Abstract:

There has been a trend in education to improve the effectiveness of teaching, especially in mathematics instruction at elementary schools. Current ideas for improvement of mathematics instruction include a constructivist approach called inquiry-based education (IBE). In previous research we analyzed elementary school teacher awareness of this constructivist approach and its application in teaching. The results were published in the article “Inquiry-based math teaching at elementary schools in the Olomouc region of the Czech republic“ in the INTED2018 Proceedings.

The present article continues the previous study with results for the research survey carried out on the same sample of teachers. This new research addresses the use of ICT in support of the constructivist IBE approach to teaching mathematics.

Inquiry based education (IBE) does not overlook modern trends in didactics, which normally include ICT tools. Teaching supported by computers and inquiry-based teaching are interrelated teaching methods which can be very well suited to one another. Typical examples are dynamic geometry programs like Cabri and GeoGebra which are particularly suitable for independent inquiry and pupil discovery, even in mathematical topics outside of geometry. For example, the current version of GeoGebra also includes modules such as CAS, tables and probability which are suitable for other areas of mathematics.

In the article we report the results of the research carried out by questionnaire, a survey made for math teachers at elementary schools in the Olomouc region of the Czech Republic. The survey aims to find out whether teachers use ICT tools for support of inquiry-based approaches in math education, specifically whether they use dynamic geometry software in their teaching.

Keywords:

Inquiry-based education, inquiry-based learning, math teaching, ICT, dynamic geometry environment, classroom geometry software.