NAIRTL Award

St Patrick’s College Drumcondra is involved in a project which has been successful in securing funding under the recent National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) 2011 Research Grants Initiative. NAIRTL promotes innovation, supports development, and sustains good practice in the integration of research and teaching and learning. This year the National Academy invited applications from existing communities/networks of practice for financial support for research activities and projects under specified thematic areas which have been identified as priority areas in the recent National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030, and selected 9 of 79 applications for funding.

Among these was a project entitled ‘The design and use of mathematical tasks to promote conceptual understanding and develop advanced mathematical thinking skills’ proposed by a network comprising Sinéad Breen (St Patrick's College) pictured here, Ann O’Shea (NUIM), Kirsten Pfeiffer (NUIG) and Barbara Jaworski (Loughborough).

Research has shown that the types of tasks assigned to students affect their learning and the use of tasks with lower levels of cognitive demand can lead to rote-learning and a consequent inability to solve unfamiliar problems or to transfer their (mathematical) knowledge to other areas competently and appropriately. This project aims to design a range of tasks to encourage higher level aspects of mathematical thinking (e.g conjecturing, generalising, specialising) in undergraduate students. A variety of means will be employed to evaluate the tasks designed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Updated: Wednesday October 19 2011