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On Tuesday, we will learn how Swedish students in grades four and eight perform in math and science compared to other countries that are members of the EU or OECD.
Then Timss for 2019 is presented, it is one of the largest international knowledge surveys and is conducted just like Pisa every four years.
In the previous survey, which was conducted in 2015, Swedish students were below average in math.
Andreas Ryve is professor of mathematics didactics at the University of Mälardalen and has for many years investigated the results and attitudes that emerged in Timss.
– We have tried to see what can explain the differences based on what happens in the classrooms of different countries, says Andreas Ryve.
For example, to see how the great math gap turned out, which consisted of developing the skills of all math teachers.
According to Andreas Ryve, teaching in Sweden has focused too much on children sitting and counting themselves and too little on teachers leading classroom instruction.
Andreas Ryve has investigated the Time Survey and the results of Swedish students in mathematics.
Photo: Private
The time curve shows that Swedish student scores have been falling steadily since 1995, but stabilized in 2011 and then increased slightly.
The decline is likely due to the passive role that the teacher assumed in Swedish classrooms during this time, according to Andreas Ryve.
– Of course, it is good that students are active. But if you go to a museum or a cricket match for the first time, you won’t understand much if you don’t have an expert commentator or guide to explain it to you. The same goes for mathematics.
A consequence of the students They would work independently became the teacher’s role to try to motivate them. This meant that the teaching was irrationally based on different everyday examples, says Andreas Ryve.
– When we look at this in our research, we see that there is a negative correlation between this and how much students learn.
It may seem logical to use different everyday examples, but there are many pitfalls, he says and gives some examples.
For example, the teacher can talk about sunflowers and how they grow day by day so that students can calculate how long they last after one week.
– But then he easily starts talking about other things, for example, if students have sunflower seeds in their breakfast file and lose focus on the math problem.
Other everyday examples Risks leading to errors may be that students have to calculate how fast Lisa runs one kilometer, based on how fast she runs one hundred meters.
– But then it is not taken into account that he gets tired and runs slowly at the end and then there are discussions about it.
