Article
Provoking intellectual need
Matematics Teaching in the Middle School
(2009)
Abstract
According to Harel's Necessity Principle (1998) “students are most likely to learn when they see a need for what we intend to teach them, where by need is meant intellectual need, not social or economic need” (p. 501). Intellectual need for a particular mathematical concept is an internal drive experienced by a learner to solve a problem. In this paper, I discuss how tasks can be designed to provoke the intellectual need for two mathematical ideas, prime factorization and lowest common multiple.
Keywords
- Intellectual Need,
- Mathematical Tasks,
- Pre-service Teachers,
- Necessity Principle
Disciplines
Publication Date
September, 2009
Citation Information
Kien H Lim. "Provoking intellectual need" Matematics Teaching in the Middle School Vol. 15 Iss. 2 (2009) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kien_lim/12/