I was a visiting consultant in a school and entered grade 4, year 8, or 9. This was a math class and the teacher was writing definitions of geometric figures on the board. When I asked her for the reason, she said, “Oh! They must do the definitions”. There was no other reasoning. She was very sure that this was the way to be. The teacher was completely in conformity (Kohlberg, 2015) with the system that she came from.
The students at this age are in the stage when peer group gains significance and the need to win approval is great (Ms Leod, 2018). This is the stage when they need a safe space where initiative is welcomed and failure is a part of the experience. Hence the students were copying completely in a state of obedience and conformity (Kohlberg, 2015). This was their safe space, the space of conformity and obedience to win the approval of the teacher.
I needed the students to move to a critical thinking (Seifert, & Sutton, 2009) format in the maths class. I was not sure however that just the developmental level was enough for that. It also needed awareness of the previous experiences. I was not sure that I could suddenly expect the students to step out of their comfortable dependence on the MKU or More Knowledgeable Other (Vygotsky, 2018) as the teacher who was giving the notes on the board. I needed just the right activity. Not too hard and not too easy!
So I requested the teacher for a time out, asked the students to get into groups with the textbook with all the data of definitions, etc. I wrote some key questions on the board that the students needed to discuss with their peers and get answers to. They could dialogue initially followed by writing the answers in the notebooks.
The questions were (a) Which are the major shapes that we see around us? (b) Are these in two dimensions or three dimensions? (c) What are the attributes of these shapes? (d) How are they the same and how are they different? (e) Think of the objects developed using these shapes. Which way have they been combined to create them?
My objective was more to make them think about the shapes in a very real way instead of rote learning the attributes of the shapes. At the end of the class, the students knew about the shapes in a way that made them real to them and of some use. This could lead to the actual development of an object using the shapes as the integration of maths and engineering.
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