Specific Learning Difficulties and Peer Support     

Bob Carabine  Roberta Downton 《Educational Psychology in Practice》2000,16(4):487-494

This article describes a project aimed at supporting secondary-school pupils with specific learning difficulties, using a peer support approach. Feedback obtained from the school's special educational needs co-ordinator and from the pupils themselves indicated some degree of success for the project in terms of developments in the pupils' response to learning and in their self-perceptions. The involvement of older pupils as contributors to the group is identified as one factor in the success of the project. The project format and the content of the group sessions are described in sufficient detail to enable colleagues to run similar groups should they wish.  相似文献   

Posing complex problems requiring multiplicative thinking prompts students to use sophisticated strategies and build mathematical connections     

Ann Downton  Peter Sullivan 《Educational Studies in Mathematics》2017,95(3):303-328

While the general planning advice offered to mathematics teachers seems to be to start with simple examples and build complexity progressively, the research reported in this article is a contribution to the body of literature that argues the reverse. That is, posing of appropriately complex tasks may actually prompt the use of more sophisticated strategies. Results are presented from a detailed study of young children working on tasks that prompt multiplicative thinking. It was found that the tasks involving more complex number triples prompted the use of more sophisticated multiplicative thinking.  相似文献   

Insights into Students’ Geometric Reasoning Relating to Prisms     

Downton  Ann  Livy  Sharyn 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2022,20(7):1543-1571

Whilst spatial reasoning skills have been found to predict mathematical achievement, little is known about how primary (elementary) students’ conceptual understanding of three-dimensional objects develops. In this article, we report a qualitative study and the impact of rich learning experiences on 48 Years 3–6 students’ geometric reasoning relating to prisms. A one-to-one task-based interview, refined by the researchers, was used to assess student learning. Coding and data analysis were informed by our previous research. The findings reveal noticeable shifts in students’ knowledge of and reasoning about prisms, their ability to construct and describe prisms with geometric language, and their visualisation and spatial structuring skills. The implications of these findings highlight the importance of teachers’ choice of tasks that require students to compose and decompose three-dimensional (3D) objects; compare 3D objects through physical and mental transformations; take different perspectives; and visualise and reason geometrically.

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