Browsing by Subject "numeracy"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Quantitative Literacy as situated social practice in Higher Education
    (Common Ground Publishing, 2006) Prince, Robert Noel; Archer, Arlene Hillary
    Mathematical literacy' is soon to be introduced as a subject in South African schools. This has generated numerous debates in various educational arenas, such as tertiary institutions and professional bodies. This paper looks at the differences between mathematics and Quantitative Literacy (QL) and examines the implicit QL demands and conventionalized QL practices in Higher Education curricula. Although certain practices are highly valued, they are not necessarily explicitly taught to students, especially those from non-dominant or disadvantaged positions in the power structures of the university and the society. This paper explores ways in which the implicit Quantitative Literacy demands can be made explicit and can be used to provide a rich environment to facilitate mathematical and statistical concept acquisition. We look at conventionalized practices in academic disciplines (focusing our analysis on the use of charts) and propose a number of principles of curriculum design.
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    Quantitative Literacy for University students in South Africa
    (2016) Lloyd, Pam; Frith, Vera; Jaftha, Jacob; Rughubar-Reddy, Sheena; Le Roux, Kate
    These activities and exercises are most appropriate for Humanities and Law students, but the contexts used should be of interest to any citizen. The mathematical content covered does not include data analysis, statistics and probability. Understanding these topics is essential for quantitative literacy, but are not included here. Thus these materials do not provide the basis of a complete quantitative literacy course, but cover the work of approximately one semester in a first year programme.
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    Quantitative literacy interventions at University of Cape Town: effects of seperation from academic disciplines
    (University of South Florida, 2012) Frith, Vera
    The aim of the Numeracy Centre at the University of Cape Town is to develop students' quantitative literacy (QL) in a manner consistent with their programmes of study and intended roles in the community. Our theoretical perspective on the nature of QL is in line with that of the New Literacies Studies and sees academic QL as practices in different academic disciplinary contexts. This means that for us the ideal curriculum structure for developing QL would fully integrate it into the teaching of the disciplines. This is in practice not achievable in most cases, especially since many students do not have the necessary foundations of mathematical and statistical knowledge and skills. The unavoidable deviation from the ideal curriculum structure presents challenges to the design of QL interventions. Two illustrative examples which display different degrees of separation from the disciplinary teaching are described and discussed. This discussion is based on lecturers' reflections on the teaching experience and on student evaluations. The 'stand-alone' QL course for Humanities and Law students, which uses a context-based approach, is the least integrated with the disciplinary curriculum, and presents challenges in terms of tensions in the classroom between the contexts and the mathematical and statistical content, as well as challenges in terms of student motivation. The QL intervention for medical students is more closely integrated into the medical curriculum and presents fewer challenges. Both interventions are intended to provide 'foundations' in terms of QL and suffer from difficulties in providing students with authentic motivation.