AA 2013 Volume 45 Issue 1
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Browsing AA 2013 Volume 45 Issue 1 by Subject "Mathematics"
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Item Open Access Learning from previous experiments: readability in national mathematics assessments(University of the Free State, 2013) Bansilal, Sarah; Khan, MumtazEnglish: This article aims to investigate the challenges associated with understanding the instructions in the Common Tasks for Assessment (CTA) by a Grade 9 mathematics class of second-language English speakers. The design of the CTA was such that a series of tasks was set using an extended context. The Flesch-Kincaid readability test judged the instructions of some tasks to be beyond the readability levels of an average Grade 9 learner. Some instructions had high lexical density, showing that these were difficult to understand. It is recommended that education authorities note the challenges associated with contextualised assessment such as the CTA, and ensure that the challenges associated with understanding instructions in national assessment should not outweigh the benefits of accessing the mathematics in different settings.Item Open Access World view, philosophy, and the teaching of arithmetic(University of the Free State, 2013) Strauss, DanieEnglish: Dilthey’s emphasis on the relativity of world and life views inspired Spengler to speak of different worlds of number. Yet, within Greek culture, Greek mathematics switched from arithmeticism to a geometrisation of mathematics. Since the Renaissance the ideal of sovereign human reason, which viewed human understanding as the (a priori formal) law-giver of nature, gave rise to the notion of construction. Avoiding the stance of both Platonism and constructivism, an acknowledgement of the ontic status of numbers (in their distinctness and succession), accounted for in terms of the distinction between law and subject, illustrates the influence of an underlying world view.