Why choose maths?!

I guess I chose this elective as I enjoyed mathematics all through primary school and always felt particularly confident with the subject when it came to testing. My positive attitude towards maths remained with me until I decided to sit Mathematics at higher level. In one sense, my attitude changed simply because I did not like the teaching style my teacher used, I found she
took any enjoyment we had previously developed away from us. Another difficulty with Higher Maths was having two teachers who split our maths time between them. This resulted in us learning two completely separate topics at the same time which at such a high level was very confusing.

On reflection, I struggled to see the relevance of what we were learning. I constantly thought to myself when am I ever going to need this information again? In relation to Liping Ma (2010) I could consider myself as not having a profound understanding of mathematics as I struggled to see the connectedness between the two topics we were learning at the time. I also found it confusing when one teacher would explain something in one way and the other would
introduce a completely different strategy, I found that I liked having one way of approaching something and achieving a set answer. Reflecting back on this, I also lacked Liping Ma’s multiple perspectives as I was unable approach problems in multiple ways.

Although I put in a lot of hard work and still managed to achieve an A at higher, I still feel like the problems I faced in my last academic year of maths left me slightly anxious at the thought of teaching mathematics to the upper years. I know the importance of showing positive attitudes towards a subject as a teacher’s attitude highly effects how pupils view a subject’s importance. Liping Ma (2010) also discusses the theory that a teacher with a profound understanding of mathematics has a greater impact on students as to produce effective learning you yourself must have a specialist knowledge of the subject. This highlighted to me the great importance it is for me to deepen and broaden my own understanding of mathematics so that in future I can answer question and explain all curricular areas clearly and with confidence.

I chose Discovering Mathematics to re-discover my own enjoyment of maths and develop my understanding to improve my future teaching.

How did I find Discovering Maths?

I must admit I left multiple lectures feeling totally confused but in the best way possible. There were multiple lectures where I sat thinking ‘WOW, I did not know that’ and some where I had no idea what was going on. Through additional reading and blogging I feel like I have developed my understanding in the areas where I was slightly more puzzled. I honestly had no idea how much maths surrounded us. It was obvious to me that maths was all around us, but I had no idea of the degree to which we use maths in our everyday lives.

I particularly enjoyed how this module was organised. By bringing in guest speakers we were really getting a deep insight into how maths is used in different sectors. I found the lecture on data and statistics in health and medicine very eye-opening. One thing I took away from this lecture is to stop taking information as the truth, so many graphs have flaws that we seem to never question. Maths is key to improving the health of our nation and our ability to make measurements, predictions and calculations all contribute to our healthcare.

My favourite lecture was the input on logistics and supply chains. This was a great example of how to make maths fun and active, although it did bring out a competitive side in some of us! The aim of this lecture was to make predictions and calculate the probability or risk of an item on our list being sold. Using the probability that the item would sell we had to decide how much of the product to buy, taking into account the time of year, and whether we had perishable items etc. This highlighted to me that maths is apparent even in supermarkets and there are people dedicated to predicting how much of an item will sell and when these items will sell best. This is done by using previous data, forming graphs and using this to make accurate predications. (The lady in the video clip shown takes into account a bank holiday which she believes will influence sales.)

This module has also opened my eyes to the history of maths. I have never really thought about where maths evolved from or how we got to the stage where we are. I now know that our base system is based upon the fact we have 10 fingers (therefore it makes perfect sense to use them to help us count). There is a huge amount of history in maths that I was blind to before, I have learnt about the Babylonian base systems and the Ishango bone which shows that maths is over 20,000 years old! I have also discovered that there is maths in both music and art which I had never ever considered.

I can truly say that this module has brought back my enjoyment in maths. The enthusiasm and knowledge our lecturers (particularly Richard) showed throughout the module has modeled to us the attitudes we should have in the classroom. The positivity from lecturers definitely affected my feelings towards the module in the best way.

How will this impact me in the future?

Although this course has not made me a mathematician, it has made maths and the thought of teaching maths a lot less daunting for me. It has definitely shown me multiple fun ways to introduce and develop maths in the classroom and the importance of relating the maths we learn to real life situations. I hope to continue to improve my understanding of maths in future and foster the enthusiasm that our lecturers displayed to create a positive learning environment in my own classroom!