CHENNAI: For three out of 10 students, navigating adolescence also means not spending the whole of their student life in the longest divisions, scaling the slippery slopes of calculus, and proving equations that were established as true decades ago.
Thirty-four years ago, Revathy Parameswaran (59) from Chennai embarked on a quest to reintroduce to students the complex hypotheses and numerical abstractions in a proven, tangible fashion, and her lifetime of excellence in teaching culminated in the “hence-proved” moment very recently, when she, among 45 teachers nationwide, was conferred on the National Teachers’ Award 2025 by the President of India.
Math stems from life, and it should be taught with an emphasis on logical reasoning right from an early age, said Revathy, who has been serving as the principal of P S Senior Secondary School in Mylapore, Chennai, for the last eight years. She said, “If mathematics is taught just as a formula-oriented subject, children think it lacks real-life applications.”
Revathy dedicated a majority of her 34-year-long career in the pursuit to explore how the science of numbers could be taught effectively, without it being reduced to a set of formulae. Years before major learning platforms adopted sophisticated learning tools for STEM education, Revathy introduced Geogebra – a dynamic mathematics software that allowed visualisation of abstract concepts – to the students at her school in 2015.
She based her doctoral research on how to help children better understand the subject. “I studied how mathematicians perceived concepts and how they can be introduced to children,” she said about completing her PhD from the Chennai Mathematical Institute. In 2013, she received a Fulbright Scholarship funded by the US government and spent four months at the University of Maryland, learning how mathematics is taught at the institution. She has also been a part of several international forums, including the International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME).
The mathematician has been a staunch advocate for experiential learning methods, which she believes could help combat math anxiety in students. She said, “When introducing prime numbers, for instance, teachers can provide children with objects and ask them to arrange them into equal groups. If a number can only be grouped as a single set or as individual ones, then it is a prime number.”
Revathy has also trained teachers on innovative ways to approach mathematics. She has served as a resource person for workshops conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for teachers. About her typical instruction to teachers during such workshops, she said,
“Every child is different, and teachers must adapt to their needs. Activities should not be done just for the sake of it, but must add value to learning. Teachers should periodically review learning outcomes and use stories, activities and examples. Many students respond well to experiential learning.”
Revathy exhorted young math teachers to strengthen their understanding of fundamental concepts as well as pedagogy. “After all, it is the teachers who lay the foundation for future professionals,” she said.
(Edited by Thamizhamudhan Sekar)