Math Trails in School, Curriculum and Educational Environments of Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Math Trails in School, Curriculum and Educational Environments of Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Background
It is indisputable that mathematics are a global cultural heritage which all countries try to educate their children. In order to manage the heterogenity in European classrooms in the mathematics education, it is necessary to teach mathematics by means of different forms. One perspective is that all human concepts, including mathematical concepts, are based in the perceptual motor system experiences that occur while interacting with the world around us (Wittmann, 2013).

Based on this perspective, one can benefit through discovering mathematics in the real environment in an active way. So called Math Trails are one possibility to allow problem solving in a more realistic way. The system MathCityMap (www.mathcitymap.eu) is a digital tool that allows the preparation and organization of Math Trails by means of digital tools. It is already possible for teachers to create these math trails in a web portal and for students to run them on a corresponding smartphone app. It has been created and developed since 2012 and already counts more than 2000 active task creators and 5500 tasks in many different countries and languages all over the world and especially in Europe (Gurjanow et al., 2019).
Studies show that the MathCityMap Math Trails have a positive effect on the motivation (Cahyono, 2017) and the long-term performance and memory effects of learning when they are carried out regularly (Zender, 2018). Nevertheless, experiences show that Math Trails are mostly used as a special learning form for excursion days without further relevance for the normal mathematics lessons.

Aim
The idea of this project is to close the gap between “normal mathematics lessons” and Math Trails as a “special learning and teachning method” through adapting them to the European curricula of mathematics education and combining the needs of teachers with the technical possibilities of digitization. Surveys among teachers and MathCityMap users show that they wish for methods to assess students, follow their learning progress while running a trail, that they have sorrows in terms of supervision and that the amount of work for the preparation of a Math Trail is one of the main reasons why teachers do not use Math Trails regularly.

To reach the project’s aim, three different components are addressed: (1) digital tool, (2) connect the running of Math Trails to the curriculum teachers have to use and (3) create different forms of teacher training on how to use the system regularly. These activities support teachers to regularly use Math Trails in their teaching and encouraged them to do so. Component (1) will be based on the needs of teachers as described above. Component (2) will be done for the mathematics education curricula for every partner country in the form of so-called theme-based and topic trails. At first, the curricula will be analyzed and topics which can be covered by a math trail will be collected. Afterwards, the topic trails are created with objects that can easily be found in many different locations (eg. at school yards). Finally, the topic trails will be connected to the curricula of the countries, whereby they are of course transferable to other European curricula as well. Component (3) will be done on the one hand in a digital and decentralized way as a MOOC, where European teachers have to complete different modules and create own tasks. On the other hand, we will develop a short-term curriculum for learning-by-doing courses which are conducted at school and universities to theoretically and practically educate teachers how to use the tool.

Consortium
The consortium contains 8 partners from 6 countries (D, F, IT, P, EST, ESP). All of them will contribute to the project in different ways. It consists of experts for app coding, teacher trainings, MOOCs, tasks and outdoor education and dissemination covered by universities, a teacher association and a company. The associate partners include teacher associations and schools. The planned activities in the consortium are annual project meetings for coordination and to present current work results, the development and conduct of long (MOOC) and short term curricula to enrich and disseminate the project and technical and didactical developments of the application, webportal and tasks/trails.

Results
In the end, European teachers receive a concept of math trails to be used in the regular maths lessons with results on a technical (advanced app, augmented trails), didactical (theme-based trails, long- and short-term curriculum) and practical (new tasks and trails) level. Hereby, the impacts are that teachers use digital teaching methods more frequently and students use mathematics outdoors regularly and benefit from its use.

Nowadays in Europe the digital technology is connected to the real world. Within this project we will strengthen this connection and use the benefits of a digitalized Europe for improvements of European schools, curricula and educational context

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 381922 Eur

Project Coordinator

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITATFRANKFURT AM MAIN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• TALLINN UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITE LYON 1 CLAUDE BERNARD
• Autentek GmbH
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA
• FEDERACION ESPAÑOLA DE SOCIEDADES DE PROFESORES DE MATEMATICAS
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE VIANA DE CASTELO
• HOCHSCHULE OFFENBURG