Can students do better? A cognitive experiment in the math class
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1
University of Ploiesti, Faculty of Letters and Science, Romania
How does the active brain work when doing mathematics? Even if we do not have yet the tools to see into the psychical processes at the speed they take place in real time, the fMRI studies bring helpful information. Among these: learning is distributed in the brain, the differences between novices and experts are reflected in different activations of the cortex areas, trained areas become less activated when doing a specific task, automaticity of some processes can be obtained through practice. However, we cannot extrapolate the findings on the brain in the case of the school as such. If we do so, we run the risk of inferring more than it is proved. Nevertheless, when a cognitive perspective is used as an interface, education can benefit of more secured steps ahead. An experimental study concerning dynamic structural learning (DSL) in mathematics has been applied in several schools tracking cohorts of children from grade 1 to 4 (232 children in total). Other partial experiments have been made with 30 students from the 8th grade (13-14 years old). The DSL-based teaching engenders three components that interact in order to build dynamic structures of thinking in students: systematic training, focused on building specific skills; randomized training, focused on developing variability across skills; and structured training, aiming at assimilating the invariants within a variable learning environment. The DSL application in the classroom has led to an over-learning phenomenon that transformed the vast majority of students’ results in an expert-type acquisition. The poster will present some concrete examples of DSL, and will also explain the dynamic infrastructure of mind – a model of an inborn system of operational clusters which activate mechanisms that make possible the specialization-modularization of the cognitive system.
Conference:
EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education, Zurich, Switzerland, 3 Jun - 5 Jun, 2010.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Arithmetic and higher-order mathematics
Citation:
Singer
FM
(2010). Can students do better? A cognitive experiment in the math class.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.11.00077
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Received:
01 Jun 2010;
Published Online:
01 Jun 2010.
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Correspondence:
Florence M Singer, University of Ploiesti, Faculty of Letters and Science, Bucharest, Romania, mikisinger@gmail.com