I had a state of flow during problem-solving in my previous job. There was a challenging requirement of implementing a customer account system alongside a general ledger output from the customer. For an entire week, my brain was working on connecting the two dots through my existing accounting and system knowledge. At the beginning of the week, there was a sustained struggle to decipher the requirements and documentation. In the middle of the week, I felt like I started to see all the puzzle pieces. By the end of the week, I started to put all the puzzle pieces together. By nature, I like problem-solving, and being tasked to solve this problem was a pleasure. Through many years of education, I vividly remember the sustained struggle that helped me to reach clarity and understanding. This is especially true when understanding an abstract Math concept.
I believe it is possible for high school students to reach a state of flow. As a prospective teacher, I need to experiment with the magnitude of struggle appropriate to trigger the state of flow. Each period of struggle should result in a step of achievement to keep the student going. This could be an hour-long problem solving where problems start with multiple iterations starting with n = 1, then n=2, then 100. Then a generalization challenge (or any conceptual understanding) should provide the template to trigger a flow.
Your response highlights the importance of balancing challenge and achievement to foster flow in students. How might you adapt your strategies to account for students with varying levels of mathematical proficiency or those who might feel frustrated rather than engaged by struggle?
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