9 Strategies for Motivating (HIGH SCHOOL) Students in Mathematics

[Egan Ford]

(07-13-2017 07:56 PM)Jim Horn Wrote:  Math in engineering college was frustrating - Wronskians, matrices, partial differentials, conformal mapping - all were taught as magical incantations that one had to do in a particular and seemingly randomly chosen way to get the correct answer. Then the next semester that same math was used to analyze electrostatic fields, Maxwell's equations, stress and strain in structures, etc. Then the math acquired a mental image of what it "really meant" rather than the somewhat mindless manipulation of symbols in accordance with seemingly arbitrary rules.

This is how I've always approached learning math. Focus on what it does, not what it is. What it is will just come after a lot of doing. That self discovery of something that had previously been discovered 100s a years ago is still just as rewarding. For me it has always started with patterns of use and application.

Now my wish for high school students, esp. in the US, would be statistics and probability first. Esp. statistics. IMHO, many in the US do a very poor job of interpreting everyday stats and data. I'd just be happy if a class on stats just got students questioning reported facts, esp. when backed with "data".

Re: calculus, et al for high school students. I wish something like this existed when I was a kid. The visuals are incredible. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab...V4b17AJtAw