Author: Dalton Wilson
Major: Math
Approved: Spring 2020
Status: In progress
Education in mathematics is taught through a theoretical approach. It is standard practice to purely explain math concepts to students. Students are taught how to perform basic computations, practice those computations, and then take a test on how well they can perform said functions. However, students are bored and often do not work well in math classes. Plus, traditional learning often omits to teach students the relationships and concepts of mathematics in nature and how they can be applied to other things. Instead of purely teaching the theory of mathematics, I propose instead to first look at nature. Mathematics comes from nature, and nature is the reason we began to quantify data. I will make a tool kit to direct this approach for students to show where our understanding of mathematics applies. Students will do a variety of lab work to manipulate certain natural conditions and be asked to interpret what they see. After that, the theories will be taught formally to the students, and then be applied to something physical. By showing students where these relationships and concepts are found, mathematics will hopefully make sense to them. Because of this, there will be more of a drive for students to learn mathematics and potentially have greater progress in this field of study. With that, I will create a conceptualized algebra course that will utilize the techniques this project is trying to develop.
