(ANSA) – Pistoia, March 14 – “Using tactile mathematics, for touch, can be a way to fill in the gaps of Italian students.” This is the message that Canadian researcher Natalie Sinclair, inventor of tactile mathematics, sent to more than 2,000 teachers in schools of all levels across Italy, who attended one of her seminars in Pistoia. About 150 teachers attended, and the others followed remotely his lesson on his innovative method of learning. The symposium took place in Carme di Pistoia which is the Center for Advanced Research in Mathematics Education and is located within Uniser, Caript srl which is revitalizing a training center at university level.
Natalie Sinclair, a researcher at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (Canada), is an international star in teaching precisely because of the concrete mathematics method she proposes. Its program enhances the sensory use of digital tools for teachers and students, from kindergarten through high school.
“I have tried to show,” Sinclair says, “how expanding the sensory modalities, in which students can experience and express mathematical ideas, can make the development of mathematical meanings more accessible and powerful.”
“In particular,” he added, speaking of the software of his invention, “they are obtained with some digital multi-touch tools suitable for the elementary school level, but also work with the dynamic mathematical tools used at the high school level.” The need for the seminar is explained by the OECD data according to which one in four students in Italy does not reach the basic level of mathematical and scientific skills, a situation that worsens in the southern regions for one in three students. While the best-prepared youngsters come from Asia and China to Singapore, which has 616 points in the ranking, compared to 497 for Italy. (handle).
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