Is anyone working, has worked, or knows about research/practice with using narratives or stories to teach mathematics at the undergraduate level (not for little children)?
" With students in grades 8 and 9, the ancient idea of one-to-one correspondence could lead to the concept of a function, one of the most important concepts in mathematics in general, and of the high school mathematics curriculum in particular. With University students, continuing the story of one-to-one correspondence in comparing finite sets extends naturally to the comparison of infinite sets, with some surprising results, including the fact that the set of even numbers is no smaller than the set of natural numbers. A few of these exciting possibilities are explored in this book. For now, we just wanted tell a story in order to pave the way for the discussion of stories in the mathematics classroom"( Teaching Mathematics as Storytelling Rina Zazkis and Peter Liljedahl chapter 1,p.2)
https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/1019-teaching-mathematics-as-storytelling.pdf.
Hope it will help!
A parallel suggestion, at the risk of sounding repetitive: Here’s a reference that might be useful: Introduction to mathematics for life scientists (Springer, 1976, 2 ed.), by the late Edward Batschelet. In my biology classes (pupils aged 14-17 years), I’ve used many exercises extracted and adapted from this book. (And I still use, although no longer teach to students so young.)
There are facts to be tought, and there are ways to teach these facts.
Narratives relating the students to a problem in need for a solution may engage an other group of students than the students motivated simply by being presented with the facts, e.g. the law of sines. Ancient excercises like the Chinese excercise calling for Pythagoras (see https://www.science.org.au/news-and-events/newsletters/resolve/february-2018/classroom-resources-pythagoras-beyond-ladders) used narratives, Babylonian and Egyptian scripts used narraitives (word problems).
In Danish secondary school, we tend to use narraitives to link across subjects, e.g. telling a story pertinent to evolution between biology and mathematics in order to get a mathematical problem of combinatorics and probability across.
- However I have not seen exlicit research on the connection of matematical education and the use of narratives.
Thanks for your answers, all great recommendations. I was wondering if you have used a story that was particularly well received by your students? Could you share details?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Mathematics