Page 10 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Kasanda

compulsory for all learners until Grade 12 many learners tended to stop
learning mathematics as soon as it became an elective subject. What are
the reasons for this state of affairs and why do most of our learners fear,
fail or hate mathematics? May be this could be attributed to our teaching
methods that do not recognize the fact that students need to be given the
opportunity to construct their own knowledge, we force the content down
their throats in the same manner that we as mathematics teachers were
taught or because we believe that this is the only way to learn
mathematics. May be it is the students’ constant failure (Ali, 2013) in
mathematics that makes them hate it.

Recent literature on mathematics teaching and learning focus on trying to
understand what the teacher does in the mathematics classroom (Ng,
Mosvold, & Fauskanger, 2012; Turnuku, & Yesildere, 2007; Ball, & Bass,
2000) as a possible means of improving student performance. What
activities are the teachers involved in, in the classroom to ensure learners’
understanding of the mathematics content? How are they presenting this
mathematics? Adler and Pillay (nd ) point out that in addition to knowing
the mathematics subject content they are teaching, mathematics teachers
should also possess pedagogic content knowledge, that is the how of
presenting this content and the contents of the curriculum they are
teaching (curricular knowledge). These are regarded as important pillars
that inform the teachers’ actions in the mathematics classroom. Knowing
the mathematics content helps the mathematics teacher to identify
appropriate examples for his/her students to understand the content
being presented. It is therefore essential that mathematics teachers are
armed with more mathematics content than the content they are to teach
their students, and how to teach it. In my view a knowledgeable
mathematics teacher (in subject content, pedagogical content and
curricular content knowledge) is an asset to all his/her students and is
capable of bringing about student learning in his/her subject because of
the many examples or teaching strategies that will be at their disposal and

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