Week 4 - Reflection

  Hello everyone welcome back to my learning adventure, 

There was many different topics talked about today in class, and I was very interested in seeing the different insights people have. There are a variety of backgrounds with various different learners that I got to learn from. The various insights gave me an opportunity to see how different viewers see math. 

I have come from a history of always having a somewhat natural ability in math, that I fostered through hard work and more learning. I have always been interested in math and found it like a puzzle when solving questions. I have always seen the beauty in math, and tried my best to understand the complexity of it as well. When we were discussing math, I noticed that many of my peers hear ‘math’, and automatically think of numbers or computations. One of the videos we watched in class, showed that even socially, people see math as symbols, number and computations. One google search of math, all images are just symbols and numbers. This made me step back and see that I have been around a lot of people that are immersed in math. I was very thankful too hear these other view points, as it confirmed the fact that I want to be able to create a classroom that shows everyone can be a math learner, and everyone has the capacity to be good at math. One thing I do not like to hear is that “I am not a math person”, “I hate math”, “I cannot do that I am no good at math”. This saddens me as I believe everyone can do math they just need the correct approach to be able to learn the math. We were given two questions in class to work on in a small group. My group was a group of four, and three of us are currently enrolled in math focused courses, and one was not. This peer also claims that she is ‘not good’ at math. As my peers and I were discussing how to solve these questions, the one peer who was not sure what to do said that they were fascinated how our brains were working. The one question was very problem solving based, and the way we started thinking about it may have stemmed through our math focus. I believe that it is important for everyone to develop these problem solving and deduction skills. 

In the very traditionalist viewpoint, math is a straight forward black and white process. This view point relates to the fact that the teacher knows all and gives the students the information they need, and all the required steps. With this approach I can see how some people may view themselves as not math people. This approach creates a one way street, that if the students do not understand how the teacher is doing the work, they will not get it at all. There is no room for discovering or experimentation in this approach. This why I believe there should be a shift from this approach to a more mathematical modelling based classroom. Math is all around us, and it can be seen everywhere, every symbol and expression in math is a model of the math that exists in the world. For example, trigonometry is so much more than angles of a triangle. We see trigonometry in wheels, sand dunes, sound waves and many more. Students who were taught in a traditionalist way will only see trigonometry as angles and graphs, but if educators were to take a more mathematical modelling approach, the students would be able to make better connections between the math and the model. 

I believe that mathematical modelling is starting to take precedent in the classroom, as it focuses on more 21st century skills. Math used to have a focus on speed and accuracy, and that was it. There was a focus on procedural competence and now there is being a shift towards conceptual understanding. In order, for students to be able to develop a conceptual understanding they need to be able to connect what they are learning in math to something they can see, or have seen. As I have mentioned, math may have fostered my problem solving skills, and students who shy away from math because they think they are not good at it many loose these important skills. This is why I think that the mathematical modelling view on teaching math is very important. This view shows learners the connection side of math, and not math as a bunch of symbols. The use of mathematical modelling also allows students to be able to bring in past experiences into what they are learning, which develops stronger connections. These connections will help people to develop their problem solving skills. The approach is much more important than the final answer. Students should be developing their problem solving skills, by analyzing questions, developing strategies, doubling checking one’s work and so on. These skills are the important transferable skills that can be taken into any work force, and any subject in school. This approach also allows room for a lot of creative thinking and exploration in math. This is important thing to have in a math classroom, as the more open the environment the more apt students will be to develop confidence in math. I have noticed a big divide between people who are in math, and people who are not are divided in a sense of people who can do math and people who cannot. I think this is a challenging barrier to break down, but it is one that needs to be broken. There is many different ways to do math, and that needs to be highlighted in classrooms. The focus needs to be taken away from being right or wrong and the process of problem solving needs to be highlighted. This will in turn hopefully create better feelings in math, and have the phrase “I can’t do math” be diminished. Everyone can do math, they just need to be shown in a way that they understand. 

Thank you for joining me on my adventure, and come back for more fun learning!