Activity Based Learning (ABL): How it can be a recipe for success in mathematics?

Authors: Sumeet Khurana

Pages: 91-95

Abstract:

compulsory school attendance for many years. Mathematics is a part of our general education and all children have to study mathematics till class 10th. But most of the students take mathematics as a very boring and difficult subject to understand. They have a phobia of mathematics. In most of the schools, teachers’ teaching style is only lecture method. Generally, the teachers believe that mathematics is about knowing solutions to problems and not about being able to understand the concept and about being able to think of ways of solving problems. The emphasis is always being on the solution rather than on thinking of a technique to reach the solution. Therefore, teaching gets restricted only to sharing solutions with students from either the textbooks or guide books, which promotes memorization in mathematics. Mathematics classroom tends to become uninteresting for students. This calls for a teacher to change his/her pedagogy. For most teachers, to make mathematics an interesting and enjoyable subject is quite tedious job because of their own fear of mathematics. ‘Activity based mathematics teaching’and ‘child centered’teaching are just technical terms to them but they don’t actually implement these techniques in their teaching. Also most of the schools don’t have access to material required in activity based learning which again becomes a barrier for the teachers to use creative techniques. In this paper focus would be on the need, benefits and problems in the implementation of the activity based learning in the light of review of related literature. Suggestion are given to make activity based learning a recipe for success in mathematics.