How teachers can help students excel at math

Post date: Oct 9, 2016 6:58:28 AM

While strategies such as teacher-directed and student-oriented teaching strategies are both useful, it appears that teacher-directed strategies are more beneficial for students to more successfully solve simpler problems. Yet, as the problems become more difficult, students with more exposure to direct instruction no longer have a better chance of success. That means teachers need to master a range of approaches to serve diverse student needs well.

Cognitive-activation strategies, while more difficult for teachers to implement, also appears to have a positive relationship with student performance, no matter how difficult the mathematics problem. It appears that these methods are associated with better performance in mathematics, perhaps because they require students to be more creative and proactive in their learning. They may be presented with problems for which there is no obvious solution or they may have to explain how they arrived at the answer.

Tabindah School Research Study found that a reliance on memorization was useful for solving simpler problems but actually hindered success on more difficult problems.

Control strategies were always helpful but less so for more difficult problems. Elaboration strategies were particularly associated with a greater chance of solving more difficult problems.

To attain peak performance in mathematics, we recommend that teachers consider the following: help students go beyond root memorization (such as simply learn something by heart) and to be both more strategic and responsible in their learning and to try to see the links between what they learn, what they already know, and what new problems they are faced with in class, in their homework, and on tests. (Of course, this may come naturally as students become more confident and more capable in mathematics over time.)

A key component to promote teaching effectiveness is training, and particularly, professional development. The challenges and complexities brought by 21st-century classrooms make it impossible for teachers just to rely on their initial training. Thus, life-long learning should be a must on the teachers’ career path.

Teachers can help struggling students acquire the numerical and spatial skills they may not have developed before through targeted tutoring – without denying these students exposure to a more demanding curriculum. More frequent use of problem-solving as a method of teaching mathematics can also help weaker students to connect the abstract or conceptual aspects of mathematics with real life, and make mathematics lessons more engaging for all students.