TSG6 in ICME9

This project aims to contribute to the Internationalization of Mathematics Teaching. In order to achieve this we set up collaborative problem solving tasks between 8 groups of high school students in each country and collected data on how collaboration was undertaken and evaluated the significance of such collaboration. The specific aims of the project are as follows:

(1) The project will provide information on how to make and use Home Pages with CGI script for mathematical communication between countries speaking different languages. It will also describe how students engaged in their solution and how teachers helped facilitate their activities.

(2) The project will reveal the kind of communication produced and evaluate how students and teachers changed their approaches to problem solving and their general beliefs about mathematics through their involvement in this project.

The different settings of the countries will mean that the communication between countries will be different. Because Australia is a multicultural country Australians have the opportunity to regularly meet people who speak English as second language in their daily lives. In contrast, Japan is a homogeneous country where most Japanese people do not have any opportunities touse English if they have learned it. These differences in settings make our results meaningful for many other countries.

The project was undertaken in October - November 1999 with the participation of 66 students, between 14-16 years of age. All students enjoyed the project and wanted to continue their communication after the project had finished. We have been analyzing the data and at this stage need more time to compare and integrate our results. Following is an example of an activity that was engaged in by 15-16 year old students.

 <An Example : Communication of Group 8> ; Click Here!

This activity produced a range of interesting results.

For example, before the project the Japanese students had the belief that mathematics is a common language shared throughout the world. After the project, the students had changed their minds and now believed that mathematics in Australia is different to mathematics in Japan. They felt that their reasoning was not well represented in English and they were not easily able to relate to the unfamiliar mathematical ideas of the Australian students. Each group engaged in rich activities that included questions and tasks which provided extensive scope for inquiry. In so many cases the Japanese students could not write their mathematical ideas in English because they could not easily represent their indescribable question or feeling even in Japanese.

Although this result looks negative it is not. They were absorbed in the project and their impression of communication with the Australian students was very positive. The Japanese students’ English communication abilities were extremely changed. At the beginning, Australian students could send both of their messages and their solution at first hour. On the other hand, Japanese could send only their messages at first hour but they could not think about any solution of problem because they wrote messages in Japanese and then they translated it in English. When Japanese students’ received messages, they translated it in Japanese and they began to write their reply in Japanese then translated it in English. But at the end of the project, Japanese students also engaged in their writing only in English.

The results also explain how students' mathematical beliefs changed according to the quality of communication.

These results are also meaningful for the teachers and coordinators who have a wish to develop the system for distance learning in the Internet Age.

At the TSG6 in ICME9, we plan to present our results in Native-English and Japanese-English.

The project is supported by a grant from Ministry of Education in Japan.

Before ICME9, we are going to have a meeting to integrate the results of the 1999 project and plan projects for the year 2000.