Masters Project: Contextual Learning in Children
The topic for my Masters Thesis was contextual learning in children. This involved creating a product that teaches a topic to children through a particular context. The topic to be though was chosen as basic multiplication and the context was rural and farming backgrounds. The project was completed as a pilot test for potential large scale analysis of contextual learning. The product was run in a rural and urban school and also a control group. An original survey was sent to the schools to try to better understand what items rural children had a better understanding of and urban children has a poorer understanding of.
This original survey gave a basis of what should be involved in the tutorial to demonstrate the topic of multiplication. Some sums of increasing difficulty were given before and after the tutorial to gage the level of the students proficiency in maths before and after the tutorial to see the potential increase in mathematic ability. This was one of the aspects used for the statical analysis of the product. A survey was also given to the students who used the product to see their reaction towards the product, to give an view of the two contexts observations towards the product and its effectiveness as a learning tool.