Notes: Problems of Teaching in Mathematics | Mathematics & Pedagogy Paper 2 for CTET & TET Exams - CTET & State TET PDF Download

This chapter discusses the challenges faced by students in the teaching and learning of Mathematics, such as fear of failure, curriculum issues, and inadequate assessment methods. Analysis of previous years' papers of CTET and state TETs exams indicates that typically 1 to 2 questions are asked annually from this chapter.

Problems in Teaching & Learning of Mathematics

• A sense of fear and failure among a majority of children. 
• A curriculum that frustrates both a talented minority as well as the non-participating majority at the same time. 
• Crude ways of assessment making perception of Mathematics as mechanical computation.
• Lack of teacher preparation and support in the teaching process of Mathematics.

Fear and Failure

• Mathematics is the subject whose study evokes wide emotional comment. 
• Mathematics anxiety and phobia are the consequences of that emotional comment.
• Mathematics is taught in the schools in such a way that it alienates the children and causes them to stop attending schools. Such fear of Mathematics is closely linked to a sense of failure.
• Many children of Class III or IV begin considering themselves as unable to cope with the requirements generated by Mathematics.
• In high school, among children who fail only in one or two subjects, the majority of them fail in the subject of Mathematics. 
• The largest numbers of the board exam failures also occur in the subject of Mathematics.
• The cumulative nature of Mathematics mainly causes such fear and failure. All the concepts of Mathematics are linked to each other requiring the clarity and understanding of all. 
• The other main reason is the predominance of symbolic language. When symbols are manipulated without the understanding, then after a certain point children start dissociating from the subject. 
• The language of Mathematics learnt in school is completely different from their everyday speech and becomes a major force of alienation in its own right.

Disappointing Curriculum

• Any Mathematics curriculum that prioritises procedure and memorisation of formulas over understanding of concepts, enhances the anxiety and phobia. 
• Mathematics is the subject that sees great motivation and talent even at an early age in a small number of children. 
• These children take to quantisation and algebra easily and carry on with great facility. The curriculum does not offer conceptual depth and thus settles for the minimal use of children's motivation. 
• The learning procedures may be easy for them, but their understanding and capacity for reasoning remain unutilised.

Crude Assessment

• The crude methods of assessment are the barriers for the effective teaching and learning of Mathematics. 
• Those methods of assessment encourage perception of Mathematics as mechanical computation. 
• ests are designed for assessing a student's knowledge of procedures and memory of formulas and facts and thus concept learning is replaced by procedural memory. 
• The children who are unable to make such replacement successfully experience the anxiety and suffer failure.
• In all the subjects except the Mathematics, partial knowledge may be tried and demonstrated but in case of Mathematics such a perception is easily coupled to anxiety and panic. 
• The evaluation procedures in Mathematics has seen a little change in our schools over a hundred years or more.

Inadequate Teacher Preparation

• Mathematics education depends heavily on teacher's understanding of Mathematics and his preparation of teaching Mathematics. 
• It is the teacher's knowing of pedagogic techniques that makes the teaching and learning of Mathematics so fascinating. Text book centered pedagogy marks the teacher's own Mathematics activity. 
• Teaching of Mathematics poses special problems. At the primary level most of the teachers consider themselves known to all the Mathematics needed and in the absence of any specific pedagogic training ends up perpetuating problems across time and space. 
• At the secondary and higher secondary level, some teachers find a different situation. The syllabi have considerably changed since their school days and in the absence of systematic and continuous education programmes for teachers, their basics or fundamentals in many areas of concept are not strong enough to draw the attention of the children. This establishes reliance on notes or guides available in the market offering not so consolidated concepts.

Other Systemic Problems

Except all the problems discussed above, few other systemic problems need to be mentioned here:

• Compartmentalisation: This includes very little systematic communication between primary school and high school teachers of Mathematics and none at all between the high school and college teachers of Mathematics. Most of the school teachers have never even seen or interacted with the research mathematicians.
• Curricular Acceleration: It involves the rapid and frequent change of the course curriculum making the shape of Mathematics education as taller and more spindle, rather than broad and rounded.

Gender Issue

• Mathematics is the subject which tends to be regarded as a masculine domain and this perception is further aided by the complete lack of references in text books to women mathematicians. 
• The classroom research also reflects a fairly systematic devaluation of girls as inefficient in mastering the subject of Mathematics. It has been found that the teachers tend to address boys more than girls.