Student
Participation
Participation means the active involvement of students in the construction
of their knowledge. The strategy often attempts to recapitulate the
development of key mathematical and scientific ideas by formulating problems
in ordinary language, and encouraging students to discover what is needed
to refine that language and thereby to reconstruct the formalism that it is
intended to teach. This goal may be attained in a learning environment that
supports and encourages experimentation within the context of simulations
that give the answers to questions that students themselves
formulate. It works well, for example in an environment that supports
collaboration and discussion among students, such as a laboratory extension
of a course.
Participation in this sense puts students more in control of the pace and,
to some extent, the direction of their learning. It is an immediate consequence
of Piagetian epistemology that students are better prepared to understand
the answers to the questions they themselves ask, than they are to understand
the answers to questions that are asked for them. Interactive texts, as integrated
teaching and learning environments, encourage students to experiment and to
ask their own questions.
In order for this to work, a delicate balance has to be struck. It is necessary
to give students the tools they need to formulate and ask their questions
without "over structuring" the activity so that their involvement becomes
superfluous.
Examples of Participation:
Galileo pendulum experiments
Lakes, Page 6 Gauge Example
Progeny, Fibonacci
Sequence and the Golden Ratio