Draft NCF: Eliminate fear of maths, bust gender stereotypes

Reshma Ravishanker The Draft National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for School Education 2023 wants to make mathematics teaching-learning less intimidating and relatable with the everyday lives of students. In a separate chapter titled ‘Mathematics Education’ it details ways and means teachers can introduce children to this less preferred subject through age-appropriate pedagogies and advocates busting of gender stereotypes that male students are bound to outperform girl children in the subject. It also details contribution of Indian mathematicians to this exact science. “There are two major aspects that cause fear of mathematics. The nature of the subject and how it is being taught; and how it is being perceived in society,” says the Draft NCF. “Prevalent social attitudes which see girls as incapable of mathematics, or association of formal computational abilities with the upper castes. Such social discriminations also cause the fear and anxiety in students. We need to break that belief exist in the society.” In the Foundational Stage, the focus will be on attaining foundational numeracy (i.e., understanding, and adding and subtracting with, Indian numerals); the Preparatory Stage, the focus shifts to the development of concepts such as numbers, basic operations (including multiplication and division), shapes, and measurement; the Middle Stage, the emphasis moves towards abstracting some of the concepts learned in the Preparatory Stage in order to make them more widely applicable and finally The Secondary Stage focuses on developing the ability to justify claims and arguments through logical reasoning. The Draft NCF advocates teaching maths through a multi-disciplinary approach and integrating maths education with arts, language and sports education. “Art and Mathematics are closely linked through several concepts. Most importantly, both these disciplines play an important role in understanding patterns, as well as enhancing spatial abilities and visualisation. Integrating the arts with mathematics would need to not only include art activities that engage students in creating visual patterns, tessellations, and making origami, the pedagogy could also include an exposure to examples of artworks that contain interesting patterns,” says the Draft NCF.     Suggestions to teach mathematics through sports include: Through sports, concepts related to measurement and mensuration could be easily taught and related unit conversion can also be discussed simultaneously. Many geometrical shapes can be discussed on the field like angles, triangles, circles etc. Many concepts from data handling, statistics and probability are closely linked with almost all the sports like averages, drawing different types of graphs, and interpreting them, calculating the chance of winning etc.    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Posted in Magazine