge? As a practicing teacher, I am generally more interested in the implementation of mathematical knowledge/research in my classroom more than I am interested in how this same practice will be done elsewhere. It can certainly enrich my practice by understanding the different methods of implementation, but the other way around (how it has succeeded elsewhere, without knowing how it was implemented) would not be beneficial.