Seminario: "Importace of misconceptions in Mathematics Learning and metacognitive Strategies in Solving Mathematical Word Problems" impartida por Satoshi Kusak (Naruto University of Education, Japan)

This research seminar presents two lines of work: the importance of misconceptions in learning mathematics using a Japanese textbook and the metacognitive skills of Rwandan students in solving mathematical problems.
 

The Japanese mathematics curriculum emphasises on the systematicity of learning content. The textbooks are adopted basically problem-solving approach and students construct new knowledge based on the previously learned content. In addition, in some cases, new learning content are introduced by using students' typical misconceptions. In this seminar, an example of Japanese Mathematics textbook will be presented, especially the introduction of new learning content making use of students’ typical misconceptions.

Moreover, an empirical study has been carried out in Rwanda. This study aims to understand the use of metacognitive skills by Rwandan learners while solving mathematical word problems. Among the results obtained we find that metacognitive skills of learners with correct answers were considerably higher than that of those with incorrect answers; although there was no considerable difference in metacognitive skills between learners who answered correctly and those who did not at the stage of ‘understand the problem’.