Special Issue Call for Papers: Creativity in Mathematics

The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue on Creativity in Mathematics. Please send your abstract submissions via email to the guest editors by March 1, 2019. Initial submission of complete manuscripts is due August 1, 2019. The issue is currently scheduled to appear in July 2020

Inquiry as an Entry Point to Equity in the Classroom

Although many policy documents include equity as part of mathematics education standards and principles, researchers continue to explore means by which equity might be supported in classrooms and at the institutional level. Teaching practices that include opportunities for students to engage in active learning have been proposed to address equity. In this paper, through aligning some characteristics of inquiry put forth by Cook, Murphy and Fukawa-Connelly with Gutiérrez\u27s dimensions of equity, we theoretically explore the ways in which active learning teaching practices that focus on inquiry could support equity in the classroom

Students' transfer of learning of eigenvalues and eigenvectors : Implementation of actor-oriented transfer framework

The purpose of this study was to investigate third year college students' transfer of learning of the concepts of eigenvalues and eigenvectors from the winter term physics courses to the interviews in which they participated before, during, and after these courses. Transfer of learning of each student was explored by implementing the Actor-Oriented Transfer (AOT) framework (Lobato, 1996). The research questions addressed by this study were 1. What characterizes upper-level physics students' emerging understanding of the concepts of eigenvalues and eigenvectors before, during, and after studying the concepts in an intensive linear algebra review week and implementing them during a series of three 3-week intensive physics courses? 2. What do students transfer about the concepts of eigenvalues and eigenvectors from this series of courses to an interview setting? More precisely, what kind of experiences and views related to matrices, methods of finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors, the interpretation and use of the eigenvalue equation, and the relationship between basis vectors and eigenvectors do upper-level physics students transfer from their coursework to the interview setting? 3. In what ways do the experiences students choose to transfer relate to their emerging understanding of the concept of eigenvalues and eigenvectors? Seven junior level physics majors volunteered to participate in the study. Participants were enrolled in four physics courses during the winter term. The seven students participated in three in-depth interviews before, during, and after they were enrolled in these courses. Four students were purposefully selected for in-depth case analysis and a cross-case analysis by actor-oriented transfer was conducted on the data from all seven students. The results of this study suggest the importance of exploring the issue of transfer by implementing the actor-oriented transfer framework. The researcher found that the actor-oriented transfer analysis provided evidence of transfer from the winter term courses to the interviews. Six students transferred their experience from a small group activity to the second interviews. There were other experiences students seemed to transfer however the transfer from this small group activity was observed in six of the participants' data

Inquiry Based Learning

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has been argued to help students develop critical thought processes. However, developing such learning environments and curriculum materials are not easy tasks. In our discussion, we will share some key elements that we found useful in creating IBL environments, which could be applicable in other courses

Supporting the Development of Process-Focused Metacognition During Problem-Solving

As students learn to problem solve in authentic situations, they must also develop metacognitive tools to manage and regulate their problem-solving process. To foster process-focused metacognition utilized by mathematical thinkers and problem solvers, inquiry-based learning classroom practices and an adapted version of portfolio problems were implemented in a content course for pre-service elementary teachers. In this article, we describe how the combination of a process-focused (instead of product-focused) classroom culture and explicit reflection on student thinking supported students’ process-focused metacognition while problem-solving. The problems, portfolio structure, and student interview reflections are shared

Mathematicians' views on undergraduate students' creativity

International audienceThere are studies investigating mathematical creativity in the primary and secondary levels, but there is still a need to explore creativity in the tertiary level. Our effort of expanding research to this level started with investigating mathematicians' views on creativity and its role in teaching and student learning of mathematics. One 60-minute interview was conducted with six mathematicians who teach courses at the tertiary level and are active in research. Two themes, Originality and Aesthetics, were observed capturing participants' views of creativity in their work, aligning with existing process and product views. In addition, all participants believed creativity could be encouraged in undergraduate courses and provided suggestions on how to cultivate and value creativity in courses focusing on proving and problem solving

Formative Assessment of Creativity in Undergraduate Mathematics: Using a Creativity-in-Progress Rubric (CPR) on Proving

“The project described in this chapter introduces an assessment framework for mathematical creativity in undergraduate mathematics teaching and learning. One outcome of this project is a formative assessment tool, the Creativity-in-Progress Rubric (CPR) on proving, that can be implemented in an introductory proof course. Using multiple methodological tools on a case study, we demonstrate how implementing the CPR on proving can help researchers and educators to observe and assess a student’s development of mathematical creativity in proving. We claim if mathematicians who regularly engage in proving value creativity, then there should be some explicit discussion of mathematical creativity in proving early in a young mathematician’s career. In this chapter, we also outline suggestions on how to introduce mathematical creativity in the undergraduate classroom.” – p. 2

The Creativity-In-Progress Rubric (CPR) on Proving: Two Teaching Implementations and Students\u27 Reported Usage

A growing body of mathematics education research points the importance of fostering students\u27 mathematical creativity in undergraduate mathematics courses. However, there are not many research-based instructional practices that aim to accomplish this task. Our research group has been working to address this issue and created a formative assessment tool, the Creativity-in-Progress Rubric (CPR) on Proving. This tool is developed to help students evaluate their own proving process as well as provide instructors insight into students\u27 self-evaluation and process. In this paper, we provide a brief description of the CPR on Proving and explain its implementation in two courses at different institutions. Additionally, we share several students\u27 usages of the CPR and provide some practical implementation suggestions