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Mathematics

ConferenceProceedings_EducatingTheEducators_MaassBarzelToernerEtAl_2015

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Participation in these online training courses conveys to mathematics teachers<br />

current research-based and intelligent knowledge in the sense of Weinert<br />

(1999), as well as the respective decision-making and responsibility which are<br />

necessary to set up successful and skills-orientated mathematics classes.<br />

Along with an assessment of quality, ongoing evaluation is to highlight which<br />

aspects of online training courses actually favour the implementation of the<br />

contents of courses in professional practice, and how such implementation of<br />

the contents of courses can be further promoted. With a view to this research<br />

objective, research project WOLF (German acronym denoting Impact<br />

Analyses of Online Training Courses for <strong>Mathematics</strong> Teachers), set up for a<br />

period of three years and supported by the Ministry of Education of the Federal<br />

State of Hesse, devised a measuring instrument in the form of an online<br />

questionnaire (FEOM, Szymanski & Bruder 2012).<br />

2 Background and description of the online training courses<br />

The online training courses for teachers are based on experience drawn from<br />

research and development projects mostly extending over several years.<br />

Individual course topics emerged in connection with the teacher development<br />

project “Increasing Efficiency in Mathematical and Scientific Teaching”<br />

[German acronym SINUS] with the support of the Hessian Ministry of<br />

Education [German acronym HKM], or were commissioned by the HKM<br />

directly. The development of an online training concept for mathematics<br />

teachers is thus also to be understood as a reaction to the education<br />

standards for mathematics, adopted by the Standing Conference of the<br />

Ministers of Education [German acronym KMK] in 2003.These education<br />

standards require further development of mathematics classes with the<br />

objective of promoting the development potential of weaker and stronger<br />

pupils (Collet, 2009). They are result-orientated by describing process and<br />

content related educational objectives as professional competences that have<br />

to be conveyed to learners before they leave school.<br />

The central objective of the online training courses thus represents an<br />

increase of competency of the participating mathematics teachers by means of<br />

which the quality of mathematics classes are to be improved in a sustainable<br />

manner.<br />

In our contribution, we should like to introduce a concept for assisted thematic<br />

online training courses for the duration of a school semester. This concept had<br />

been developed and tested within the scope of a research project supported<br />

by the DFG [German Research Foundation] on problem solving skills in<br />

mathematics instruction (cf. Collet & Bruder 2008). The objective of such<br />

course concepts is the implementation of research-based innovations for<br />

teaching in the form of modules for teaching concepts to promote certain<br />

spheres of competence at the secondary levels. On the basis of this concept,<br />

applied since 2005 and elaborated and tested for seven more topics already,<br />

we have in the meantime been able to gain multiple experiences with a total of<br />

148

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