SKEMP THEORIES

HOW THE THEORIES CAN APPLY IN

MATHEMATICS LEARNING?
About Him

 Richard Skemp
 Was born on March 10,
1919 – and died on June 22,
1995
 Definition Of Skemp Theories

Producing both theories of learning, including

Intelligence, Learning and Action (Wiley, 1979) and
corresponding practical curriculum materials such
as Understanding Mathematics at secondary level
and Mathematics in the Primary School.
 Richard Skemp Idea’s

Mathematics, like music, needs to be expressed in

physical actions and human interactions before its
symbols can evoke the silent patterns of
mathematical ideas (like musical notes),
simultaneous relationships (like harmonies) and
expositions of proofs (like melodies).
The silent music of mathematics, likening the learning
of mathematics to the learning of music — as a lived
and shared aural and performance experience, versus a
far more passive, isolated pencil-and-paper experience.
Skemp comments that some composers can read a
printed musical score, or write one by hand, and HEAR
the musical sounds that are captured or expressed in
the notation. Most lesser mortals need to have the
music performed to know what the ball-and-stick ink
on-paper means. It is, as Skemp argues, convincingly
as always, similar with mathematics:
In the meantime, teachers and researchers will
continue to work outside students’ brains, using
words, images and actions to stimulate students’
mathematical thinking, while watching and listening
to student speech, writing, drawing and other actions.
The real learning that happens in the students’ brains
can at best only be inferred – in common sense ways
as well as in Skempian, and other, psychological
approaches – from external observations.
 Skemp’s expressing the essence of ideas in simple
language.
“it is easy to make simple things difficult but difficult
to make hard things easy.”
“teaches the product of mathematical thought, not
the process of mathematical thinking.”
How we can apply this theories in learning Mathematics

Mathematics as Problem Solving

1. The Skemp learning activities are, themselves,
problem-solving tasks.
2. The students are led to construct mathematical
concepts and relationships from physical experiences
designed to appeal to their imagination and to build on
their real-world experiences.
3. Students work cooperatively on well-designed, goal-
directed tasks, making predictions, testing hypotheses
and building relational understandings that facilitate
routine and non-routine problem solving
Mathematics as Communication.
1. The Skemp learning activities are designed to
foster communication about mathematical concepts
between students and between students and adults.
The place value concepts with physical
embodiments, spoken/heard symbols, and
written/read symbols, all the while exploring the
underlying mathematical meanings and using
problem solving strategies to predict their best move.
Mathematics as Reasoning
1. Using patterns and relationships to make sense out
of situations is an integral component of the Skemp
learning activities.
2. The activities frequently lead the students to
explore, conjecture (make predictions), and test
their conjectures.
3. The program builds on relational understanding.
Useful instrumental (habit) learning is promoted
when appropriate.
Mathematical Connections
1. Teacher arrange the activities in optimal learning sequences and provide teachers
with the framework to make relational connections within and across networks. Many
of the activities require assembling previously learned concepts and processes to deal
with the task at hand. An entire network (NuSp 1, The number track and the
number line) is devoted to number tracks and number lines, which are of importance
throughout mathematics, from kindergarten through university-level mathematics,
and beyond. They provide valuable support for our thinking about numbers in the form
of a pictorial representation. Skemp's unerring notions about contexts that appeal to
student imaginations have produced interesting lifelike settings in which the students
learn. They compare possible outcomes of the moves they might make in One tonne
van drivers (Num 3.10/3), and they are introduced to a budgeting activity in
Catalogue shopping (Num 3.10/4). In adult life, planning the use of money and
other resources (e.g., time, labour) is one of the major uses of arithmetic. Because of
interesting real life situations, connections to other curriculum areas are easily
integrated. Feeding the animals (Num 7.2/1) and Setting the table (Num 4.5/2,
SAIL Volume 1) are examples of activities which have spin-offs to art and health