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Futures thinking in English and Mathematics classrooms. Jane Forte and Sandra Swain Albany Senior High School. Abstract.
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Futures thinking in English and Mathematics classrooms Jane Forte and Sandra Swain Albany Senior High School
Abstract Australian teachers are currently facing the challenge of needing to embed two aspects, the cross curricular priorities and the general capabilities, into their classrooms. This session is a look at the ongoing journey of two teachers from different subject areas exploring ways to address CCT in tasks and assessments that have a focus on futures issues. They will share materials that they have used so far in their journey and discuss where they might go next.
Beginning the journey The Australian Curriculum is more than mathematical, or any subject area, content The cross curricular priorities and the general capabilities are integral to the Curriculum While there is no need to assess either, failure to plan for them will mean they are not satisfactorily addressed
A futures focus - Sustainability Sustainability addresses the ongoing capacity of Earth to maintain all life. Actions that support more sustainable patterns of living require consideration of environmental, social, cultural and economic systems and their interdependence.
General capabilities - Critical and Creative Thinking Responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex environmental, social and economic pressures – requires young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully. Mark has developed a checklist for the aspects of this capability that gives clear details of what is expected of high school students.
Inquiring – identifying, exploring and clarifying information
Creative thinking Creative thinking involves students in learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition. The products of creative endeavour can involve complex representations and images, investigations and performances, digital and computer-generated output, or occur as virtual reality.
Critical thinking Critical thinking is at the core of most intellectual activity that involves students in learning to recognise or develop an argument, use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems. Examples of thinking skills are interpreting, analysing, evaluating, explaining sequencing, reasoning, comparing, questioning, inferring, hypothesising, appraising, testing and generalising.
Problem solving model Clarify – what are you being asked to do, what assumptions need to be made Choose – what tools and methods to use Use – actually doing it, measuring, calculating, drawing, spreadsheet, etc Interpret and check – state the answer, justify, check and refer to assumptions
My plan to develop a futures focus Embed the Problem solving model into student tasks so students learn how to do it naturally Look at survey results to see where that takes me Develop activities that involve futures issues
Survey results Used a rating scale of 1 to 5, where 1 disagreed and 5 definitely agrees. The first section dealt with the future faced by all nations. The second section dealt with reasons why people do not like to think about the future.
Population The last section asked which of two countries had a smaller population 5 out of 22 chose Indonesia smaller than Australia 1 out of 22 chose China smaller than USA 5 out of 22 chose India smaller than Germany
Tasks to address futures issues Students have completed Population age comparisons Toowoomba Dam
Student responses Some students clearly demonstrated aspects of Critical and Creative Thinking that I was able to mark off on a spreadsheet checklist. Only some aspects of the Capability are realistically dealt with in Mathematics.
Population comparison task To address student understanding of world population, I have written a task to look at population of various countries around the world, and to compare them to Australia. As with many of my tasks, this one includes a hefty dose of ICT as well.
Where to from here It has not been difficult to include some consideration of futures issues into tasks, including statistics, measurement and number. I need to continue to seek opportunities to address these issues both formally and informally as we complete tasks.
Problem solving model This model underpins the Mathematics throughout the curriculum, as well as providing a structure that can assist students with problem solving in any setting, including futures issues. As such, my students need as much practice and experience with it as possible to develop their critical thinking.
