Khalid Barkaoui
Yesterday, April 19, 2023, the premises of our prestigious Halima Saadia public school under the provincial management of Boulemane hosted a typically educational meeting from 9 a.m. This meeting was moderated with mastery and professionalism by the pedagogical inspector of primary education Mr. Abdelmajid Zarour and the effective participation of a slew of teachers from the public and private sector. These actors flocked in large numbers to take part in a high-level communication of our supervising dynamics. This communication is entitled: mathematical concepts: from design to use aims to provide our primary school teachers with new skills in the co-construction of mathematical concepts. The nodal point of this presentation lies in the use of a didactic approach recognized internationally and which deserves a lucid focus in order to draw the eloquent lessons which are essential with as much acuity: this is the approach of Singapore in mathematics.
It is true that this approach has shown its effectiveness, particularly when students from Singapore take part in international assessment tests such as PISA and TIMSS. The Singaporean learners who take part in these tests are in pole position alongside the Japanese, Chinese and Finnish. This method has become a source of inspiration for more than 60 countries that have adopted it.
The results of the TIMSS 2019 survey were unveiled on Tuesday, December 08, 2020. This edition saw the participation of 64 countries and nearly 580,000 students. Morocco participated for the third consecutive time (2011, 2015, 2019) in this survey with 8,830 students in the fourth year of primary school and 9,790 students in the second year of middle school (according to the supervisory ministry). Morocco is lagging behind. This bitter and worrying observation of our country shows if necessary that the teaching/learning of scientific subjects and in particular of mathematics is to be reinvented and renovated.
It should be emphasized that this approach, which emerged in the 1980s in Singapore, draws its essence from several didactic methods such as those of Maria Montessori, Freinet, Piaget, Bruner… This method favors the manipulation of concrete objects to inculcate a passion for discipline and develop reasoning in students aged 5 to 12.
This method recommends a pleasant progression composed of three strong moments: from the outset, the pupils approach the mathematical problems by manipulating concrete objects such as cubes, tokens, bars, sticks…then, we move on to a second moment, namely pictorial representation. In a nutshell, manipulated objects are replaced by images that represent them.
So a stack of ten cubes represents the number ten, then a dime, and so on. This is the pictorial step.
The third key moment of this approach is the transition to abstraction or schematization. The three apples which are concrete objects are ipso facto replaced by an image and at the end they are replaced by the number 3.
The Singapore method once again places speech at the heart of learning and promotes the construction of knowledge through a constructive exchange between teacher and student. The teacher thus has a role of guide and mentor. By his judiciously formulated questions, he makes explicit what may not be for the student and helps him to break down his thoughts. The practice of mathematics therefore becomes collaborative and is based on exchange and interaction. Not only does the teacher explain in words what he is doing, but also the student is called upon to use verbalization to explain aloud what he is doing and the path he is taking to arrive at the result.
It is an approach that promotes collective work, collaboration, attention, communication and which relies on fun activities to make learning more pleasant and fun.
The success of this approach depends on the initial and continuous training of Singaporean teaching staff. This staff benefits from no less than 100 hours of continuous training per year. One thing is inevitable: the success of this approach is due to the availability of a multitude of teaching materials. Objects and kits are made available to all schools in this nation to allow each child to manipulate the objects in order to do additions, subtractions, divisions, multiplications, fractions… and to have an attitude positive towards this discipline.
By way of conclusion, I can announce that our students have trouble assimilating mathematics. This finding is corroborated by the latest alarming report published by the INE with the higher education council. This is the PNEA 2019. This report confirmed the mediocrity of the level of our Moroccan schoolchildren and college students in this scientific discipline. It is time to align our program with the PISA and TIMSS tests, but it is also urgent to draw inspiration from this approach to refine the quality of teaching/learning mathematics.
Khalid Barkaoui
Member of the AMEF CP de Boulemane.