Mathematics as a Constructive Activity (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning Series) - Softcover

Watson, Anne; Mason, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805843442 ISBN 13: 9780805843446

Publisher: Routledge, 2005

Synopsis

This book explains and demonstrates the teaching strategy of asking learners to construct their own examples of mathematical objects. The authors show that the creation of examples can involve transforming and reorganizing knowledge and that, although this is usually done by authors and teachers, if the responsibility for making examples is transferred to learners, their knowledge structures can be developed and extended. A multitude of examples to illustrate this is provided, spanning primary, secondary, and college levels. Readers are invited to learn from their own past experience augmented by tasks provided in the book, and are given direct experience of constructing examples through a collection of many tasks at many levels. Classroom stories show the practicalities of introducing such shifts in mathematics education. The authors examine how their approach relates to improving the learning of mathematics and raise future research questions.

*Based on the authors' and others' theoretical and practical experience, the book includes a combination of exercises for the reader, practical applications for teaching, and solid scholarly grounding.
*The ideas presented are generic in nature and thus applicable across every phase of mathematics teaching and learning.
*Although the teaching methods offered are ones that engage learners imaginatively, these are also applied to traditional approaches to mathematics education; all tasks offered in the book are within conventional mathematics curriculum content.

Mathematics as a Constructive Activity: Learners Generating Examples is intended for mathematics teacher educators, mathematics teachers, curriculum developers, task and test designers, and classroom researchers, and for use as a text in graduate-level mathematics education courses.

About this title

About the Author

Anne Watson, John Mason

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805843442
• ISBN 13: 9780805843446
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242