MAINTAINING CONVENTIONS AND CONSTRAINING ABSTRACTION

• In Event: STUDENT LEARNING: MATHEMATICAL CONVENTIONS

Description

Conventions play an important communicative role in mathematics. Likely due to the complex relationship between conventions and school mathematics, few education researchers have questioned or investigated the consequences of instruction and curricula that primarily, if not unquestionably, maintain conventions. Drawing on Piagetian notions of abstraction and our work with students and teachers, we argue that students’ repeated experiences with instruction and curricula that maintain conventions likely constrain students’ learning opportunities. We hypothesize that by ‘breaking’ conventions, educators could better support students in differentiating those aspects of their activity essential to a concept from those that are unessential.

Authors

• Kevin C. Moore, University of Georgia

• Jason Silverman, Drexel University