Activity 1. Ways your students learn mathematics - Part 2

Previous participants enroled in the AustMS unit identified that to promote relational understanding, teachers need to consciously set tasks requiring relational understanding, and to reward it (or not reward instrumental understanding as highly). The rewards of relational understanding suggested were not only marks but also the satisfaction of the “Aha!” kind of experience, and the better recall that comes from relational understanding. Here is one of their suggestions:

Try to change the assessment tasks to include tasks that require a relational understanding. For example, “Write a paragraph that a peer could understand, including diagrams where appropriate, explaining ... ”.