Final Project Slides and Reflection

 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qLdufvO58D6oKedjwJ7fSl9MCZEUAqd50kt-JeygpmM/edit?usp=sharing

Reflection

During this inquiry project I learned a lot about my own position on what makes math interesting through reflection and consideration of my own math journey, while also simultaneously learning about the educational systems of highly successful countries Finland and Singapore and their techniques to achieve such success. Did they care about student interest in the subject? Or was their goal only to get high scores on PISA testing? It turns out that interest in mathematics is a foundational principal in their education systems and I learned how they define 'interest' and the purpose it serves in their system. There are so many interesting aspects of this project that I discovered along the journey. If I were to consider what to take forward into future inquiry, I would want to investigate more into how our education system is fundamentally structured to support student interest, how higher mathematics could be integrated into the high school curriculum, and I would possibly want to dive deeper into the education system of Finland. This project lead me in many interesting directions, many of which I did not expect. For example, I did not expect to feel so strongly about integrating higher mathematics into the high school classroom, but when I thought about it over an extended period of time, the more it seemed to make sense. If we want students to be interested in math, then we need to make math relevant to them and give them the most interesting problems mathematics has to offer. Many of the concepts in calculus, abstract algebra, geometry, etc. can be broken down, simplified and made approachable for unseasoned mathematicians. Many of the concepts in these topics already connect to the fundamentals our curriculum is based on. From this point in my inquiry, I am very interested in pursuing inquiry into the technological revolution of education and what that means for the framework of our school systems.