In my classroom I tend to lean towards problem solving and giving students opportunities for discovery. I have been working on using the strategies championed by Peter Liljedahl in Building Thinking Classrooms in mathematics. For many of our students a balance between direct teaching and discovery is required. Time to work on rich tasks in groups, mini lessons and direct instruction, small group lessons, games, and independent tasks. In anything balance is key, finding what works for you and the group of students in front of you that day. I don’t think a single approach is correct, teaching is an art full of human variables, our own experience, that of our students and where they intersect. I try to teach with the core competencies in mind, math gives us great opportunities to work on both the creative and critical thinking competencies as well as communication. Both articles encourage allowing students to think for themselves and for teachers to accept that students bring a great variety of strategies and perspectives to their learning. I also agree that teachers need to model a positive attitude towards math, no matter what we do our attitude is contagious. Each year we need to find a balance of what is best for our current group of students, we need to work together in our school communities and across grade levels to meet student needs.
These two articles reminded me of another set I read in the Math for Elementary School Teacher’s course and wrote about here. https://blog.missyounger.com/2021/06/09/comparing-visions-for-math-education/
