"Art, Math, and the Qualitative: Changing the Focus in the Math Classroom" by Sunita Vatuk

Описание: I will share my observations about the potential benefits and challenges gleaned from a wide variety of projects integrating math and a variety of visual arts in college and K-12 classrooms, museums and after school activities. Some of the greatest potential is in the area of classroom norms or culture. Many math classrooms do not reflect values which are professed by mathematicians and math teachers, and arts-based activities have great potential to bring classroom culture more in line with those values. Looking at and discussing art can create more rigorous and more creative modes of discourse and engage a wider set of students. Making art gives opportunities for richer and more authentic problem solving. And looking at and analyzing art can help change the focus to crucial qualitative features of mathematical objects, leading to greater conceptual understanding. All of these activities can help bring students' intuition and ideas into the classroom. However, for these to be most effective, it is important to create genuine collaboration between artists or craftspeople and mathematicians or math teachers, and to include arts learning goals as well as math learning goals.