Teaching Mathematics with Creativity

Abstract

This article explores and reviews the literature about the latest research-based teaching and learning techniques or strategies that are used by passionate and enthusiastic classroom teachers, often for the purpose of enlightening, firing up, or illuminating classroom lessons to grab students’ immediate attention, curiosity, and overall interest in the learning process. The question used to guide the exploration of the existing literature is: How do effective classroom teachers manage to always create a conducive, welcoming, and exciting rather than depressive learning environment? Participants’ engagement, observation and informal-oral interviews (or conversations) were the methodologies employed for this review study. While the current research output is often forward-looking, that is, it is too busy moving forward as it comes up daily with suggested new ways of teaching and learning, almost nothing or little attention is given to what is already available. This means there is an implication that a valuable knowledge already discovered could remain largely un-utilized, unused knowledge domain which can be put into practice in classroom settings. Hence, this qualitative, cumulative, and narrative review article highlights some of the latest, creative, and effective teaching techniques that the authors explored and found impressive. These are effective strategies that might be overlooked, overshadowed, or blurred; but they are effective techniques that can be utilized by the most passionate and enthusiastic classroom teachers for the purpose of making mathematics attractive. It is therefore recommended that the classroom teachers be allowed certain decree of freedom to experiment with new ways of teaching.