Departmental Colloquium
Guershon Harel
University of California, San Diego
Intellectual Need and Its Application in Mathematics Instruction
Abstract: Most students, even those who desire to succeed in school, are intellectually aimless in mathematics classes because often they do not realize an intellectual need for what we intend to teach them. The notion of intellectual need is inextricably linked to the notion of epistemological justification: the learners' discernment of how and why a particular piece of knowledge came to be. This talk addresses historical and philosophical aspects of these two notions, as well as ways teachers can be aware of students' intellectual need and address it directly in the mathematics classroom.
Friday October 24, 2008 at 3:00 PM in SEO 636