Week 8: Response on Forcing Awareness by Dave Hewitt

Summary

 Whether it would be helpful and appropriate to force awareness in teaching, it has been a controversial topic among teachers. Dave Hewitt suggests that forcing awareness is a process involving deliberately planned tasks, usually with a standardized questioning line, where an instructor interacts with learners so that it is highly likely that the learners will develop a particular understanding of mathematics in this situation. The role of instructors is to bridge what students don’t know and what they are coming to know, to build upon their existed awareness so that they become aware of something new. From this view, teaching is seen as interacting with existing awareness of learners, rather than attempting to educate learners about the teacher's awareness.

Stop 1 Forcing Awareness

When I reflected on my teaching, I realized that the process of forcing awareness is likely to include stressing certain things while ignoring others, concentrating the attention of the learners on some issues, and arbitrarily guiding the questioning etc. However, the crucial aspect for instructor is to be sensitive to learners ' awareness and quickly adjust teaching strategies in that moment, so that existing awareness can be used, influenced, guided, challenged or appreciated. It would be beneficial for learners to use the power of their mind and not just sit and expect to be told. Thus, we should create a classroom culture where initiatives and motivations are welcomed and appreciated.

Question 1

In your teaching practice, did you notice the proportion of forcing awareness and student-centered learning? Which teaching pedagogy would you prefer and why?

Stop 2 Educating Awareness

When looking at the roles a teacher taken and questioning employed in educating awareness, only percentage success can be achieved by learners. There is a loss of sense of achievement and empowerment in learning, which discourage learners’ initiation and curiosity. On the other hand, student-centered learning includes students in the process of thinking, discovering, conjecturing, evaluating, and this means that what is new is related to what they learned as it evolved out of what was already there. It means that the new knowledge is not a specific piece of information that needs to be learned but is connected to what has already been known.

Question 2:

Can you think of any benefits of deliberately educating awareness in math class? Can you give an example?

Stop 3 the Benefit of Forcing Awareness v.s Rote memorization

According to the illustrated examples, barely talking the concepts doesn’t guaranteed listeners managed to transfer the words they heard into meaningful mathematical ideas. Furthermore, it is very likely for them to truly aware of the mathematical significance of the statement, or be able to apply this new knowledge in new situation.  It is too often the case that, instead of this, a learner tries to memorize this as ‘received wisdom’ from their teacher; trying to memorize someone else’s awareness rather than having educated their own.  It is too often the case that, a learner attempts to memorize 'received wisdom' fed by instructors, rather than generate their own. it is just a separate piece of information floating in someone’s mind. The difficulty with attempting to memorize something is that this is always followed by forgetting at a later date. Memory is distinct from sense of consciousness. Memory needs extra effort to preserve and retain this memory over time. This is because it can be unattached to the consciousnesses that a learner already has; it is only a single piece of knowledge that floats in someone’ mind.

Question 3

Would you recommend rote memorization in mathematics education?

Reference Hewitt, D. P. (2018). Forcing awareness.