A new study says that the use of "real-world" concrete examples doesn't help students learn math. Examples of concrete learning include story problems often given to math students, such as the classic one of two trains that leave different cities and head toward each other at different speeds. "The danger with teaching using this example is that many students only learn how to solve the problem with the trains," says study leader Jennifer Kaminski. "If students are later given a problem using the same mathematical principles, but about rising water levels instead of trains, that knowledge just doesn't seem to transfer." Students who learned the same concept through abstract examples were much more likely to be able to transfer that knowledge to different situations.
The problem may be that extraneous information about marbles or containers may divert attention from the real mathematics behind it all. "We really need to strip these concepts down to very symbolic representations such as variables and numbers. Then students are better prepared to apply those concepts to a variety of situations," Kaminski added.
Photo: Saarbrücken, HTW, Mathematics Workshop by flgr Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
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