Exploring the creative potential of mathematical tasks in teacher education

Abstract

Creativity is a cross-cutting ability that is highly valued in today’s society. Therefore, it should play an important role in education in general and in mathematics in particular. This requires teachers to create appropriate learning opportunities that allow creativity to flourish in students, helping them to develop their mathematical potential. In particular, the use of rich and challenging tasks can encourage fluency, flexibility and originality as three of the essential dimensions of creative thinking. Based on these assumptions, we developed a qualitative study with 19 elementary pre-service teachers to identify the dimensions of creativity revealed by these participants when solving challenging tasks, as well as their ability to recognize these dimensions in written tasks’ resolutions. Ultimately, we aimed to identify potential tasks that contribute to the development of creativity in future teachers. Data was collected mainly through written productions. Preliminary results suggest that the tasks used have creative potential, with participants demonstrating some of the dimensions of creativity. Flexibility was identified as the most challenging dimension for them to identify.