Professional organizations such as NCTM, MAA, AMATYC, NSF, AMA, etc. are all calling for changes to students' mathematical experiences including inquiry-based lessons, deep engagement with mathematics, and coherent connections across lessons. However, research confirms that most U.S. students instead experience an incoherent approach to learning mathematics that privileges teachers’ solutions and textbook algorithms over students’ reasoning and construction of meaning. In many cases, teachers believe that they cannot change this reality because of high pressure to cover a high number of topics.
One way to facilitate deep exploration that allows you to still cover a large number of topics and in a more meaningful way is with “iconic problems”. An iconic problem is rich mathematical context useful for introducing a number of mathematical topics. In this session we will explore examples of iconic problems and discuss how to use them to rethink how we introduce new ideas in our math classrooms.
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