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Full-Text Articles in Education

Towards Pedagogy Supporting Ethics In Modelling, Marie Oldfield Jul 2022

Towards Pedagogy Supporting Ethics In Modelling, Marie Oldfield

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Education for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility that are critical in building robust and applicable mathematical and statistical models do currently exist in isolation but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curricula at the school or university level. This is partially due to the split between fields (such as mathematics, statistics, and computer science) in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with industry and its requirements. I argue that principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling should begin at school level and that this would mean that ethics …


Computational Thinking In Mathematics And Computer Science: What Programming Does To Your Head, Al Cuoco, E. Paul Goldenberg Jan 2021

Computational Thinking In Mathematics And Computer Science: What Programming Does To Your Head, Al Cuoco, E. Paul Goldenberg

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

How you think about a phenomenon certainly influences how you create a program to model it. The main point of this essay is that the influence goes both ways: creating programs influences how you think. The programs we are talking about are not just the ones we write for a computer. Programs can be implemented on a computer or with physical devices or in your mind. The implementation can bring your ideas to life. Often, though, the implementation and the ideas develop in tandem, each acting as a mirror on the other. We describe an example of how programming and …


Recognizing Mathematics Students As Creative: Mathematical Creativity As Community-Based And Possibility-Expanding, Meghan Riling Jul 2020

Recognizing Mathematics Students As Creative: Mathematical Creativity As Community-Based And Possibility-Expanding, Meghan Riling

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Although much creativity research has suggested that creativity is influenced by cultural and social factors, these have been minimally explored in the context of mathematics and mathematics learning. This problematically limits who is seen as mathematically creative and who can enter the discipline of mathematics. This paper proposes a framework of creativity that is based in what it means to know or do mathematics and accepts that creativity is something that can be nurtured in all students. Prominent mathematical epistemologies held since the beginning of the twentieth century in the Western mathematics tradition have different implications for promoting creativity in …


Book Review: What Is A Mathematical Concept? Edited By Elizabeth De Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, And Alf Coles, Brendan P. Larvor Jul 2019

Book Review: What Is A Mathematical Concept? Edited By Elizabeth De Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, And Alf Coles, Brendan P. Larvor

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a review of What is a Mathematical Concept? edited by Elizabeth de Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, and Alf Coles (Cambridge University Press, 2017). In this collection of sixteen chapters, philosophers, educationalists, historians of mathematics, a cognitive scientist, and a mathematician consider, problematise, historicise, contextualise, and destabilise the terms ‘mathematical’ and ‘concept’. The contributors come from many disciplines, but the editors are all in mathematics education, which gives the whole volume a disciplinary centre of gravity. The editors set out to explore and reclaim the canonical question ‘what is a mathematical concept?’ from the philosophy of mathematics. This review comments …


Revealing Luz: Illuminating Our Identities Through Duoethnography, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Luz Marizza Bailey Jul 2018

Revealing Luz: Illuminating Our Identities Through Duoethnography, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Luz Marizza Bailey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Hispanic Americans make up 15% of the current US workforce, but they only account for 7% of the STEM Education workforce [8]. One effective way to reach this population, particularly Latinas, is by providing stories and ethnographic biographies of successful Latinas they can relate to. It is important to note that Latinas have been earning PhDs in STEM disciplines outside of the US much longer than US-born Latinas have been earning them inside. Thus we offer the story of a mathematics educator, from Peru, Dr. Luz Antonia Mendizábal Gálvez de Rodriguez, a girl who was given a chance to be …


Calculus Problems, Joshua N. Cooper Jul 2016

Calculus Problems, Joshua N. Cooper

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.


Bringing Students Back To Mathematics: Classroom Knowledge And Motivation, Giang-Nguyen T. Nguyen, Joel B. Goodin Jul 2016

Bringing Students Back To Mathematics: Classroom Knowledge And Motivation, Giang-Nguyen T. Nguyen, Joel B. Goodin

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper reports part of a larger research study that investigated how teachers motivate students to learn mathematics at the college level. Findings from the study indicated that teachers have the power to influence and reinvigorate students who had given up learning mathematics. In the framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the researchers analyzed five students’ motivational levels based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to see how each student was motivated by their teacher. Findings from the study could provide some directions for future research on students’ motivation to learn mathematics.


Wabi-Sabi Mathematics, Jean-Francois Maheux Jan 2016

Wabi-Sabi Mathematics, Jean-Francois Maheux

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Mathematics and aesthetics have a long history in common. In this relation however, the aesthetic dimension of mathematics largely refers to concepts such as purity, absoluteness, symmetry, and so on. In stark contrast to such a nexus of ideas, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi values imperfections, temporality, incompleteness, earthly crudeness, and even contradiction. In this paper, I discuss the possibilities of “wabi-sabi mathematics” by showing (1) how wabi-sabi mathematics is conceivable; (2) how wabi-sabi mathematics is observable; and (3) why we should bother about wabi-sabi mathematics


Developing A Healthy Scepticism About Technology In Mathematics Teaching, Peter J. Rowlett Jan 2013

Developing A Healthy Scepticism About Technology In Mathematics Teaching, Peter J. Rowlett

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A reflective account is presented of experiences which took place alongside a research project and caused a change in approach to be more sceptical about implementation of learning technology. A critical evaluation is given of a previous e-assessment research project, undertaken from a position of naive enthusiasm for learning technology. Experiences of teaching classes and designing assessment tasks lead to doubts regarding the extent to which the previous project encouraged deep learning and contributed to graduate skills development. Investigations of the benefits of another technology – in-class response systems – lead to revelations about learning technology: its enthusiastic introduction in …


Gaming Your Mathematics Course: The Theory And Practice Of Games For Learning, Kathleen H. Offenholley Jul 2012

Gaming Your Mathematics Course: The Theory And Practice Of Games For Learning, Kathleen H. Offenholley

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Learning through play is fundamental to humans and to many other animals. Game Based Learning is an interactive pedagogy that has as its foundation the tenet that games, by their very nature, increase learning through positive emotional experience. This article introduces readers to what games in mathematics classes have the potential to do, including to decrease anxiety, increase motivation, and deepen learning through immersive gaming. The article then connects this theory to practice, providing examples of both computer and non-computer games in introductory middle school, high school and college mathematics. The article analyses how these games work, and makes the …