Recognizing Mathematics Students as Creative: Mathematical Creativity as Community-Based and Possibility-Expanding

Abstract

The editorial staff of JHM works hard to make sure the scholarship disseminated in JHM is accurate and upholds professional ethical guidelines. However the views and opinions expressed in each published manuscript belong exclusively to the individual contributor(s). The publisher and the editors do not endorse or accept responsibility for them. See https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/policies.html for more information. Abstract Although much creativity research has suggested that creativity is influenced by cultural and social factors, these have been minimally explored in the context of mathematics and mathematics learning. This problematically limits who is seen as mathematically creative and who can enter the discipline of mathematics. This paper proposes a framework of creativity that is based in what it means to know or do mathematics and accepts that creativity is something that can be nurtured in all students. Prominent mathematical epistemologies held since the beginning of the twentieth century in the Western mathematics tradition have different implications for promoting creativity in the mathematics classroom, with fallibilist and social constructivist perspectives arguably being most conducive for conceiving of creativity as a type of action for all students. Thus, this paper proposes a framework of creative mathematical action that is based in these epistemologies and explains key aspects of the framework by drawing connections between it and research in the field of creativity.