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ABILITY TO APPLY MATHEMATICS AND HEARING IMPAIRED CHILDREN
J. Kane
Teaching mathematics is one of the more important tasks of education and upbringing of children with and without special needs. Teaching and learning mathematics is the base for solving and applying mathematical problems. Teaching and learning mathematics are complex processes which teachers and pupils assume to have a direct relationship, one to the other. Each pupil is an individual with his/her own unique personality. Pupils acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes at different times, at different rates and in different ways, mainly because their levels of readiness and ways of responding are different.
The teacher is in obligation to have in mind the following, during teaching and learning of mathematics: (a) The goals and objectives of mathematics should include the ways by which children seek to solve problems. (b) Children should be encouraged to agree or disagree among themselves on how to solve a problem, and to seek to resolve their differences using the data of the problem. (c) Activities should be constructed to enable higher levels of thinking to emerge. (d) The experiences of the children should be used as the mainspring of their motivation for doing and enjoying mathematics. (e) Problem solving should be a principal focus in developing the children’s mathematical abilities. (f) Children should be given opportunities to reflect and reorganize their ways of thinking.
The psychological processes (cognitive, affective, emotive) involved in modeling, in applying mathematics and in solving problems are critical to mathematics teaching and learning. Emphasis on problem solving modelling and applications demands an approach to teaching mathematics which fosters the development of such creativity and higher-level thinking skills in children. A broader conception of mathematics suggests that mathematical concepts and tools should no longer be viewed as instruments for solving carefully selected and structured problems but as ways of thinking about and organizing one’s experiences. Problem solving should no longer be viewed as an activity in which pupils engage after they have acquired certain mathematical concepts and skills. It should be viewed both as a means of acquiring new mathematical knowledge and as a process for applying what has been previously learned. The emphasis should be on pupils’ engaging in activities which lead to self-generated knowledge. This is the basis of constructivism. Advantages of constructive modes of teaching mathematics are: (a) in all instructional modes the pupils are involved in problem solving. (b) problem solving assist pupils in developing analytical and reasoning skills. (c) problem solving provides pupils with new and challenging tasks that force them to evaluate and modify their own thinking processes as new information becomes available. (d) problem solving encourages pupils to devise their own method of working problems (e) problem solving enhances understanding, which is a consequence of pupils’ engaging in investigations and explorations. In turn, understanding aids problem solving.
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Children acquire mathematical knowledge by constructing the knowledge within their minds. They do not internalize mathematical knowledge directly from the environment (from being taught by the teacher, from using certain materials). Using their past knowledge, children construct relations between objects, and test these relations. Therefore, the main feature of learning mathematics is the focus on children’s thinking and not on children writing correct answers. This is of key importance for teaching mathematics in schools for children with damaged hearing which is currently mostly based on writing correct answers. Because of this it is important for children to experience mathematics through various modes of representation, social settings and ways of communicating and reasoning. In the same time, for defectologists to correctly teach mathematics in class tuition of schools for children with damaged hearing, it is necessary for them to monitor the development of mathematics teaching in elementary schools, because only knowledge acquired and developed in this way will enable the teaching of mathematics in schools for children with damaged hearing to fulfill the tasks set in front of it.
References
1. Leslie S. Beatty, Richard Madden, Eric F. Gardner; Harcourt, Brace&World: Stanford Diagnostic Arithmetic Tests, New York, 1984.
2. Mousley K., Kelly R.R: Problem solving strategies for teaching mathematics to deaf students, American Annals of the deaf, 143. - No. 4, 1998, 325-337.
3.Ingram David: First language acquisition, Method, Description and Explatation. Cambridge, 1989.
4. Dejic, Mirko. metodika nastave matematike Uciteljski fakultet, Jagodina, 2000.
5. Vukovic, Veljko. Osnovi metodike nastave matematike, Uciteljski fakultet Jagodina, 1996.
6. Karic, J., Radovanovic, V, Grubac, J. Uporedna analiza usvojenosti sadrzaja nastave matematike kod dece ostecenog sluha od prvog do cetvrtog razreda osnovne skole, Beogradska defektoloska skola 3/2003.
7. Karic, J. Stavovi prema ukljucivanju dece sa posebnim potrebama u redovan sistem obrazovanja, Nastava i vaspitanje Bgd,1, 2004.
8. Karic, J. Citanje i resavanje matematickih zadataka izrazenih tekstom i brojem u skoli za decu ostecenog sluha, Nastava br. 4, Banja Luka, 2004.
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