Hejný Method
new methodology of teaching mathematics since school year 2016/2017
Since school year 2016/2017 we have taught the subject mathematics from the first grade of Private Primary School according to the methodology of Prof.RNDr. Milan Hejný, CSc., who is a Czech mathematician, specialist in didactics of mathematics, professor of Faculty of Pedagogy of Comenius University in Prague. He is an author and co-author of 16 mathematic publications and more than 270 publications regarding didactics of mathematics, including 13 frequently quoted books. He has lectured at 13 foreign universities and more than 30 international conferences, participated in 7 national and 4 international grant projects, member of a publishing board of the magazine Educational Studies in Mathematics and publishing board of Kluwer Publishing house for the series Mathematics Teacher Education. He has worked for 10 months as a host professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and 5 months at Central Michigan University in the USA. His methodology of teaching mathematics is based upon the theory of generic models and leads students to the formation of general models and schemes. The idea consists of the fact that the teacher assigns interesting tasks and the students solve them together. Students must form “generic models“ of task solutions on their own. Milan Hejný with the team of Faculty of Pedagogy of Comenius University have prepared many mathematic textbooks for primary schools including teacher’s books.
Prof. Milan Hejný claims that more than 95 per cent of what we really need in life can be found in schemes. He explains it on the knowledge of one’s own flat. “If I know how my flat looks like, I can tell you after a short while how many windows, doors or carpets are there. The problem is, that during teaching of mathematics in standard way, the windows are discussed first, followed by doors and carpets separately, “ claims the 78-year old teacher with Slovak origin.
His research team has discussed the theory of a generic model and prepared a concept of a “scheme-oriented“ educational theory. The concept shall not teach the student to learn math by heart but rather explore it in practical tasks.