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Resources for Staff
- - Effective use of Zoom for Teaching Mathematics
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- Teaching students maths so they learn
- - What is a mental model?
- - We are different from most of our students
- - Student maths mental models
- - Doing maths without good mental models
- - Six differences between mental models in experts and novices
- - Part 2: Teaching students how to develop good mental models
- - Part 3: What to do?
- - References
Building mental models is hard
Firstly, we need to appreciate that building good mental models is hard, and hard work, and in mathematics, it does not generally seem to happen automatically.
Davis (1983) wrote that,
“Neither the importance of mental representations, nor the difficulty in creating them, seem to be generally recognized.”
Constructing good mental models requires time, effort and guidance.
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