Applying Constructivist Theories of Teaching and Learning to the Teaching and Learning of Adult !umeracy in the Further Education Sector in the UK

Abstract

The pursuit of mathematical connections in teaching has intensified in recent
years and a number of studies in numeracy teaching have identified two types of numeracy teachers – those with constructivist approaches to the teaching and learning of numeracy and those with a transmission view of the subject generally. Of the two, constructivist teachers have been found to be the more effective teachers of numeracy because they are better in bringing about identified learning outcomes. What constructivism promotes is a more progressive model that is rooted in discussions between teacher and student
and between student and student. It involves the process of meaning-making whereby students simultaneously construct and make sense of their world, and is also more democratic in the sense that roles of teacher and student can be reversed. Indeed, the fundamental goal of numeracy instruction should be to help students build structures that are more complex than those they possessed before instruction and that can be used in different contexts. Here, the teacher's role is not to merely convey to students information about numeracy but to facilitate profound cognitive restructuring through negotiation of
meanings of contextualised activities. Hence the importance of constructivism in the teaching of adult numeracy.

Keywords: constructivism, numeracy, mathematical connections

Mathematics Connection Vol. 6 2007: pp. 49-56