As part of my work in OpenLearn I am exploring a potential project to help pre-university students to develop their Mathematics skills. I am looking at a possible project with the Physics department at the University of Bristol. The people there are exploring ways to help equip people for the course in advance and have identified the need for some to be able to develop ability in the application of their Maths skills.
Another problem that they identified with students was the ability to quickly follow a mathematical line of argument, whether this be in rearranging equations, solving a problem etc. It was not that the students did not understand the mathematics but they could not keep speed with the process...a kind of taking time to read and understand, so by the time they had mentally grasped one bit the lecturer had moved on by several steps.
I liken this to my knowledge of translating and understanding spoken German, especially when it comes to numbers. I pretty much can construct any German number, and given time, if it is slowly spoken, understand a number. The problem comes when I hear a number in general conversation, by the time I have worked out what the number means the person talking has moved on with the conversation and I have totally lost the thread. For me understanding the number is not automatic. The word automatic was also used by Prof K and Dr P when relating to some of students' experience.
I recently read something about this automation in a book about activity theory and we discussed it briefly in our reading group. At the time I said that I considered it to refer to those processes that involved a lot of physical skills, such as the high degree of muscular tuning and control necessary for playing an instrument. I related the example from the BBC documentary were Waugh (forgotton his first name) learns a one-handed Chopin piece and reads a book aloud whilst playing the piece with his other hand.
To be continued.....
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