Modelling and Modelling Competencies in School

The paper reports on university seminars of mathematical modelling at school. The seminars were held by the departments of mathematics and mathematics education together with various schools in Hamburg. Future teachers and students in upper secondary level carried out together modelling examples either in ordinary lessons or special afternoon groups. They tackled authentic problems proposed by applied mathematicians working in industry. In this paper we consider one of these examples in more detail and describe students' attempts at solving the problem. The paper also deals with modelling competencies and their development. These competencies are evaluated by means of a test that was applied to all participating students at the beginning and at the end of the seminar. The results of these tests are reported and they indicate which competencies were fostered through modelling examples and which were not.