<p>Empirical research shows that a possible reason why Swedish students mathematical knowledge deteriorates can be a too big focus on imitative reasoning, i.e. recalling solutions or follow algorithms, and a lack of creative mathematical reasoning, i.e. when a student construct his/her own solution and motivates its plausibility with mathematically well-founded arguments. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if, and in what way, lecturers can provide students an opportunity to learn creative reasoning by simulating creativity in their presentations of examples. Six lectures were observed and 22 task situations were analyzed with respect to three aspects; reflection, plausibility and mathematical foundation, which are to be present in the situation if the reasoning will be seen as simulated creative. The result shows that plausibility and mathematical foundation is present in 19 situations, while the reflection aspect is present only in three situations. The result also shows that only two situations contain all three aspects, which implies that these two situations are the only ones where simulated creative reasoning was presented. The conclusion is therefore that students are given small opportunities to learn creative reasoning during lectures. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:umu-26617 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Grahn, Kristin |
| Publisher | Umeå University, Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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