This paper and the accompanying presentation has a simple message, that
mathematical thinking is important in three ways.
• Mathematical thinking is an important goal of schooling.
• Mathematical thinking is important as a way of learning mathematics.
• Mathematical thinking is important for teaching mathematics.
Mathematical thinking is a highly complex activity, and a great deal has been written
and studied about it. Within this paper, I will give several examples of mathematical
thinking, and to demonstrate two pairs of processes through which mathematical
thinking very often proceeds:
• Specialising and Generalising
• Conjecturing and Convincing.
Being able to use mathematical thinking in solving problems is one of the most the
fundamental goals of teaching mathematics, but it is also one of its most elusive goals.
It is an ultimate goal of teaching that students will be able to conduct mathematical
investigations by themselves, and that they will be able to identify where the
mathematics they have learned is applicable in real world situations. In the phrase of
the mathematician Paul Halmos (1980), problem solving is “the heart of
mathematics”. However, whilst teachers around the world have considerable
successes with achieving this goal, especially with more able students, there is always
a great need for improvement, so that more students get a deeper appreciation of what
it means to think mathematically and to use mathematics to help in their daily and
working lives.
MATHEMATIC