Creating New Mathematical Possibility: Types of Student Actions With Creative Potential

• In Event: Fostering Learning: Relationships With Teachers, Mathematics, and Challenging Tasks

Abstract

What does student mathematical creativity look like? In this study, I present and illustrate a set of types of creative action taken by students during high school mathematics lessons: setting out, familiarizing, imagining, manifesting, recognizing, and naming. The actions were drawn from rich classroom data from lessons designed to be aesthetically captivating to students. This thematic analysis of student data was guided by firsthand accounts by professional artists and mathematicians about their own creative work. The variation in how students’ actions create new possibilities in mathematics points to their capacity for complex creativity, pushing back on the notion that mathematical creativity is a special quality of a limited set of individuals.

Author

• Meghan Riling, Boston University