It is
apparent that, these days, teachers are giving math lessons to their students
mainly via relational and instrumental way. While both ways have their
advantages and disadvantages, I am of the opinion that the integration of these
methods can make overall student learning effective and successful.
To begin,
on one side, an instrumental learning is very easy for students to adapt as it
does not only include less knowledge of learning material, but also provides
positive but less lasting results very quickly. As a consequence, some students
do develop their confidence that help them later in becoming interested for
more learning in other mathematical topics. However, on the other side,
relational learning is very natural for almost everyone. Students very often
show incredible interest in learning when they find meaning making reasoning
behind every step of any particular math problem. From teacher’s point of view,
the teacher’s task to making their students interested in learning becomes much
easier.
All in
all, using both ways together can be very helpful for both teachers and
students. For example, solving for F (3) in the following mathematics problem:
F(x) =
x^2-4
There are
two ways to solve this question, using an instrumental approach, we can just replace
X with 3 and then simply solve the question. It will be very quick and easy for
a majority of student. The relational way to solve this problem is the usage of
graph. In this way, a teacher can actually show students about what does this
answer means for them. Using a combination of the aforementioned methods, a
teacher can first teach this problem via graphically and then via instrumental
technique once students appear to understand the actual concept of the problem.
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