Papers by Helge Fredriksen
Research and Development in University Mathematics Education, 2021
240, 2020
This research project is a case-study of three consecutive cohorts of engineering students being ... more This research project is a case-study of three consecutive cohorts of engineering students being subject to the pedagogical approach of flipped classroom (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). The study, which is qualitative and based on a naturalistic research paradigm (Moschkovich & Brenner, 2000), considers various aspects of mathematical learning when students are subject to this new form of learner-centred teaching (Stephan, 2014). Research on Flipped Classroom (FC) has increased substantially during the last decade. However, the bulk of studies consider mostly student satisfaction and performance comparisons between traditional lecture-based and FC teaching. As such, they provide little insight into the fundamental aspects of what makes the FC in tertiary mathematics education efficient or not. As such, there is a definite lack of research that provides qualitative socio-cultural studies of FC teaching and learning. The aim of the study was to address these shortcomings in the research field
The main concept of Flipped Classroom (FC) is to invert, or flip, the content of teaching in term... more The main concept of Flipped Classroom (FC) is to invert, or flip, the content of teaching in terms of what is done during the homework phase, compared to the activity in the class with the teacher. Traditionally, the students at higher education attend a lecture, accompanied with tasks to solve at home or in a colloquium arranged by the University. The FC model will alter this completely, giving the students the opportunity to watch the lectures at home using pre-recorded videos. When attending class, instead of listening to a lecture, the students spend the time in a more dialogue-based problem-solving activity. To capture this complexity, the poster proposes a conceptualization of FC within the Activity Theory Framework.
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA
Flipped Classroom as a pedagogical framework has gained popularity at secondary and tertiary leve... more Flipped Classroom as a pedagogical framework has gained popularity at secondary and tertiary levels of mathematics education, but there is a lack of research based on a solid theoretical foundation. This article considers the flipped mathematics classroom from the perspective of affordances and cultural–historical activity theory. The empirical background is based on semi-structured interview data from eight first-year computer-engineering students following 1 year of flipped classroom teaching. The thematic analysis of the data indicates that the flipped format offers a range of affordances at various levels of the activity system. This article advances research on affordances for mathematical learning in a flipped classroom pedagogical frame, presenting operational affordances out-of-class, action affordances at the mathematical task level and finally activity affordances at the collective level.
International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education
Flipped classroom (FC) pedagogical frameworks have recently gained considerable popularity, espec... more Flipped classroom (FC) pedagogical frameworks have recently gained considerable popularity, especially at secondary school levels. However, there are rich opportunities to explore FC at tertiary levels, but progress on the area requires instructors’ attention to well-designed tasks for students’ collaborative learning. Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) provides a foundation for the development of such tasks. This article advances research on the role of task design in a FC context by considering how RME heuristics may be developed to include the out-of-class phase, where students prepare for in-class work with videos. This adaption, named flipped RME classroom design, is explored through two realizations of such a design with a group of computer engineering students during their first year of studying compulsory mathematics. Thematic analysis of the classroom observations shows that students’ modelling activity in-class is supported by the design of an out-of-class component in ...
International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education
ZDM
While the number of studies of flipped classrooms has increased, they have primarily addressed th... more While the number of studies of flipped classrooms has increased, they have primarily addressed the efficacy of using such an approach on student outcomes, often failing to account for the classroom activities and learning theories used to design the curriculum. This study begins to fill this gap in the literature by uniting the at-home video and in-class curricular components of the flipped classroom via design heuristics that empower students to critically think about mathematical problems individually before engaging with the task in a collective environment. To that end, we illustrate how elements of the instructional design theory of Realistic Mathematics Education and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy influenced the written and hidden curriculum and how those considerations were then experienced by the students as part of the enacted components of the curriculum. The context of the study is a 2-week classroom teaching experiment covering topics in trigonometry and vectors for 27 calculus students at a Norwegian university.
Teaching Mathematics and its Applications
To support the possibility of taking an online engineering degree programme, Narvik Universtiy Co... more To support the possibility of taking an online engineering degree programme, Narvik Universtiy College has chosen to facilitate a streaming service of all lectures conducted by the college. At the Bodo college campus, in the academic year of 2012/2013, these online lectures were used as a central component in adidactic innovation project. The aim was to test and evaluate the capabilites and limitations that web-base communication provides both academically and socially. This innovation was viewed within a Vygotskian theoretical framework linked to a social constructivist facilitation of sudents´ learning. A survey among the students was performed in the mid-semester. The results of the analysis show that the renewal f the teaching was well received by the students in the group. Howevwe, the social learning environment suffered, since students failed to participate in the sessions created in connection with the web lecturing.Thus, the social learning context that we initiallly sought to strengthen was fragmented and lacked momentum as a rsult of the change.
International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology
This study explores contradictions that emerge when utilising a flipped classroom approach to uni... more This study explores contradictions that emerge when utilising a flipped classroom approach to university mathematics education. The work uses Activity Theory and its principle of dialectical contradiction as a theoretical framework to identify and analyse contradictions that arise in flipped mathematics classrooms for engineering students. Data was collected mainly by means of video recording of classroom activities and interviews with two cohorts of first-year engineering students in a Norwegian university over two years. An inductive approach to data analysis based on the interaction between the theoretical framework and the empirical data is used to provide evidence about the contradictions. The results show that contradictions manifest themselves as tensions in flipped mathematics classrooms. They emerge at different activity levels and affect student learning of mathematics. The aim of the study is to address the lack of research on tensions and contradictions in flipped mathematics classrooms at the university level.
Proceedings CERME8
The article summarises experiences gained through my practice as web-based pedagogue in mathemati... more The article summarises experiences gained through my practice as web-based pedagogue in mathematics at the University of Nordland (Norway)’s teacher-training institute. It has been my wish to make continuous improvements to my practice and I present two of the most important improvements that I investigated on the basis of practical action research. Data collected from students’ feedback indicates that video lectures produced by filming whiteboard teaching yields a greater educational result than so-called screen video of a slideshow run on a PC. In addition, we present and discuss significant findings regarding the use of Skype in web-based teaching
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Papers by Helge Fredriksen