Being Mathematical: New Questions for Old Yudariah Mohammad Yusof, Roselainy Abdul Rahman, Department of Mathematics, Faculty

of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. e-mail: yudariah@mel.fs.utm.my John H. Mason, CME, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing, Open University, UK e-mail: j.h.mason@open.ac.uk

Introduction The main aim of a mathematics lesson is for students to learn something about a particular topic. This is achieved by ensuring students are engaged in doing appropriate mathematical tasks. By tasks, we mean what students are expected to do: the calculations to be performed, the mental images and diagrams to be visualised and represented, or the symbols to be manipulated. The purpose of a task is to initiate activity by students; such as to construct and act upon objects, whether physical, mental or symbolic that is relevant to a mathematical topic. Merely doing the tasks may not be enough to guarantee that efficient learning has taken place. Students need to understand and be able to make mathematical sense of their experiences. We believe that students will be more likely to develop better mathematical learning behaviour if they are provided with learning experiences where their mathematical powers are used specifically and explicitly. We suggest that students should be given opportunities to recognise and use their own mathematical thinking powers and to become more aware of the structures in the mathematics learnt. In this paper, we will illustrate how we can design mathematical tasks as well as diversify tasks and activities found in current mathematics textbooks to make the mathematical processes explicit and provide students with a richer mathematical experience. Invoking Students Own Powers A topic in mathematics is usually made up of a collection of mathematical statements that provide the structure for the topic. Some typical statements are: definitions, facts, theorems and properties, techniques and instructions, conjectures and problems, examples and counterexamples, representations and notations, explanations, justifications and reasoning, links, relationships and connections. However, an important element of a mathematics lesson is the mathematical processes or mathematical thinking activities that are used within the topic. If these processes are not made explicit then students will have to infer them from observed behaviour. A teacher explains and asks questions, thus both the style and form of presentation, the types of tasks given, represents manifestations of the teachers view of mathematics and so will influence students perceptions of how to learn mathematics. Here, we consider the mathematical processes or mathematical thinking activities as powers, which students possess and may have used in other contexts. Among the powers that are relevant for learning mathematics and those, which we will focus on, are specialising and generalising, imagining and expressing, organising and characterising, conjecturing and convincing. In developing the mathematical pedagogy for classroom practice, we adopted the theoretical foundations of Tall (1995) and Gray et al (1999) and used frameworks from Mason, Burton & Stacey (1985) and Watson & Mason (1998). The basic notions that underlie our

teaching acts, mathematical activities and tasks, are to provide linkages between mathematical ideas, to expose the structures of the mathematics and to make explicit the mathematical processes. These are implemented through classroom strategies that used specially designed mathematical prompts and questions, and structured examples. The prompts and questions were employed to engage students in, and to assess their grasp of mathematical ideas and techniques. These prompts and questions took into account the mathematics that we wish students to learn and to bring about their own awareness of the mathematical powers. Our approach in using structured examples is to make students work on typical and generic examples leading towards the ability to generalise. In addition, students are encouraged to make up their own examples and these, in turn, help us to assess what they were attending to in the topics taught. Designing Tasks The design, selection and modification of tasks, is to invoke and encourage the use of students own powers. If students are using these powers, such as specialising and generalising, imagining and expressing, organising and characterising, conjecturing and convincing, then they are taking initiative and getting some pleasure from what they are doing, reinforcing their emotional commitment. Structuring the tasks so that learners are making choices and constructing objects for themselves would engage their creative potential, and so harnesses their emotional energy. Specialising in order to appreciate a generality and seeking counter-examples to other peoples conjectures would offer opportunities for students to experience the freedom that comes from making choices, and learn how to make sensible and useful choices. To create suitable tasks, we need to ask the following questions. o What tasks would get students specialising and generalising for themselves, in this topic? o What tasks would get students imagining and anticipating some mathematical relationship, and then expressing that in words, pictures, and eventually, symbols? o What tasks would get students ordering, organising or characterising mathematical objects according to concepts which are used in the topic? o What tasks would get students conjecturing and convincing, first themselves, and then others? The answers to these questions will help us in creating, selecting, or modifying tasks that will focus students attention on the mathematical processes and structures that we wish them to learn. Changing the format or changing the resources can also create new tasks. We could also try giving the answers, and ask students to reconstruct possible questions. Tasks can also be adapted and extended by changing a bit of the question, removing some of the information from the question, replacing part of the question and adding a bit to the question. Particularly, those that will require students to provide explanations and justification for the solutions found. This will lead to the use of the powers of conjecturing and convincing as desirable mathematical behaviour. The following are some illustrations of tasks, some of which were created, others were selected or modified from school textbooks currently in use. The examples will demonstrate the mathematical powers in tasks and how changes are made to generate new questions from old.

Illustrations of Powers in Tasks Specialising is trying out particular cases in order to make sense of the generality, and to try to see why the generality must always hold. Being able to generalise would indicate that students could sense the underlying pattern even if they were not able to fully articulate yet (Mason et al, to be published). Table 1 and Table 2 present two tasks to illustrate how we can invoke students use of their own powers of specialising and generalising. Topic: Straight lines Task 1: Slope of a straight line Activities: Specialising and Generalising Creating task: Changing the format On squared paper, start at a point; move 1 to the right and 2 up; mark a new point (draw in the movements too). Go a further 1 right and 2 up; keep going for two more points. Draw a line joining the points. Go back to the starting point. Go 3 right and 6 up. And again; and again. Go back to the start. Go 4 right. How many up to get to the old point? Choose any two points; express the relationship between the right move and the upwards move in terms of the coordinates of the points. On the same graph, using the same starting point, draw a straight line of slope 3 and another one of slope 4. Write down the slope for any straight line. Focus of Attention: characteristics of a straight line, the slope in Cartesian coordinates Questions and Prompts: What is the same and what is different about the movements that you have carried out? What can change and what must still stay the same so that any new point will be on the line.

