CIEAEM 57 – Italie – Italy Oral presentations
Piazza Armerina, July 23-29, 2005
Abstract
We aim to develop a new way of teaching mathematics by diverting some best-sold video games to stimulate the students. A cognitive approach of motivation and rule acquisition can lead us to some new results about pedagogy. Our study is deeply based on these words of mathematician David Hilbert: “mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper” [2]. It is a fact that mathematics is a construction based on very simple rules (the axioms) which project a landscape of possibilities (the theorems). A lot of video games can be seen exactly as a “mathematics-like” structure based on defined rules which allow extrapolating certain strategies in order to win.
The fact is that playing to a video game is not usually perceived as a boring activity. We suggest a pedagogical use of video games to explain why mathematics can be perceived by the students as the most powerful possible game. Cognitive sciences allow considering not only the impact on student’s mind, but also on their affect and their various levels of cognitions.
Here we show that the diversion of video games in order to improve mathematics’ didactic leads to an ascendant pedagogy, where the most basic rules (as possible, the axioms) must be taught in order to clearly enact their landscape of possibilities. Then the student would be able to have a better comprehension of what is mathematics. This method has the ambition of
reducing the occurrence of abandons concerning mathematics at every levels of teaching, and the occurrence of superficial rule acquisition. Therefore it should improve the chance of emergence of “masterminded” students (about mathematics) in any n-sample of college students. This method can even be extended to any system of rules.
ABERKANE, Idriss
Lire l’article complet: cieaem57_aberkane_idriss 2005