How maths brings joy
Take a close look at the slides in your neighbourhood. How many steps do they have? How many steps does your daughter have to climb to be the same height as mum? Why do you slide faster on a wet surface than on a dry one? Why is one slide fast and the other slow? If you intersperse such questions at the appropriate moment of play and enjoyment of the movements, then your child will pick up on one or two of them - because they will realise that their interests are really being taken seriously.
Counting verses can also encourage children to use the numbers and transfer them to new situations: «One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, down the slide, you can fly.» Teachers report that the joyful use of the slide has inspired kindergarten and lower school children - as well as themselves. Be honest: don't you prefer joyful learning to being taught and working through material?
The four-year-old boy could only count to two. In his favourite game, however, he knew exactly how many cows there were.
The Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire discovered that teaching material through pressure and the view that education means instruction are the main factors that suppress the interests and needs of learners. This demotivates and can have serious consequences: from inner resignation to severe learning disorders. Children do talk, but always with the feeling that what they say has no meaning. Information is not memorised: it goes in one ear and out the other. These mechanisms also have a destructive effect on carers and teachers. The psychologist Paul Watzlawick called such existential situations a «game without end» - a vicious circle that arises when people do not know how to stop negative mechanisms and events.
Reading and writing in eight weeks
Based on these findings, Paulo Freire developed methods for literacy that benefited millions of Brazilians. Firstly, he researched the interests and life experiences of the learners, true to the motto: «First research, then teach.» After analysing the collected topics, he integrated them into reading and writing projects.
These were so successful that the people were able to read and write after around eight weeks. Another important aspect of his method is dialogue. A real dialogue changes the relationships and emotions of the people involved, whereas teaching simply continues the «game without end».
«First research, then teach» also became the motto for the training of special needs teachers at the Intercantonal University of Applied Sciences for Special Needs Education HfH. The lecturers based their approach on a research method developed by the Geneva psychologist Jean Piaget and his colleagues. He called it the critical method, later it was also called the flexible interview (see box at the end of the article). The aim is to maximise the child's thought processes by motivating them to act. In a friendly conversation, the meanings of thoughts and actions are continuously discussed and further developed. Over time, this method has been increasingly integrated into HfH teaching and school practice.
Lessons from the farm
How exactly does that work? Let me give you two case studies: During maths lessons in kindergarten, a four-year-old boy was found to only know numbers up to two. It was feared that he might have a mental developmental delay. During flexible interviews, the remedial teacher discovered that the boy knew very well how many cows there were in his favourite farm game.
This discovery had an impact on teaching: the boy and other children were given the opportunity to learn mathematics and geometry based on the farm or other favourite games. Teachers had overcome the pressure of instruction and a wealth of material because they had explored the farm as a factual topic for maths education. At the same time, they had realised how relative didactics and their prejudices are when the children's resources are included.
If we want to learn how to master specific problems, we need new, creative methods.
The second example is about the experiences of parents and teachers in play and homework situations. In a workshop, they learnt how to use the flexible interview to overcome teaching and make board games accessible to children with disabilities. This made the dialogues with the children more objective and joyful. The skills had developed freely and effectively.
The examples suggest that psychologists, educators or teachers deal with children and young people as if they were talking to friends. They solve problems that a child is confronted with and at the same time work with materials (or toys) and notes. The accuracy of the results is a by-product. The climate of friendship is richer in social relationships and emotions than the climate of instruction. The child's self-determination is appropriately integrated and not excluded. In this way, life experiences and interests can be explored and utilised for educational purposes in a very short space of time.
It is a complex and difficult task when specialists, teachers, parents and learners realise that the integration of children who are different from the average is not quite successful. Consider the testimony of the mother of a son with trisomy 21, who looked back with satisfaction on her child's integration at school during a panel discussion. However, the fact that she had to pick up and drop off her boy four times a day was very stressful for her. What would it be like if professionals in similar cases were to look for resources in the neighbourhood or community? Would other parents or a restaurant be willing to help a family with a child with a disability, even if it was just for the journey to school or lunch? Paul Watzlawick emphasised in a lecture that the way out of the «game without end» is through simple actions.
The development of inclusive education and upbringing requires new methods (see box at the end of the article). This begins with the diagnosis of the resources of the children, parents, grandparents, at school and in the neighbourhood. It is easier to diagnose deficits and treat them in isolation. It is then generally thought that the child or young person has been «taken care of» with treatment and that the situation will improve. But this is often a fallacy.
Unconventional methods
If we want to learn how to master specific problems, we need new, creative, dialogue-based and unconventional methods. Interest in the matter, in competences, in relationships and in self-determination is at the centre of this. If it is established in meetings or supervision sessions that there is a lack of development, joy or a feeling of freedom, the projects, goals, relationships and methods need to be revised again. This procedure is based on the integration concept of «empathy and understanding» by the Bolognese educationalist Nicola Cuomo.
Back to maths: Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory, once wrote: «The essence of mathematics lies precisely in its freedom.» He would have been delighted at the sight of a kindergarten group that had painted number squares on a square to form a giant hopscotch game that reached up to a million. Such activities are great moments of liberating pedagogy.
The MKT test system
Based on the principles of liberating pedagogy, flexible interviewing and the integration concept of empathy and understanding, a test system for diagnosis and support in mathematics from Year 1 to Year 9 was also developed and standardised. At its core, the various test methods not only deal with cognitive subject competences, but also with empathy and understanding of mathematics in the education system.
www.hfh.ch
The flexible interview
The website of the same name of the Intercantonal University of Applied Sciences of Special Education HfH invites you to work and research with the flexible interview method. It describes tried and tested parlour games to which the method can be applied and shows how monetary values or fractions can be discussed. The website also provides information on Nicola Cuomo's «Empathy and Understanding» method. Reference is also made to a development project in which children learnt German as a second language using Paulo Freire's methods. Numerous observations show how free conversation and free play have a positive influence on lessons.
www.interview.hfh.ch
Read more:
- Dyscalculia - what parents can do. When children have difficulties with arithmetic, they are quickly diagnosed with dyscalculia. Dyscalculia usually has several causes. How can parents recognise dyscalculia? And how can an affected child be helped?
- How we learn. How do young people actually learn and what can parents do to support them? We asked one family about this.
