Mathematics Classrooms in the Postmodern Era
Khara Nanda Neopaney
Every one in my school days used to speak with me that mathematics was a dry subject. Owing to its absolute in nature people believed that there is a royal road in mathematics, and consequently it is incorrigible. Obviously, one who had discarded this subject and put more interest in liberal arts would always suggest that it is a subject of intelligent and label this prevailing mathematics as “cold reason and hard control”( Taylor, 1996). Nevertheless, the existing mathematics curriculum too reflects that mathematics as silent; it is a centrally prepared document and questions upon whose knowledge counts.
Every individual in the classroom feels comfortable if a teacher could value his/her participation in the class. Our mathematical pedagogy must be socially justifiable so that every individual has the access to exercise his/her culture through acknowledging the multi-lingual languages. Moreover, our curriculum must keep rooms for recognizing the cultural artifacts and mentifacts. I perceive that there are multiple realities and students should have opportunities to make meanings of objects through their own construct. Perhaps, knowledge is socially constructed through shared meanings. “Do not forget your landscape is a popular Nepali adage used often to remind others about their background” (Luitel, 2003). More specifically, the adage is used to advise persons with an improved lifestyle resulting from formal education not to deviate from their cultural capital by which they are linked with their land. What does the metaphor of linking-with-their –land indicates? The question indicates that we need to explore the notion of contextualization mathematics through both our experiential and theoretical landscape.
The postmodern curriculum of mathematics emphasized children’s engagement in personally meaningful mathematical activity, children’s explanation and justification of personal solution methods, and children’s collaborative work that focuses on challenging their classmates. In such type of classroom setting a teacher must be able to encourage students to construct the mathematical meanings rather than transmitting the readymade solutions. In other words, a teacher must be able to read the students in detail. Thus Crawford, (nd), maintained that “To understand another’s speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words- we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough-we must know its motivation” (Vygotsky, 1962, p.51). Important teachers, roles in this type of classroom include establishing and guiding the development of these social norms, facilitating the discourse among students while they engage in collaborative problem solving, and supporting children’s developing understanding of adequate mathematical explanations. Establishing classroom norms that support children’s development of conceptual understanding of mathematics requires teacher knowledge about mathematics teaching and children’s mathematical thinking. The adequate manipulative and the other related technology would certainly enhance the learning abilities of the students in mathematics. The technology fits within current classroom practice but makes it easier for teachers to engage in such practices as addressing students’ prior knowledge, targeting conceptual understanding, motivating and engaging all students, facilitating group discussion, and questioning students and providing frequent feedback. Teaching for a whole academic session and taking a closed examination at the end would bring no fruitful assessment of students’ performance. The ongoing evaluation by maintaining the portfolio of each student is the main asset of postmodern assessment of students.
Last but not the least; the mathematics curriculum should be holistic, kaleidoscopic and hermeneutic in nature. The pedagogy is eclectic. The assessment should go hand in hand with the teaching-learning process. The phenomenology should be substantially from post-modern stand-point.
References
Luitel, B.C (2003). Narrative Exploration of Nepali Mathematics Curriculum landscape: An epic journey for the year 2001-2003. Curtin University: South Australia.
Taylor, P.C (1996). Mythmaking and Myth breaking in the mathematics classroom: Educational studies in mathematics.31 (1, 2), p, 151-173
Crawford, K (nd.).The context of cognition: The Challenge of technology (p.51).
