Implementation of IBL in Europe from an Australasian perspective
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COMMENTARY PAPER
Implementation of IBL in Europe from an Australasian perspective Gloria Ann Stillman
Accepted: 27 September 2013 / Published online: 15 October 2013 FIZ Karlsruhe 2013
Abstract In this paper the situation in Australasia with respect to research, curricula and practice in inquiry-based learning in mathematics education is examined. As an organising frame the work of researchers in the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) was examined for points of intersection with several of the papers that have arisen from the international PRIMAS project, one of several projects funded by the European Union which follow the recommendations of the Rocard Report (Rocard et al. 2007). Although MERGA services researchers in countries such as Singapore in addition to Australia and New Zealand, a survey of outputs of members showed that the latter two countries had more of a tradition of inquiry-based learning practices and research in mathematics education than did Asian countries under the MERGA umbrella such as Singapore. For this reason the focus here is on mathematics education in the schools in these two countries and the classroom research in them that extends or complements the research or issues raised in other papers in this issue of ZDM. Keywords Argumentation Discourse Discussion Inquiry-based learning Scaffolding
1 Introduction Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is receiving attention in parts of the world other than Europe such as Australasia where it
G. A. Stillman (&) Education Victoria, Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, 1200 Mair Street, Ballarat, VIC 3350, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
has been the basis of classroom research for several years (e.g. Fielding-Wells 2013; Goos et al. 1999; Hunter, R. 2006, 2008, 2012; Hunter, J. 2006, 2009; Hunter and Anthony 2011; Maor and Fraser 1996). At times, though, it has other descriptors than the IBL tag, for example, investigation (e.g. Owens 1998), collective argumentation (CA) (e.g. Brown and Renshaw 2000) and student-centred curriculum integration (CI) (e.g. Brough and Calder 2012). However, the status of the mathematics within the inquiry can differ markedly with these different forms. Mathematics often plays a trivial role in the service of teaching other curriculum content, such as environmental science in CI, for example, where the focus is not on advancing mathematical understanding (Wineburg and Grossman 2000), but only applying already known mathematics (e.g. recording the volume of juice from a worm farm). In an Australasian context the distinctive feature of inquirybased mathematics classrooms is that ‘‘students have a significant opportunity for engagement through activities involving mathematical discussion and argumentation’’ (Hunter and Anthony 2011, p. 98). When the idea of mathematical inquiry initially came to the fore in Australia, influenced by Cockcroft (1982), approaches such as problem solving and investigation were seen as distinctively different (e.g. Queensland Departm
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