Abstract:

In the Master Program on Secondary Education of the University of Salamanca, the students have different courses including Contents in Mathematics and Educational Innovation. The planning of these courses leads us to ask questions such as: What is the educational innovation? Is the innovation a crucial aspect of success in education? Are the contents of mathematics more important than anything else in the mathematics classes?

Students come to this Master for future math teachers with different backgrounds (mathematicians, physicists, engineers in different specialties, architects, economists ....) Most of them are in this Master looking for a real job opportunity in the market, because the recession in Spain has reduced their opportunities to find a job related with their academic training and very few of them have a real vocation as teachers. Sometimes, they have shown great scepticism about innovation in a math class, and about the methodologies, resources and innovative educational models that are presented. This scepticism is endorsed in the Practicum of the master. In most cases, they are witnesses of a model of teaching from 20 or 30 years ago, and students who seek to change minimally and for a short time the dynamics of the class using a resource managed in the master receive a certain rejection. In the real classrooms, contents are the target of the process, and most precisely the usual aim of teachers is finishing all the contents of the curriculum of each course. We cannot generalize, but the real facts and experience bear this out.

The purpose of this communication is to present a current joint reflection on the importance of innovation, on the need for it and on its place in the current model of teaching mathematics and the type of mathematical skills that are important in the world for our students of XXI century. Does innovation reside exclusively in the use of ICTs? Our answer to this question is no, but it is obvious that the use of them by teachers and students has substantially altered the procedures and contents that until recently were considered essential.

Keywords:

Innovation, Training of future teachers, Contents in Mathematics at secondary school.