Values in mathematics and science education: researchers' and teachers' views on the similarities and differences (original) (raw)
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This article looks back and also looks forward at the values aspect of school mathematics teaching and learning. Looking back, it draws on existing academic knowledge to explain why the values construct has been regarded in recent writings as a conative variable, that is, associated with willingness and motivation. The discussion highlights the tripartite model of the human mind which was first conceptualised in the eighteenth century, emphasising the intertwined and mutually enabling processes of cognition, affect, and conation. The article also discusses what we already know about the nature of values, which suggests that values are both consistent and malleable. The trend in mathematics educational research into values over the last three decades or so is outlined. These allow for an updated definition of values in mathematics education to be offered in this article. Considering the categories of values that might be found in mathematics classrooms, an argument is also made for more attention to be paid to general educational values. After all, the potential of the values construct in mathematics education research extends beyond student understanding of and performance in mathematics, to realising an ethical mathematics education which is important for thriveability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Looking ahead, then, this article outlines a 4-step values development approach for implementation in the classroom, involving Justifying, Essaying, Declaring, and Identifying. With an acronym of JEDI, this novel approach has been informed by the theories of 'saying is believing', self-persuasion, insufficient justification, and abstract construals.
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Exploring Issues About Values in Mathematics Education
ECNU Review of Education, 2021
This commentary article is intended to provide a broad yet brief look at research and issues about values and valuing in mathematics education from a broad view about related issues. The articles in the special issue provided new findings, insights, and directions in research on values and valuing in mathematics education. n the future, more attention should be paid to the issues concerning values as a construct from a social-cultural perspective, and more studies addressing enacted values, using more observational data, and with large scale and long duration are needed.
Values are the personal convictions which one finds important. Three different aspects which are associated with mathematics education differently are identified, namely, values through mathematics education, values of mathematics education, and values for mathematics. These are paired with Bishop's (1996) conceptions of general educational, mathematical, and mathematics educational values respectively. This article provides examples of what these values might look like in different classroom scenarios, and how values as a volitional construct scaffolds cognitive and affective developments in mathematics learning. Implications for teachers include the need to assess validly what students value, and the need to better understand how teachers practise values alignment within their own classrooms. In so doing, appropriate valuing by teachers and their students can serve its purpose of fostering mathematical understanding and/or performance.
Values in the mathematics classroom
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2019
Values, moral values and democratic values are attracting the attention of education researchers in general and mathematics education researchers in particular. Little research has studied pre-service teachers' perceptions of values in the classroom, their perceptions of the relationship between the different variables of values in the classroom, as well as their relationship with the democratic society. The present research attempts to do so. Twenty-two graduate pre-service teachers who participated in 'New trends in mathematics education' course discussed how to cultivated values in the mathematics classroom. Moreover, they answered survey questions related to the cultivation of values in this classroom. We used a combination of deductive and inductive content analysis to characterize the pre-service teachers' texts. The research results indicate that the pre-service teachers perceived values as encouraging students' activity in the mathematics classroom. In addition, the pre-service teachers perceived values as encouraging specific categories of values needed as skills for the citizen in a democratic society, as creativity, critical thinking and metacognition.
Values in the Mathematics Classroom: Supporting Cognitive and Affective Pedagogical Ideas
Pedagogical Research, 2016
Values are the personal convictions which one finds important. Three different aspects which are associated with mathematics education differently are identified, namely, values through mathematics education, values of mathematics education, and values for mathematics. These are paired with Bishop's (1996) conceptions of general educational, mathematical, and mathematics educational values respectively. This article provides examples of what these values might look like in different classroom scenarios, and how values as a volitional construct scaffolds cognitive and affective developments in mathematics learning. Implications for teachers include the need to assess validly what students value, and the need to better understand how teachers practise values alignment within their own classrooms. In so doing, appropriate valuing by teachers and their students can serve its purpose of fostering mathematical understanding and/or performance.
Values in Mathematics Education: What is Planned and What is Espoused?
1997
This paper seeks to explore values that are explicitly and implicitly documented in the Malaysian school mathematics curriculum and to compare them with mathematics teachers' perceptions of what values are appropriate to be taught through mathematics. The study finds that what is planned only partially matches what is espoused by the teachers in the sample.