Abstract
This chapter deals with senior secondary school practices, which for most systems means the teaching of students aged between 15 and 18 years. This sector of mathematics education has come under increased scrutiny as more students are staying on after their junior secondary school time and as access to higher education has developed dramatically over the past decade. Rather than attempting to survey world-wide practices, an impossible task in itself, the authors have chosen to focus on four topics with which to analyse the trends, developments, and issues.
In the first ‘problem-solving’, they describe the growing arguments in favour of including more problem-solving activities at this level of schooling, and strategies for organising such activities in the class. They also describe a French interpretation of mathematics teaching known as ‘situations-problèmes’ and discuss its organisation and practice by examples. In the second part, ‘the evolution of mathematics teaching objectives and practices’ the authors discuss the trend towards greater ‘realism’ in the mathematics curricula, and new teaching approaches such as group-work.
The third section analyses the profound influence of ‘new tools for calculating and representing functions’. It is certainly arguable that graphic and scientific calculators, and computers are having their greatest effect at this level of schooling. In the fourth section the authors discuss ’the contribution of epistemology and the history of mathematics’. They present several examples of a historical approach to mathematics teaching through using ancient, classic, problems, and through using history as a source of ideas for justifying topics in the curriculum. They also point to the use of historical situations to enable the teacher to understand better the reasons for their student’s difficulties in learning certain topics.
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Grugnetti, L., Jaquet, F. (1996). Senior Secondary School Practices. In: Bishop, A.J., Clements, K., Keitel, C., Kilpatrick, J., Laborde, C. (eds) International Handbook of Mathematics Education. Kluwer International Handbooks of Education, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1465-0_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1465-0_17
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