Imagine Math Day: Encouraging Secondary School Students and Teachers to Engage in Authentic Mathematical Discovery

Authors

Darryl H. Yong, Harvey Mudd CollegeFollow
Michael E. Orrison Jr., Harvey Mudd CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Department

Mathematics (HMC)

Publication Date

8-2008

Abstract

Research mathematicians and school children experience mathematics in profoundly different ways. Ask a group of mathematicians what it means to “do mathematics” and you are likely to get a myriad of responses: mathematics involves analyzing and organizing patterns and relationships, reasoning and drawing conclusions about the world, or creating languages and tools to describe and solve important problems. Students of mathematics often report “doing mathematics” as performing calculations or following rules. It’s natural that they see mathematics as monolithic rather than an evolving, growing, socially constructed body of knowledge, because most mathematical training in primary and secondary schools consists of learning how to use pre-existing mathematical tools. They rarely get to see the process by which those tools came about, let alone authentically participate in the construction of those tools.

Comments

First published in MAA Focus, vol. 28, no. 6 (August/Septemer 2008) by the Mathematical Association of America.

Rights Information

©2008 Mathematical Association of America

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Recommended Citation

Orrison, M., and Yong, D. "Imagine Math Day: Encouraging Secondary School Students and Teachers to Engage in Authentic Mathematical Discovery." MAA FOCUS 28 (2008), no. 6, 24-27.