Mathematics education in the computational age: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

In the spirit of Jonathan Borwein’s opportunistic and inventive use of computers in the development of the field of Experimental Mathematics, this paper recommends a computational ‘turn’ in school mathematics. At a time when students are increasingly moving away from mathematics in the senior years of schooling, we need to reconsider the relevance of current mathematics curricula and traditional approaches to mathematics pedagogy. Computational applications are transforming the world that we live in and just as Experimental Mathematics challenged the foundations of the discipline of mathematics, computational approaches are also changing almost all traditional fields of study. By persisting with the teaching of manual computation in school mathematics, we are denying the current and future worlds of our students. By doing so, we risk increasing our students’ lack of interest in mathematics as it will progressively be seen as an historical curiosity of little relevance. This paper proposes some key questions for mathematics educators to consider in order to make mathematics more relevant and of interest to today’s students.