Rugosidad y perfil longitudinal

While context-based problem-solving tasks had been used to illustrate current approaches to teaching and learning in mathematics and provide parents an opportunity to gain an understanding of new strategies, a further aim was that the familiar contexts would prompt and support parents to see opportunities in their everyday activities for mathematical conversations with their children. ‘Maths in my week’ and a group Facebook page were then provided as opportunities for families to share these conversations and encourage each other. They also provided weekly evidence regarding the

56 degree to which parents were able to identify and make use of the opportunities in their everyday activities.

4.7.1 ‘Maths in my week’

Many parents in pre-workshop interviews described activities that they were engaging in to support their child’s mathematics learning including, playing card games, monopoly, understanding money through shopping and having bank accounts. A review of research literature highlighted the importance of giving value to the everyday experiences of families, and promoting these as opportunities to engage in mathematics. It was important then to expand these initial ideas to include a wider range of contexts and the types of mathematics being discussed. In supporting and developing parental awareness of opportunities for mathematics through everyday activities, the first two workshops ‘Maths in my week’ space provided models of some of my everyday activities and facilitated group discussions for families to collectively brainstorm what mathematics they thought might be represented in the photographs.

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Figure 4.6: Maths in my week - Workshop 2

Families (particularly students) were easily able to make a mathematics connection from the photos and on large sheets of paper wrote down a range of possible mathematics questions (e.g., six pairs of shoes are left at the front door, how many shoes are there altogether? What fraction of the shoes are pink? What fraction of the shoes have laces? If there are four rows of four cookies waiting to be baked, how many cookies are there altogether?).

The weekly opportunity for families to feedback and report on where they had noticed mathematics occurring in their daily activities and their deliberate engagement in sustained mathematics conversation did not appear initially to be occurring to the degree which I had hoped. However, the summaries of the ‘Maths in my week’ conversations do indicate that families were becoming more aware of the mathematics opportunities in their everyday lives. The following excerpts, taken from researcher weekly reflections, are evidence of parents identifying and engaging in everyday opportunities for mathematics conversation with their children throughout the workshops:

The two families that I spoke to were quite contrasting, one of the Mums said that she was definitely seeing lot of maths happening in her life particularly with baking, but it was usually when the kids were at school, so she didn’t feel she had been able to make many connections for her kids, although she had been getting her daughter to work out how long her and her sisters could play at the playground if they had to be home by a certain time. The other Mum said that she had been talking to her daughter lots when she gets home from work about balancing the tills, and how she has to count up all the 10, 20, 50 dollar notes and has been asking her daughter how much will I have if there are e.g. 14x50

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Jarred and his Mum had been at the FIFA U20 world cup and had had a discussion about how many adults and children might have been in the stadium, they knew that there were 8585 people there. What if half were children? What if 1 third were children how many children and adults would that be? They had also discussed how much money would have been collected through ticket sales. The Evans family had worked out what fraction of the goals Grace had scored at her netball game over the weekend (this was great as it demonstrated use of a question that had been modelled last week), Ruby had finished reading a book and had worked out that she was averaging 17 pages per reading session.

[W4R]

The Greens’ had discussed a headlining article that had appeared in a local paper about a local girl who had designed the “kindling cracker” and how much money she the designer would make if she sold x number of devices. Bradley, their son, said that he had been checking the speedo in the car and noting the distances travelled – this was a question

from last week’s workshop. [W5R]

Table 4.2 shows the increasing number of contexts in which parents and children were able to make mathematical connections across workshops three, four and five, and the frequency of which each context was referred to in the reflections.

Table 4.2: Parent References to Everyday Activities

Everyday Activities

Workshop Three Workshop Four Workshop Five Food (6)

Money (7) Time (5) Sport (1) Reading (1)

(number of references to)

Food (3) Money (5) Time (2) Sport (8) Reading (2) Computer Games (2) Construction (1) Food (6) Money (4) Time (3) Sport (3) Reading (1) My family (1) Quiz Scores (1) News (1) Travelling (1)

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4.7.2 Sharing opportunities for mathematics via Face book

At the beginning of the workshop series, families were encouraged to join the workshop Facebook page. This had been set up with the intention of providing a further forum for families to share the opportunities they might have discovered for mathematical conversations in their everyday activities and provide a support network of ideas between families. It was assumed that with the proliferation of Facebook usage as demonstrated on our school Facebook site that families would be keen to share their experiences in this forum. However, very few families made use of this facility. While nine of the seventeen families joined the page, only five made any contributions. Three people made one contribution, one made two contributions and the fifth person made five contributions. This was unexpected in light of the widespread use of social media for commenting and engaging with issues. It may be that families didn’t see their mathematics as being able to be easily represented visually.

4.8 Summary

This chapter has described the impact of the pre-workshop interviews on the workshop design. Parental motivations for participating were combined with the findings from the literature review to inform the overall workshop design. The initial workshop trial was described along with my researcher observations and reflections. Following this, an outline of the workshop series was presented along with researcher reflections which prompted ongoing modifications to the design of the workshop series. Further description of the problem solving activities and the way in which these were generated was also provided. Finally, findings relating to the way in which parents were beginning to observe opportunities for mathematics in their everyday activities as demonstrated in the ‘Maths in my week’ reflections were presented. The overall impact and effectiveness of the workshops, as reported by the parents, will be presented in the following chapter.

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Chapter Five