THE PLACE AND ROLE OF CONTEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN REALISTIC MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
Keywords:
contextual problems, realistic mathematics education, modeling, visualization, learning and teaching mathematicsAbstract
Contemporary theories of mathematics education were created primarily in response to the many criticisms of traditional mathematics education. One of the recent theories is the theory of realistic mathematics education (Realistic Mathematics Education - RME), which interprets mathematics as a human activity, and learning process is seen as an activity for solving everyday problems, namely the problems from contexts. The contexts are usually complex structures, and processes of their modeling and mathematization go through several stages. That is why it is necessary for their solving, in the process of teaching mathematics, to apply models that provide visualization.
Accordingly, the first part of the paper, along with the theoretical interpretation of the aforementioned aspects of modern mathematics education, provides examples of contextual problems whose modeling uses different types of graphs.
The methodological part of the paper is focused on examining how much contextual problems, which determine realistic mathematics education, are present in mathematics teaching of basic school cycle.
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