Say what you see What is the relationship between the changes in the coordinates and the slope? How do you know which line is of slope 3 and which is of slope 4? What happens in general?

Table 1 Task 2: Equation of a straight line Activities: Specialising and Generalising Focus of Attention: slope of a straight line Creating task: Extension and changing a bit of the question Graph the line y = mx for various positive Questions and Prompts: values of m. What can change? What stays the same? Pick out the part, which tells you the slope of the straight line. What effect is there if you change positive values of m to negative values?

Describe what happens

Table 2

Using Structured Examples Topic: The Chain Rule For the chain rule, the focus of attention is to recognise that the function being differentiated is a composite function, f ( g ( x)) and to recognise the rule: f ( g ( x)) g ( x) . We can introduce various examples of a class of functions of the form f ( g ( x)) that succumb to the Chain Rule such as,
f ( x ) = ( x + 1) 4 f ( x ) = ( x + 1)
3 2

f ( x ) = ( x + 1) 3 y = (2 x + 1)4 y = (4 x 2 + 4 x + 1) 6 y = x2 1

Using prompts and questions such as, what stays the same, what is different, what can change and say what you see, the students attentions can be directed to the mathematical structures that they need to recognise, become aware of the possible range of change, and gives them the facility to ask questions for themselves. In this case, the range of change can encompass the functions, the arguments, and the symbols for the variables. These allow students to detect particulars and re-express them as a generality and to work out what is common to the collection of examples. By presenting the examples structured in this way, we can give students the experience of a broader range of possible change. Most students are used to tackling each question one at a time, without really working on what constitutes a question of this type, the composite functions. Yet, this is exactly what they need in order to do well in examinations: recognise quickly the type, and have come to mind the details of how that type is resolved. A good deal of mathematics is about solving not particular problems, but whole classes of problems, and classifying problems by the techniques which solve them. Presenting students with a library of classification give students little or no insight into the classification process, yet it is exactly this classification (recognition of type) that they need. In addition, they can be asked to make up their own examples and to check whether they could solve their own functions using the Chain Rule. Now they are moving into being designers of questions not just victims. When students start to construct their own questions, then they gain control and ownership over the class of questions, and hence over the technique. New Questions From Old New tasks can be created by adapting and extending through changing a bit of the question. We can remove some of the information from the question, replace part of the question, or add a bit to the question. The following example illustrates how such tasks can be generated. The original question is given in Version 1 (see Prestage & Perks, 2001). Versions 2, 3, and 4 show the changes made to the original question to evoke students awareness of the different mathematical skills required in solving the question. Version 1 The following bar chart (Figure 1) shows the amount of money collected by 100 children on a sponsored walk (even amounts RM2, RM4, RM6, etc., were put in the lower intervals). Estimate the mean amount collected per child.

30 28 26 24

Number of children

22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 2 4 6 8 10 12

Am ount of money collected (RM)

Figure 1 Version 2 The bar chart in Figure 1 shows the amount of money collected by children on a sponsored walk. Estimate the mean amount collected by child. Version 3 The bar chart in Figure 1 shows the amount of money collected by children on a sponsored walk. Estimate the average amount collected per child. Version 4 The bar chart in Figure 1 shows the amount of money collected by 100 children on a sponsored walk (even amounts, RM2, RM4, RM6, etc., were put in the lower intervals.) Estimate the mean amount collected per child. What is the lowest possible value of the mean? The highest? What estimates can you give for the median and mode? The different versions of the question offer students other possibilities, each of which demands different mathematical skills. However, in making changes to a task, it is important to consider the mathematical structures we want students to focus on, the skills that we wish them to develop, and the powers that we want them to be able to invoke in doing the tasks. Conclusion We have illustrated the use of prompts and questions, structures examples and how to change existing questions to invoke students use of their own mathematical powers. Here, we have identified specialising, generalising, imagining, expressing, characterising, organising, conjecturing, and convincing as the basic powers for students to engage with. An awareness of the different structures in a mathematical topic would give teachers the freedom to choose where to start, how to develop a topic and what kinds of tasks to set. More importantly, however, is inculcating students into a mathematical way of thinking, and this

requires that teachers have the facility and familiarity with all the different aspects. The mathematical tasks given to students should provide experience for them to enhance their awareness of the mathematical thinking skills. With this awareness, students can focus increasingly on flexible processes and the conceptual aspects of mathematical objects, which can be transferred across the students area of study. References 1. Gray, E., Pinto, M., Pitta, D. & Tall, D.O., 1999. Knowledge Construction and Diverging Thinking in Elementary and Advanced Mathematics, Educational Studies in Mathematics, 38(1-3), pp 111-133. 2. Mason, J., Burton, L. & Stacey, K., 1985. Thinking Mathematically. AddisonWesley Publishing Company, Inc., Wokingham, England. 3. Mason, J, Yudariah Mohammad Yusof, Roselainy Abdul Rahman, Ong Chee Tiong, Md. Nor Bakar, Ali Hassan Mohamed Murid & Maslan Osman. Teachers Guide for Developing Mathematical Thinking in Practice, draft copy, to be published. 4. Prestage, S. & Perks, P., 2001. Adapting and Extending Secondary Mathematics Activities. David Fulton Publishers, London. 5. Tall, D. O., Mathematical Growth in Elementary and Advanced Mathematical Thinking, plenary address. In L. Meira & D. Carraher, (Eds.), 1995. Proceedings of PME 19, Recife, Brazil, vol. I, pp 61-75. 6. Watson, A. & Mason, J., 1998. Questions and Prompts for Mathematical Thinking. ATM, Derby.