Students' general learning difficulties can stem from inappropriate educational interactions, some internal factors, or the environment. Cultural and linguistic diversity, meanwhile, are often underestimated factors that can cause a learning difficulty. Also, students who are slower to acquire knowledge are expected to progress more slowly in acquiring school skills and knowledge, as their level of performance or learning achievements match their intellectual abilities. Most often, students with learning difficulties in mathematics already have poorer educational achievements in the subject in primary school. National examinations showed that ninth-graders have major problems with algebra problems, including equations and inequations solving, and with exponentiation and fractional problems, which are the basis for solving exponential equations and inequations. We can help them to progress more successfully by taking into account their special-educational needs, such as the need for concrete visual-schematic presentations, recording intermediate results, insisting on tasks and considering sequences of examples. To improve the quality of learning, it is first necessary to assess students ’mistakes and one way of assessing is to analyse students’ mistakes. This way we can determine the cause of the problems and find solutions to solve them. According to the research results, the most common mistakes made by students in solving exponential equations are: misunderstanding the concept of exponential equations, inappropriate use and order of computational operations, and incorrect use of the common power base. Before teaching to solve exponential equations and inequations, the teacher must have a good understanding of their concept and include life examples and situations during teaching and consolidation of material, as students thus gain new ideas for solving problems and gain a deeper understanding.
I conducted a case study with a student with learning difficulties in mathematics, who attended the 3rd year of secondary vocational school of economics during the training and achieved the prescribed educational goals in mathematics with great difficulty. I designed a 16-hour training to solve exponential equations and inequations in order to design, implement and evaluate training to consolidate the solving of exponential equations and exponential inequations after an initial assessment of basic conceptual and procedural skills. The training included consolidation of prior knowledge, consolidation of solving exponential equations and inequations in the analytical and graphical way, and consolidation of current teaching material in school in mathematics. At the end of the training, I checked for a possible change in the student's self-evaluation of her learning achievements and success in mathematics. The results of the research showed that before the start of the training, the student had deficits in conceptual and procedural knowledge in all areas of prior knowledge which are needed to solve exponential equations and inequations. With appropriate adjustments, the use of various aids, explicit teaching, observance of the gradualness of sequences and the presentation of various strategies for solving mathematical problems, the student made visible progress in solving exponential equations and inequations. The training also influenced the student to be more positive in her self-evaluation in terms of success and achievement in mathematics. The training itself proved to be successful, as the student with learning difficulties in mathematics showed progress in several areas of solving exponential equations and inequations, as well as in the areas of prior knowledge that were included in the training. Findings after the end of the training will thus be able to help special rehabilitation educators in dealing with high school students with learning difficulties in mathematics.
|
