Exploring the creative potential of mathematical tasks in teacher education
Isabel Vale 1 2 * , Ana Barbosa 1 2 3
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1 Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Viana do Castelo, PORTUGAL2 CIEC, University of Minho, Braga, PORTUGAL3 inED, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Porto, PORTUGAL* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Creativity is a cross-cutting ability that is highly valued in today’s society. Therefore, it should play an important role in education in general and in mathematics in particular. This requires teachers to create appropriate learning opportunities that allow creativity to flourish in students, helping them to develop their mathematical potential. In particular, the use of rich and challenging tasks can encourage fluency, flexibility and originality as three of the essential dimensions of creative thinking. Based on these assumptions, we developed a qualitative study with 19 elementary pre-service teachers to identify the dimensions of creativity revealed by these participants when solving challenging tasks, as well as their ability to recognize these dimensions in written tasks’ resolutions. Ultimately, we aimed to identify potential tasks that contribute to the development of creativity in future teachers. Data was collected mainly through written productions. Preliminary results suggest that the tasks used have creative potential, with participants demonstrating some of the dimensions of creativity. Flexibility was identified as the most challenging dimension for them to identify.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 19, Issue 4, November 2024, Article No: em0790

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/15075

Publication date: 01 Oct 2024

Online publication date: 05 Sep 2024

Article Views: 659

Article Downloads: 178

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