DIGITAL LIBRARY
INNOVATING DIDACTICS IN MATHEMATICS, AS MAIN INTEGRATOR OF THE LEARNING ABILITIES
Instituto Politécnico Nacional (MEXICO)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2009 Proceedings
Publication year: 2009
Pages: 4766-4773
ISBN: 978-84-613-2953-3
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 2nd International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 16-18 November, 2009
Location: Madrid, Spain
Abstract:
The purpose is to suggest a new education strategy, innovative, for the teaching and learning of mathematics. It is an innovating strategy because the word innovation means so much the action to innovate, talking about the result, but also the content, like object, behavior, practice or idea.

The concept above mentioned is related to the terms of Reform and Revolution, both imply innovation, but their differences are based in that the word Reform implies the correction of that made in the past, is to remake or to form again, while the Educative Revolution impacts the educative system in general and its subsystems, transforms educative structures, rolls and educative purposes.

A revolution in the implemented strategies by the professor for a better and greater learning by the students implies a change in the mental structure, includes the self-esteem, and facilitates the universal learning. In this sense, the innovation that is contributed with the innovation of learning strategies for the mathematics indeed implies the change of learning structure.

The didactic proposal for the integration of the knowledge considers a revolution and considers three moments (Camarena, 2004). 1. To present the didactic strategy of the Mathematics in Context in the learning environment. 2. To introduce extracurricular courses where can be carried out activities for the development of thought abilities, meta cognitive abilities, and abilities to apply heuristic when solving problems, as well as activities to block negative beliefs. 3. To orchestrate an integral and interdisciplinary group in the last semester of the student studies, where real events of the industry are solved.

The application of the didactic strategy was carried out with a pilot group of student from the communications and electronics engineering of the “Instituto Politécnico Nacional de México”. The test included the complete cycle of studies of the scholars. The results gathered were: Greater confidence of the students, better integration to work collaboratively in group, students learned to solve contextualized events and integrated in themselves the mathematical knowledge that engineering demands, with this, they successfully confronted the thematic learning in the other courses of their studies, that is to say, was generalization. Subsequent to end of their studies, 70% made postgraduate studies outside México, 60% of them remained working abroad developing Engineering, and those that returned developed their own company. It is considered that the proposed didactic strategy is extensive to the learning of mathematics in other professional areas, looking for an integral education with it.