Mathematical Modelling Education and Sense-making by Gloria Ann Stillman & Gabriele Kaiser & Christine Erna Lampen

Author:Gloria Ann Stillman & Gabriele Kaiser & Christine Erna Lampen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030376734
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

For learners at the bottom of the configuration, it does not mean that they are not interested in other domains or school subjects. My modest proposal is that students should be afforded opportunities to engage in activities in “mathematics put to use” of the kind of leisure activities mentioned above and others that might emerge. This might allow them to creatively bring to the fore their talents with issues that interest them in imaginative ways. For many school children, especially those from socially and economically depressed environments, schools are most of the time the only places where they can productively unleash their hidden talents. It might just be that engaging them in schools in such activities as used in this chapter might engender a different interest in mathematics.

I experimented with some of the ideas above with preservice mathematics teachers (Julie 1993). It was a time of turbulence and protests against apartheid in South Africa at school and higher education institutions attended by the oppressed sectors of our society. One of the rallying calls was for political relevance to be included in the subjects students studied. Mathematics was not spared. Based on Flatland, the preservice teachers were given the project of developing an essay in which mathematical objects are anthropomorphized. In a similar way to Abott, they used the idea of the existence or not of formulae for solution of polynomomial equations to render commentary on the political situation in the country at that time. This is indicative of the possibility of “mathematics put to use” in domains not normally associated with modelling and applications.

References

Abbott, E. A. (2008). The annotated Flatland: A romance of many dimensions (Introduction and notes by I. Stewart). New York: Basic Books.

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