2007©The Montana Council of Teachers of Mathematics Can our Learners Model in Mathematics?

Abstract: Mathematical modeling of real world conditions should be part ofl mathematics classroom activities. In this paper I argue that when real world problems are taught at schools learners are not able to cope on their own, without the assistance of their educator. There is very little or no emphasis placed on this aspect of mathemtics at schools, although it is just beginning to make an appearance in our new Outcomes Based Curriculum. I also discuss an experiment conducted with Grade 10 learners (15 year old) and their responses to real world problems and the conditions that need to be considered. There is ample evidence that a lot of work on mathematical modeling of real world problems has been done elsewhere in the world, but not much has been done in South Africa. This experiment was fully conducted using Sketchpad as a mediating tool. This in itself was a difficult task because our learners have not been really exposed to dynamic geometry environments. 1. The Teaching Experiment This paper reports on a modeling experiment that was conducted, to teach concepts such as perpendicular bisectors and concurrency, with grade 10 learners, using a pseudo real world problem. The learners selected for this research were from a school in Chatsworth in KwaZulu