![]() Ideas from one are not necessarily foreign concepts for the other, though. These arguments misrepresent both art and science, and often people try to make them seem as different from one another as a lion is from an elephant. Snowflakes are beautiful examples of natural symmetry I’m sure the arguments are familiar: in our changing technological world, we need science, not art art is creative, so not suited to logical people art won’t help you get a job only smart people study science. Pushing a division between them comes from a misunderstanding of both subjects. Imagine learning music by only focusing on scales and reading notes and never having the opportunity to appreciate and play a piece of music! We do not want to rob our students of the beauty of playing or even composing a musical piece! I have a dear friend who is a self-taught pianist who has never played scales in his life! He could mentally hear pieces of music in his head and in order for him to express these melodies he learned which notes to play.When it comes to arts and sciences, you cannot have one without the other. I like to use the analogy of learning music to illustrate my point. “Mathematics is a process of inquiry and coming to know, not a finished product, for its results remain open to revision” (Ernest, 1989, p. This includes learning theories that are underpinned by Vygotsky’s (1978) social constructivist and social-cultural theories however, in reality, many mathematics classrooms around the world still rely on didactic, delivery-transmission mode approaches of the 1950s rather than more investigative and inquiry methods that foster creativity. Progressive mathematics education reform has focused on helping learners to understand the concepts of mathematics through a constructivist approach. Inquiry embraces and invites uncertainty (Murdoch, 2015) allowing learners to explore and arrive at deep conceptual understandings in a constructivist environment. Direct instruction may be used to deliver low order facts and skills, when necessary in the scaffolding process and when learners require the skills and facts in order to make further progress in the unit of inquiry. In an authentic deep learning classroom, there is a dance between both explicit/ direct instruction and inquiry based learning. Undoubtedly, educators agree that standardized test results generally reflect a snapshot of low order thinking and do not reflect an individual’s talents and achievements over sustained periods of time. Research cited to support direct instruction as the sole effective teaching methodology often relies on the measurement of student achievement based on standardised tests. This transmission method of teaching stifles a learner’s ability to think independently, to be curious and creative. I facetiously call this the monkey see monkey do technique. An explicit instruction method is a teacher-centred approach that often adopts a cycle of explaining, modelling, scaffolding and practising. The push for only employing pedagogies involving direct or explicit instruction where mathematical understandings are transmitted to students is gaining traction with leading educationalists around the world. In fact, another false binary belief is that you either employ direct/ explicit instruction techniques or inquiry based learning. The false dichotomy that you either teach facts and skills or you teach for conceptual understandings, is a deeply ingrained belief, unfortunately, in many countries around the world. ![]() ![]() We live in a sad state of affairs when it comes to maths education. Ultimately, the need for innovative thinkers for the 21st Century creates a need for education reform to prepare the next generation of students to be successful world citizens of the modern age (Lin, 2016). Cutting-end mathematicians have pioneered the way forward using mathematical ideas and insights to develop the info-technology and biotechnology arenas. Creativity is known to be the driving force for innovation and technological advancements, and mathematicians and scientists play a significant role in this ecosystem. Thus, human skills such as creativity, originality, and initiative, which cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence, are now more valued characteristics in the ever-changing job market. We live in complex, scientifically exciting times! The exponential growth in technology of the last few decades has led to many breakthroughs in innovations such as Global Positioning System (GPS), social networking, advances in robotic medicine, and quantum computing to name a few, however, this has also resulted in the disappearance of many jobs due to automation.
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