Teaching secondary mathematics

# Introduction

This free course, Teaching secondary mathematics, first discusses why people learn mathematics and how it is learned. It then moves onto a discussion of what it means to act and be mathematical. When teaching mathematics a consideration of why it is important to learn mathematics will help you decide how you expect your students to learn and what they need to learn to consider themselves ‘mathematical’. The course further considers what it means for teaching mathematics if students are to be lifelong learners and users of mathematics. Finally, the course considers teaching implications of taking the view that mathematics is a creative discipline.

This course will identify and explore four key questions that underpin all mathematics teaching. You will develop your practice as a mathematics teacher because the course will help you to:

- come to a more developed understanding of these questions and the issues that they raise
- explore these issues through the examples and activities provided
- reflect upon the implications of these examples for your own teaching.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by its author, Clare Lee:

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Transcript

As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how it relates to your practice. Hopefully you will have opportunities to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and revisited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes within the course – in order to do this, and to retrieve your responses, you will need to enrol on the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

OpenLearn - Teaching secondary mathematics
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