Teaching via Problem-Solving or Teacher-Centric Access: Teachers’ Views and Beliefs

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory study, which investigates teachers’ preferences about the implementation of teaching via discovery learning and problem-solving. This discovery way of teaching is compared to receptive learning and a teacher-centric access in mathematics lessons. As most teachers seem to choose the latter way of teaching, we want to get to know, what reasons teachers name for using or not using discovery methods. Therefore, semi-standardized interviews with five teachers were conducted, analysed, and interpreted. This sample encompasses two teachers who prefer a receptive way of teaching, one teacher who uses discovery learning a lot and another two teachers who use both methods. A comparison of two selected teachers reveals that even if teachers prefer a different way of teaching, they may mention the same concerns about discovery learning. They do, however, differ in the number of advantages of discovery learning they mention in the interview. Teaching time and students’ performance in mathematics are mentioned as important decision-making factors. As expected, the teacher who uses discovery learning mentions a lot more profits than his colleague.