Here we are, the end of the road of EDCP 324. Although it was only around 3.5 months, this was the most I have thought about Math as a subject itself instead of rote computation and instrumental understanding.
Throughout this journey, many constructs about math education have stuck in the back of my mind. The differentiation between instrumental and relational understanding at the beginning was an important revelation for me. My career as an actuary has required that I go through a series of exams on financial mathematics and actuarial modelling. Thinking about it, those long and arduous exams were very much instrumental to me. If you ask me to recall what I have learned right now, I could barely tell you those concepts. On the contrary, I do have fond memories of my undergraduate statistics and calculus classes. Sharing these experiences in Susan's classroom as well as teaching them in my practicum school re-sparked my passion and shone a light on my relational understanding in those subjects.
As a parent, I started to pay attention to the arbitrary vs necessary concepts in not just math, but in everything. When I discussed with or educated my two girls, I started to emphasize the discovery of necessary concepts around them. For example, I no longer stress the correct word to describe something in English, they can come up with their own descriptions to communicate and see the world. The important aspect of learning should be about inquiry and thinking of something without first being boggled down by semantics.
I enjoyed learning about the world of tesselation through my art project, it is an area of math which I have never known of. I enjoyed doing my non-curricular teaching as well as mini-curricular teaching for the class. Finally, I resonated strongly with Lockhart's lament about how high school math (and high school Geometry), traditional rote memorization and computation should be something I should steer away from in my own class.
There are many things I enjoyed that I have not mentioned, but overall it was a beautiful learning experience. Thanks to all my classmates for sharing our thoughts and bouncing ideas off each other. And big thanks to Susan for facilitating this beautiful experience.
Ray, this is such an amazing blog post: beautifully written and so thoughtful and meaningful! I am so happy to hear about the great things you took away from the course. And of course, whenever I hear 'tesselation' or 'chirality' -- I will immediately think of you! ;P Thanks for being the organizer for the giant Wurzelschnecke today too!!
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