Exploring the use of Fermi problems to elicit students´ and pre-service teachers´ intercultural awareness in mathematics classrooms

This workshop explores the use of so-called Fermi problems (FPs) to elicit students´ and pre-service teachers’ intercultural awareness (ICA) in mathematics classrooms.

FPs are contextualized problems requiring the students to structure and make assumptions about the problem situation and estimate relevant quantities; for example: How many people do you think could fit in the playground?

We use the overall framing of the models and modeling perspective on teaching and learning to combine three strands of research in mathematics education focusing on (i) ethnomathematics, (ii) FPs, (iii) the six design principles of so-called Model Eliciting Activities, and the strand of English language educational research in terms of three levels of awareness: basic cultural awareness, advanced cultural awareness, and intercultural awareness.

The two research questions (RQs) studied in the workshop are:What is the impact of students’ cultural setting on their solutions and solving processes when working on FPs?What issues and questions related to cultural similarities and differences are elicited in mathematics classrooms when students solve and compare their solutions to FPs developed by students in another cultural setting?The RQs are investigated in an international collaboration involving 4 countries over a 2-year period and the outcome of the workshop is a new framework for analyzing students’ work on FPs with respect to ICA and sets of FPs focusing on eliciting components of ICA.