Algebraic Thinking

Vol.2-161

A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH TO TEACHING/LEARNING MATHEMATICS BASED ON BRAIN PATTERN PROCESSING OPERATIONS Victor Amezcua La Catalina Natural Language School, Mexico www.lacatalinaschool.com The poster presents an emerging framework on teaching/learning mathematics, grounded in a 10year project conducted as design-based research and in education-research literature (mathematics, Schoenfeld, 1992; 2nd language acquisition, Krashen, 1995), and focusing on the mathematical domain of algebra. The project was motivated by my observations as an educational practitioner and as founder/director of a natural language school, and bears implications for teaching, learning, and design. The framework foregrounds cognitive and affective factors contributing to or hindering mathematics learning and connections between these factors (see Schoenfeld, 1992). These factors, I demonstrate, can be modeled as cohering around the construct pattern that undergirds a heuristic model of brain-pattern processing. As mathematics is arguably the science of patterns (Devlin, 2003, Schoenfeld 1992) with a language to deal with them (Esty, 1992), I discern structural, functional, and developmental continuity from simple pattern-processing perceptual activity (e.g., recognition, comparison, matching) to learning language and basic mathematical skills (Amezcua, 1999). Thus, similar pattern-processing cognitive faculties are active in learning languages and mathematics. Much of naturalistic learning is the development of equivalence classes, e.g., table. To the extent that mathematics-learning shares with language-learning cognitive faculties, students need ample opportunity and supportive contexts to recognize and construct equivalences. Algebra, though, is particularly demanding, as equivalences, e.g., [123=102+2*10+3] [x2+2x+3], are stated but not initially evident or intuitive to the learner. Abstraction is based on the innate ability to recognize equivalent classes, but observation strongly suggests that at its natural level the skill is insufficient to deal with mathematics requirements. Strengthening this ability allows fluency in the mathematical language to emerge making possible the transferring of skills between one area to another via the abstraction process. The psycholinguistic approach to teaching/learning mathematics that emerged from my study offers tools for diagnosing learning problems and for designing strategies for their resolution. The framework deals with affective factors metacognitively. Students are lead to recognize and assess their hidden beliefs by showing them that their equivalence-class recognitions skills in daily activities are the same as those required in mathematical endeavors. Through this, one can remove learning blockages by replacing old beliefs with more effective ones. Much of my research was done from a qualitative perspective, but I am conducting new quantitative studies in rural areas in Mexico where the difficulties are especially challenging to ground the research. References. Amezcua, V (1999) A heuristic model of brain pattern processing. Unpublished Manuscript. Devlin, K (2003) Mathematics: The science of patterns. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Esty, W. (1992) Language concepts of mathematics FOCUS on Learning Problems in Mathematics 14.(4). Krashen, S (1995) Principles & practice in 2nd language acquisition. UK: Redwood.
_____________________________ Alatorre, S., Cortina, J.L., Siz, M., and Mndez, A.(Eds) (2006). Proceedings of the 28th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Mrida, Mxico: Universidad Pedaggica Nacional.

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PME-NA 2006 Proceedings

Schoenfeld, A. (1992) Learning to think mathematically. In D. Grouws (Ed.), Handbook for research on mathematics teaching and learning. New York: Macmillan.