TraM project: Transfer in Mathematics at the Gymnasium

The TraM-project is an SNF-funded collaboration between Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Stern (D-GESS), Prof. Dr. Norbert Hungerbuhler (D-MATH), and Dr. Ralph Schumacher (MINT Learning Center at ETH Zurich). The project was instigated by findings of decreasing the mathematical abilities of students across Switzerland and the need for a new curriculum that would help students to learn mathematics better again.

In the TraM-project, a large-scale comparison study, a new experimental 'Cognitively Activating' curriculum was devised by Dr. Armin Barth of the MINT Learning Center. This 'CogAct' curriculum is then evaluated against the best practices in the field of mathematics in the specific subjects of functions and differential calculus. The 'Transfer'-element of the TraM-project concerns the effects of early cognitively activating curriculum intervention on subsequent performance in kinematics, for which the knowledge of functions is important. Additional transfer effects that are planned to be investigated are effects of early functions-intervention on subsequent learning of differential calculus.