| dc.description.abstract | Educational change is perhaps one of the most difficult processes that teachers might, experience in search of democratising their classroom practices. Being a traditional mathematics teacher who resorted to autocratic most of teaching, I had come to realise that my node of teaching was probably not facilitating the learning of mathematics by my pupils in the primary school. This thesis traces my attempts, via three projects, to change my style of teaching from a tractional to a more interactive and democratic mode of teaching. In an attempt to improve upon my own teaching practice, I also wanted my pupils to benefit it in the process. In my first project, I thus set to improve my pupils understanding of mathematics and to encourage them to verbalise their thoughts freely and confidently. For this purpose, I’d order to counteract a pupil passivity, I employed a collaborative process approach to the teaching of mathematics. In my second project f set out to learn from the failures of the first project. Project three, which was d.one at a different school, I largely a reply cation study of project two but deliberately carried. Cut in a different setting. Wanting to democratise my classroom practice I needed to resort to a mode of research that. was in line with democratic practices. I chose Action Research, which by its very nature of reflecting and acting within a collaborative process, tends towards a democratic practice. It offers me the opportunity to do research in the class on those aspects of my classroom practice that I felt, needed to be investigated. Action Research allows the teachers, together with other significant participants, to share their experiences with colleagues and in so doing to generate their own theory which will be open to scrutiny and change. In doing project three at a different school, I also wanted to establish the passivity of duplicating this study via an Action Research approach in another setting. Through the process of Action Research, I had undergone significant personal transformation in that I have civilised critical thinking skills such as the ability to analyse, synthesize and not to. take things f or granted but to ask appropriate questions. My pupils, it seems, have also benefited from the process. The collaborative process approach which I employed towards the learning and understanding of mathematics served to empower the pupils j-n the classroom to voice their opinion and to substantiate their arguments. In the process I also discovered that educational change was a painful but positive process for both participants and myself. | en_US |
