Mathematics As A Constructive Activity Learners Generating Examples

This book explains and demonstrates the teaching strategy of asking learners to construct their own examples of mathematical objects. The authors show that the creation of examples can involve transforming and reorganizing knowledge and that, although this is usually done by authors and teachers, if the responsibility for making examples is transferred to learners, their knowledge structures can be developed and extended. A multitude of examples to illustrate this is provided, spanning primary, secondary, and college levels. Readers are invited to learn from their own past experience augmented by tasks provided in the book, and are given direct experience of constructing examples through a collection of many tasks at many levels. Classroom stories show the practicalities of introducing such shifts in mathematics education. The authors examine how their approach relates to improving the learning of mathematics and raise future research questions.

*Based on the authors' and others' theoretical and practical experience, the book includes a combination of exercises for the reader, practical applications for teaching, and solid scholarly grounding.
*The ideas presented are generic in nature and thus applicable across every phase of mathematics teaching and learning.
*Although the teaching methods offered are ones that engage learners imaginatively, these are also applied to traditional approaches to mathematics education; all tasks offered in the book are within conventional mathematics curriculum content.

Mathematics as a Constructive Activity: Learners Generating Examples is intended for mathematics teacher educators, mathematics teachers, curriculum developers, task and test designers, and classroom researchers, and for use as a text in graduate-level mathematics education courses.

Watson (Oxford U.) and Mason (Open U.) examine teaching techniques which actively engage learners, enhancing their sophistication and deepening their understanding, revealing their depths, making them accept initiative in finding and applying deeper concepts, and enriching enjoyment of mathematical structures and connections. They give examples used in classrooms, then "example spaces" specifically for learners to explore, then the tools teachers need to help learners develop those "example spaces" and strategies for prompting learners to generate them. They close with a very useful chapter for those seeking to justify expansion of programs that examines the constructive activities of mathematics, including its ability to teach how to learn, how to build evidence, and construct outcomes. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR