First Results from a Study Investigating Swedish Upper Secondary Students’ Mathematical Modelling Competencies

Quality Teaching of Mathematical Modelling: What Do We Know, What Can We Do?

“…Modelling is indeed rather difficult for students (see, for instance, Houston andNeill 2003, or Frejd andÄrlebäck 2011). Figure 6 shows the PISA task "Rock Concert".…”

Modes of Mathematical Modelling : An analysis of how modelling is used and interpreted in and out of school settings

“…In an investigation of 400 students about their modelling competency, only 23% of the students expressed that they had encountered mathematical models or mathematical modelling in their education before participating in the study. (Frejd & Ärlebäck, 2011). Maybe as a consequence of that result, the students in the same investigation seemed not to have a clear view about the meaning of the notion of mathematical modelling (ibid.).…”

“…Looking at Ärlebäck's (2009c) dissertation, it includes and discusses five different papers with different aims. The papers investigate teachers' beliefs and affects (Ärlebäck, 2010), students' modelling competency (Frejd & Ärlebäck, 2011), introducing mathematical modelling by Fermi problems (Ärlebäck, 2009d), curriculum aspects (Ärlebäck, 2009b) and designing and implementing of modelling activities into secondary school (Ärlebäck, 2009a). A brief summary with the main conclusions will be provided below.…”

“…Frejd, , 2011aFrejd, , 2011dFrejd & Ärlebäck, 2010Frejd & Ärlebäck, , 2011. All papers provide information about how the notion of mathematical modelling is interpreted and used by different actors in Swedish upper secondary school in mathematics except for one paper, which presents an exploratory and comparative literature review about meanings associated with models and modelling in the context of the teaching and learning of mathematics .…”

“…All papers provide information about how the notion of mathematical modelling is interpreted and used by different actors in Swedish upper secondary school in mathematics except for one paper, which presents an exploratory and comparative literature review about meanings associated with models and modelling in the context of the teaching and learning of mathematics . The other papers focus on student's modelling competencies (Frejd & Ärlebäck, 2011), student's description of the notions of mathematical models and modelling (Frejd & Ärlebäck, 2010), how and what is assessed in national course tests about mathematical modelling (Frejd, 2011a) and teachers' conceptions of mathematical modelling (Frejd, 2011d) (similar to Paper 3). A summary of the main findings of Frejd and Ärlebäck, (2010) and Frejd (2011a are presented below.…”