Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education

A special issue of Mathematics (ISSN 2227-7390). This special issue belongs to the section "Engineering Mathematics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2022) | Viewed by 10342

Special Issue Editors

Department of Mathematics, School of Science and Technology, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: number theory; numerical sequences; cryptography; recurrence relations
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Mathematics of University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: didactics and technology in mathematical education
Department of Mathematics of University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: didactics and technology in mathematical education
Department of Mathematics of University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: didactics and technology in mathematical education

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, “Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education”, in the journal Mathematics, aims to publish recent developments in the didactics and technology aspects of mathematics education. Mathematics education is a core issue, since mathematics occupies an increasingly prominent place in society—currently, in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we frequently hear about “flatening the curve”, R, efficacy, percentages, and so on. Therefore, familiarity with mathematics is required of all citizens, even those that think that it has nothing to do with them. Life in modern society changes quickly due to technological advances, so it is important that citizens can adapt to those changes with knowledge that includes mathematics. At the same time, so many new technological advances are made that they can and should be used in the classroom, triggering students’ curiosity towards how such advances were made, and how such advances affect their development. Therefore, adding didactics and technology into mathematical education (pre or post COVID-19) will allow researchers to present their findings in a broad spectrum of possible activities and tasks, either as investigations focussing on the students or teachers, present or future, or even as literature reviews.

Prof. Dr. Paula Catarino
Prof. Dr. Maria M. Nascimento
Prof. Dr. Ana Paula Aires
Prof. Dr. Helena Campos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Mathematics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Didactics
  • Technology
  • Mathematical Education
  • Pupils
  • Students
  • Future Teachers
  • Innovations
  • Activities
  • Tasks

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 3772 KiB  
Article
Application of GeoGebra in the Teaching of Descriptive Geometry: Sections of Solids
by Cacilda H. Chivai, Armando A. Soares and Paula Catarino
Mathematics 2022, 10(17), 3034; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/math10173034 - 23 Aug 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3050
Abstract
Technologies came to revolutionize the teaching of technical design; they brought resources that enabled 3D and 2D graphic simulation. The objective of this research is to understand how the implementation of the dynamic software GeoGebra on the topic of cylindrical sections can improve [...] Read more.
Technologies came to revolutionize the teaching of technical design; they brought resources that enabled 3D and 2D graphic simulation. The objective of this research is to understand how the implementation of the dynamic software GeoGebra on the topic of cylindrical sections can improve 3D spatial visualization in students because of the challenges in understanding the 3D representations and transporting them to the 2D sheet. This is a quasi-experimental case study in a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach which was conducted in a grade 12 class on the subject of descriptive geometry. The instruments used were a pre-test, post-test and Santa Barbara Solids Test. The students of the experimental group used GeoGebra and obtained better results in the post-test than the students in the control group, which suggests an improvement in learning; however, the Santa Barbara Solids Test results showed that the difficulties in visualizing views of the projected solids in a two-dimensional plane persisted. This study is also intended to test software in a classroom with students who have never experienced a 3D technology in their educational practices and direct future research in the complex content of descriptive geometry with the help of software. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education)
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19 pages, 307 KiB  
Article
Comparing Mathematics Early Years Education in Spain, Portugal and Slovenia
by Ana Ancheta-Arrabal and Carlos Segura
Mathematics 2022, 10(15), 2590; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/math10152590 - 25 Jul 2022
Viewed by 1306
Abstract
This work aims to examine how the learning of mathematics in early childhood is developed in different policies, particularly within the processes of formal education and care in early years institutions. A comparative analysis of early mathematics education policies across countries must consider [...] Read more.
This work aims to examine how the learning of mathematics in early childhood is developed in different policies, particularly within the processes of formal education and care in early years institutions. A comparative analysis of early mathematics education policies across countries must consider cultural differences, teaching practice, structural differences and institutional framework conditions, as well as the initial training and professional knowledge of teachers and educators. Extracted from the official country regulations, the following pages include some of the main characteristics of the national systems of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, as well as a comparison of the ECEC guidelines concerning mathematics education between these three countries. There is an international consensus on an approach to early mathematics education inspired by realistic mathematics education (RME), i.e., on the importance of working mathematically in context, as well as on the idea of doing so through play, developing the language to communicate mathematical ideas. However, we found that these three aspects are reflected very differently in the official regulations of the three countries: while in Spain the development is very detailed and emphasizes the holistic approach and the role of mathematics in exploring the environment, the Portuguese curriculum emphasizes the role of mathematics as a form of language. The Slovenian curriculum, at last, focuses on the concepts and procedures associated with each mathematical sense. Furthermore, there are structural features concerning the regulation and type of ECEC system that have an influence in the implementation of the curriculum. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education)
22 pages, 1548 KiB  
Article
Towards Using Unsupervised Learning for Comparing Traditional and Synchronous Online Learning in Assessing Students’ Academic Performance
by Mariana-Ioana Maier, Gabriela Czibula and Zsuzsanna-Edit Oneţ-Marian
Mathematics 2021, 9(22), 2870; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/math9222870 - 11 Nov 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1980
Abstract
Understanding students’ learning processes and education-related phenomena by extracting knowledge from educational data sets represents a continuous interest in the educational data mining domain. Due to an accelerated expansion of online learning and digitalisation in education, there is a growing interest in understanding [...] Read more.
Understanding students’ learning processes and education-related phenomena by extracting knowledge from educational data sets represents a continuous interest in the educational data mining domain. Due to an accelerated expansion of online learning and digitalisation in education, there is a growing interest in understanding the impact of online learning on the academic performance of students. In this study, we comparatively investigate traditional and synchronous online learning methods to assess students’ performance through the use of deep autoencoders. Experiments performed on real data sets collected in both online and traditional learning environments showed that autoencoders are able to detect hidden patterns in academic data sets unsupervised; these patterns are valuable for the prediction of students’ performance. The obtained results emphasized that, for the considered case studies, traditional evaluations are a little more accurate than online evaluations. Still, after applying a one-tailed paired Wilcoxon signed-rank test, no statistically significant difference between the traditional and online evaluations was observed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education)
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19 pages, 4328 KiB  
Article
Positioning–Emotions Association of Young Students Using Digital Technology
by Wajeeh Daher and Osama Swidan
Mathematics 2021, 9(14), 1617; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/math9141617 - 08 Jul 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2061
Abstract
Researchers in social semiotics have shown students’ emotions to be associated with their positioning, an association which contributes to students’ cognitive processes and, therefore, to their learning. Nevertheless, this association between emotions and positioning, especially with regard to very young students, has not [...] Read more.
Researchers in social semiotics have shown students’ emotions to be associated with their positioning, an association which contributes to students’ cognitive processes and, therefore, to their learning. Nevertheless, this association between emotions and positioning, especially with regard to very young students, has not been extensively investigated with qualitative methods. The present work considers the positioning–emotions association in the context of third-grade students using digital technology to study relationships among quadrilaterals. The entire learning process of eight students, divided into four pairs, was recorded on video; the transcripts were then analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the relationship between positioning and emotion constructs. A chi-square test was run for the transcribed data to find the correlations between constructs for positioning and emotions. We found a strong connection between outsiderness and boredom and between leadership confidence; moderate connections were found between outsiderness and powerless, help-seeking and confusion, and collaboration and interestedness. We used the discursive framework for connecting positioning with emotions to encode the data and triangulate our qualitative and quantitative findings. By these means, we were able to draw conclusions regarding the role of digital technology in determining students’ positioning and of the teacher in modifying undesirable positioning and its associated emotions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Didactics and Technology in Mathematical Education)
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