Meta-univ maths course to make ‘better teachers’

Masters in Mathematics Education, the country’s first meta-university course, is expected to begin from January 3, 2013, to provide “better mathematics teachers at the school level”.

Dr Khursheed Haider, who has been teaching mathematics at Jamia Millia Islamia since 1994, said the course would open avenues for students who could not “go beyond BEd”.

“Schoolteachers with a BEd will become eligible to do a PhD after completing this course. This will open avenues for them in higher education,” he said.

He said central universities “may have to change their rules to recognise Masters in Mathematics Education as a regular course”.

Teachers of the meta-university course were of the view that the way mathematics was being currently taught at the school level needed to be changed.

“I have seen students of Class VI to Class XII who are scared of this subject. There are others who find it boring. The way mathematics is taught at schools needs to changed. There is a scarcity of good teachers, too,” Shobha Bagai, associate professor at Cluster Innovation Centre, Delhi University, said.

Bagai, who has a PhD from IIT-Delhi, joined the CIC in September last year to teach students of Masters in Mathematics Education. Earlier, she taught at Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College, Delhi University.

“The teaching experience at CIC is different from regular colleges. There it is difficult to get out of the conventional teaching mode. There is

... contd.