Reading this article took me back to my math classes in elementary and secondary school. I tried to think back and remember if there was ever any emphasis placed on the creativity, flexibility and adaptivity when learning how to solve problems and I realized that there never was any importance placed the these three abilities. Instead, I can specifically recall instances (right up until senior level high school math classes) where the teacher insisted we solve problems in a particular manner, using a particular method and/or formula, just so that marking the question would be easier for the teacher. I believe this was an attitude I encountered a lot from my math teachers and as a result, I became one of the students who could learn how to solve a problem really well but in only one specific manner. I found this was not the case once I came to university hence I struggled to be creative and come up with new and/or modify known strategies of solving problems. Concepts like flexibility and adaptivity seemed strange to me because that wasn't how I'd been taught how to solve math problems. I always felt there was one method and/or strategy that had to be more correct than the others because I'd always been taught there can only really be one "right" way to solve a problem.
Reflecting back on this experience and now reading through this article, it illustrates to me how important it is for students to have a good grasp on all three strategies of creativity, flexibility, and adaptivity. Math shouldn't be about robotic routines to solve problems but should involve thinking and conceptual understanding.
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