In order to provide concrete support to teachers MERIA project has developed a methodology for implementation of an inquiry based approach in teaching and examples of mathematical activities for high school students. The basic aim of inquiry based mathematics teaching is to engage students in more comprehensive mathematical work than mere routine tasks. Through a series of workshops within the MERIA project, high school teachers will get more familiar with the underlying principles of inquiry-based mathematics teaching and training for its implementation. This project contributes to the systematic and sustainable improvement of the quality of secondary mathematics education, strengthens the link between high school and higher education and supports the scientific foundation of the whole process.
Project MERIA promotes inquiry based mathematics teaching and team members are designing new teaching materials for this approach. Materials are based on Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) and Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS). Testing of the materials will be performed in associated schools, where the teachers have already described their methods and familiarity of inquiry-based approached through semi-structured interviews.
These teachers have been invited for the two-day workshop on IBMT, RME and TDS.
Workshop was held at the Faculty of Science on 28th and 29th September 2017. It gathered 18 participants from five Croatian schools: Business School Varaždin, Technical School Požega, XII. Gymnasium Zagreb, Electro-engineering school in Varaždin, Josip Slavenski Gymnasium Čakovec and XV. Gymnasium Zagreb.
The first day started with a lecture “Inquiry based mathematics teaching” and a workshop “Structured and unstructured tasks” held by Željka Milin Šipuš, Faculty of Science. After that Matija Bašić, Faculty of Science, held lecture on Realistic Mathematics Education. The day ended with a workshop on design of RME scenarios.
The second day a lecture on Theory of Didactical Situations was held by Matija Bašić. It was followed by a workshop on design of TDS scenarios held by Eva Špalj, Aneta Copić and Sanja Antoliš from XV gymnasium, Zagreb.
Slides from the lectures (in Croatian):
