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Full-Text Articles in Education
Happiness In Mathematics Education: The Experiences Of Preservice Elementary Teachers, Jeffrey Pair, Kent Dinh
Happiness In Mathematics Education: The Experiences Of Preservice Elementary Teachers, Jeffrey Pair, Kent Dinh
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
In this paper, we discuss preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) self-report of their happiness or unhappiness. Several times throughout a mathematics content capstone course, PSTs responded to prompts in which they described times from their past schooling experiences or during the course in which they experienced happiness or unhappiness in learning mathematics. Through thematic analysis, we examined their common experiences related to happiness and their mathematics learning. We found that PSTs’ happiness is related to expectations of themselves, their teachers, their peers, and mathematics itself. The study illuminates PST beliefs about mathematics teaching, collaborative group work, and the nature of mathematical …
Paul's Dilemma: Is This A Polyhedron?, Bethany Noblitt, Shelly Harkness
Paul's Dilemma: Is This A Polyhedron?, Bethany Noblitt, Shelly Harkness
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Teachers play the believing game when they honor students’ mathematical thinking, even when it means they must suspend their own mathematical thinking momentarily. The study reported here tells the story of what happened in a university mathematics classroom when one student did not think that a particular figure satisfied the definition of a polyhedron and the instructor chose to play the believing game. The result was a very rich discussion, where both students and the authors grappled with their own mathematical understanding. One author served as the instructor of the course and the other author was an observer, taking field …
The Importance Of Surprise In Mathematical Beauty, V. Rani Satyam
The Importance Of Surprise In Mathematical Beauty, V. Rani Satyam
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Mathematicians, mathematics education researchers, and philosophers have written about mathematical beauty and many of the qualities commonly associated with it, such as simplicity, brevity, enlightenment, etc. One key theme that underlies many of these qualities is surprise or the unexpected. In this article, I discuss the integral role surprise plays in mathematical beauty. Through examples, I argue that simplicity alone is oftentimes not enough for a piece of mathematics to be considered beautiful, but rather it is unexpected simplicity that we seek. I propose, moreover, that surprise is necessary for enlightenment. The paper also reports results from an activity designed …