“All teachers should have the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills to enable them to develop successfully in our school system, being able to generate learning and bring out the talents and abilities of all children in our country.”
With these words, Salome Martinez, Fondef Project Director “Resource for the Initial Training of Elementary School Teachers”, officially launched this initiative that has as partners the Ministry of Education, the Chilean Academy of Sciences and Ediciones SM Chile.
During the ceremony, held on June 14 at the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral, the academic said the aim of this project is to contribute to the improvement of preparedness to teach mathematics for prospective Elementary School teachers in the country. “For this purpose this project intends to produce a selection of texts and multimedia materials for future teachers, supplemented by textbooks for teacher educators to interpret the standards of initial training for Elementary school teachers made by the INICIA project.”
“Our project considers incorporate different levels of evaluation of our progress and the performance of pilots, which will test the material in courses in various teaching careers. Not only the pilot experiences will help us to amend courses, change approaches and enrich our texts, but also to capture these experiences for use in other products: the text for the trainer, which is a sort of teacher's guide providing guidance and support to teacher educators, “added Martínez.
A call for all players
For the realization of this initiative a large number of mathematicians and educators has been brought, many of whom have participated in other projects that have been conducted at the Center for Mathematical Modeling. “To this network, which includes professors from different profiles and different institutions was joined the Faculty of Mathematics, PUC, which allowed us to expand our partnership network and consolidate the work together,” she added.
During the ceremony, the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, Martin Chuaqui, thanked Salome Martinez for having them joined in this initiative and stressed that “this is a pioneering project considering that there are no books of this nature in Spanish nor have a contemporary approach on what teachers should know (…). We have an optimistic view about the measures being taken to strengthen the disciplinary training of future teachers, integrating it creatively with the equally necessary teaching skills.”
The social impact of CMM
The Dean of the School of Physics and Mathematical Science at the University of Chile, Francisco Brieva, gave special recognition to the work done by the Center for Mathematical Modeling in the area of mathematics education. “It is good that this week, which we questioned the university system, questioned how we develop as a country, there are organized people, and there is a near future we can appreciate.” “The CMM – he added-has the ability to go beyond the specifics of the discipline or the success of the new research; it has also addressed the extension in its most basic sense, and how a knowledge can permeate to others in different dimensions. That experience leading the Centre in these almost 15 years since it began to take shape, to call people, is a model that has been repeated in other areas, but not with the social impact that has had the CMM. “
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