Mathematical creativity among secondary mathematics teachers and grade 10 students

• Main Author: Oledan, Alexis Michael B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Creative teaching; Mathematics teachers; Science and Mathematics Education; Secondary Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdd_scied/10
• Institution: De La Salle University

One of the 21st-century skills students should develop is creativity, which applies to all subjects, including mathematics. Mathematical creativity does not have a universal definition, and it is defined variably in literature. Although this is true, most researchers agree that increasing mathematical creativity is necessary for students to appreciate the techniques and concepts that underpin mathematics and to have a thorough understanding of the content knowledge. Teachers and other stakeholders face a challenge in planning activities that promote mathematical creativity. Thus, this study looked at teachers' participation in lesson study and students' involvement in the enhancement class. As well as other essential factors such as participant collaboration, the study underline the usefulness of open-ended mathematics activities in increasing creativity. The urge to develop creative students motivates teachers to be innovative to achieve such goals. This study used a single case study strategy of incorporating open-ended mathematical tasks on research lessons to investigate the elements of creativity, as defined by Rhode, which is: person, process, press, and product, based on the goals of this study and other research involving lesson study and creativity, specifically mathematical creativity. The researcher was able to collect data from a variety of sources, including individuals (teachers and students), circumstances (planning, implementing, and reflecting), and another context (creativity), using portfolios, video records, one-on-one interviews, and session logs. In this study, the findings emphasize the qualities of creative teachers and students. The three primary themes for creative teachers were quality and effectiveness of teaching strategy, open-mindedness, flexibility, and other divergent thinking skills. Moreover, students' mental ability and divergent thinking skills, open-mindedness, and resourcefulness were the three primary themes for creativity. The study also describes the processes experienced by the participants that developed their creativity which was with Amabile's creative process, which involves a problem or task identification, preparation, response generation, response validation and communication, and decision making about further work for teachers. The creative process experienced by students was closely linked to Treffinger's creative process model: understanding the problem, generating ideas, applying planning for action. A collaborative environment allowed teachers to improve the teaching-learning process and foster creativity among Grade 10 students. With collaboration, students also gained ideas from classmates and helped some students with mathematical struggles. For creative products, the categories for discussing creativity, suggested by Guilford, which included fluency, flexibility, and originality, were also explored with participants' outputs. Teachers created research lessons that can be subjectively considered original since they were developed during their participation in this study. It was also observed that the activities were unique and new to most students and thus were valuable in fostering students' mathematical creativity. For students, the fluency component of creativity would depend on the structure of the open-ended mathematical tasks. A task that may lead to pattern identification may limit the flexibility component. Limiting the number of responses, on the other hand, might give students a chance to think flexibly and originally.