Relevant initiatives

Date: 2015.03.01

Posted by Veronica Del Bene (Italy)

SINUS (extensively tested in Germany) is a significant initiative that promotes a reversal of school science-teaching pedagogy from mainly deductive to inquiry-based methods and the development of teachers’ networks in order to improve the quality of their teaching and support their motivation. A central server (www.sinus-transfer.eu) contains materials for teachers and promotes a wide range of practices including problem-based activities, hands-on/mind-on and group projects. You can find several didactical and methodical suggestions as well as practical experiences to design a teaching unit with innovative approach. As regards mathematics, I completely agree with basic guiding principles of SINUS project: (i) less focus on passing factual knowledge to students, more focus on independent problem solving; (ii) less focus on mere computing and manipulating formulas, more focus on understanding; (iii) not only focus on acquiring particular math skills and results, but also focus on the necessary learning processes and strategies. The implementation of these guiding principles leads to an experimental access to mathematics. The philosophy of didactical activities proposed by SINUS project is “Don’t preach facts, stimulate acts”. This means to encourage students to develop their own informal methods for doing mathematics. If learning is to be successful, the students must be able to tie their own think-nets, they must get the chance to go individual ways in their learning process.
Materials developed by SINUS teachers fascinate me because they try to combine real-life knowledge with mathematical knowledge. They are based on realistic problems instead of mechanical computing and create situations that allow an active engagement by students, a vivid discourse among students about analyzing, solving, interpreting a problem, encouragement of students to generate questions and generalizations of their own, the insight that mathematics is a stimulating and challenging discipline (e.g. “The surface of the golfball consists of a grid of hexagons. What does this mean?”).