Frustrated maths students may have a good excuse. Some teaching methods meant to make maths more relevant may be making it harder to understand, US researchers say.
students who are taught abstract maths concepts fare better in experiments than those taught with real-world examples
Adding extra details makes it hard for students to extract the basic mathematical concepts and apply them to new problems
"We're really making it difficult for students because we are distracting them from the underlying maths," says Jennifer Kaminski from
Ohio State University
The findings cast doubt on the widely used practice of using friendly, concrete examples to teach abstract maths concepts.
teach a formula about distance with the classic example of two trains departing from different cities and travelling at different speeds.
"The danger with teaching using this example is that many students only learn how to solve the problem with the trains,"
clipped from: www.abc.net.au 