Approaches To Teaching Mathematics in Common European Framework

Approaches to teaching mathematics in common European
framework
Tatiana Gavalcov, FIM UHK, Czech Republic
An important feature in European higher education system after the Bologna Declaration
in 1999, supported especially by ERASMUS and SOCRATES program, is the rapidly
growing students mobility. Nowadays, there is a common agreement that Europe need one
higher education area. A tool which enables students mobility is ECTS/DS as a transfer and
accumulation system; due to a large number of European universities, the automatic
recognition of degrees is a necessary condition to build up the European Higher Education
Area.
In what follows, we shall present here results of the European Commission project
Tuning Educational Structures in Europe, outcomes of the period 200 2002; more precisely,
observations and outputs concerning mathematical subjects or educational programs. The
group of authors formulating these results, although large one and consisting of specialists in
business, chemistry, education sciences, geology, history, mathematics and physics subjects
from different European countries, does not pretend to be a representative one. However,
results provide some relevant and concentrated knowledge on processes which are still a topic
of discussions.
As a part of the Tuning project a methodology has been designed to understand curricula
and to make them comparable; the concept of learning outcomes and competences was
introduced. According to the project, these are the most relevant elements in the design,
construction and assessment of qualifications. By learning outcomes we mean the set of
competences including knowledge, understanding and skills a learner is expected to
know/understand/demonstrate after completion of a process of learning, short or long.
Competences and learning outcomes allow flexibility and autonomy in the construction of
curricula and they are the basis for formulating the level indicators.
The idea of recognition for somebody with degree in some subject (for our purpose
Mathematics) from country A to country B means:
(1) he/she will be recognized as a holder of such degree, and the government of the
country B will not require further proof of his/her competence;
(2) a potential employer in country B will be able to assume that he/she has the general
knowledge (of Mathematics for our purpose) expected from somebody with that
degree.
Thus, the idea of a common framework must be combined with a widely used
accreditation system. Concerning programs in mathematics, we meet surely its special
features:
all programs have similar, although not necessarily identical structures,

due to the very nature face of mathematics and to its logical structure, it seems
that mathematics is well suited for the core curricula also from the point of
credits, especially for the first two or three years.
The work on core curriculum in mathematics for education of engineers is still an

important long-term MWG SEFI activity. Its combination with accreditation system consists
in recognizing that a given program fulfils the requirement of the core curriculum. Thus, for
an educational program, one has to check on three aspects: a list of contents, a list of skills,
and the level of mastery of concepts, all treated as in the Tuning project. Let us concern here
on skills only; three skills may be expected of any mathematics graduate:
- the ability to conceive a proof,
- the ability to model a situation mathematically,
- the ability to solve problems using mathematical tools (including numerical and
computational resolution).
Return now to ECTS/DS credit system probably well-known for SEFI members; since
its start as a pilot project in the late 80ties of the last century, now it is the most used credit
system in European higher education. ECTS/DS was not designed to replace national systems,
but to enhance the understanding of them in other countries and systems. Although the task to
combine core curricula with ECTS/DS system seems to be difficult, let us point out that the
credit as a unit of that system is expressed in term of the total student workload measured in
time, that is, a credit does not correspond to the number of contact hours teaching only.
Further, the convention that 60 credits measure the workload of a full-time student during on
academic year, in most cases with 36/40 weeks per year, leads to the expression that
one credit stands for 24 30 working hours of a student (including his/her time spent on
lectures, seminars, independent study, preparation for, and taking of, examination etc.)
Therefore, as a conclusion of the common agreement that Europe need one higher
education area, one gets a statement that one credit system with clear rules is an obvious need,
and due to authorities, ECTS/DS is such a system. A calculation of student workload, a key
task, seems to be a problem in mathematical education as well. The following problems have
to be solved as a part of our activities:
- calculation of workload in terms of credits is to a large extent discipline related, and
therefore has to be determined always by academic staff,
- learning time of a student is influenced by diversity of tradition, coherence of
curriculum, teaching and learning methods, methods of assessment, ability and diligence,
financial funds. A learning time has to express the expected average time to achieve the
specified learning outcomes at some level.

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Approaches to teaching mathematics in common European

all programs have similar, although not necessarily identical structures,

The work on core curriculum in mathematics for education of engineers is still an

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