My name is Sérgio Carlos, I live and teach secondary school Mathematics in Aveiro, which is a city in the west cost of Portugal. Ever since I started my teaching career, about 27 years ago, I was intrigued and fascinated by some students that seem to have a particular ability to grasp mathematical ideas, while others in the same classroom struggle to simply know the procedures to tackle any given task. So, to better try to understand this phenomenon, I have engaged in a PhD, completed in 2016, which focused on Excellence and Creativity in University Mathematics.
At this point I’m asked
to share with the readers a story about my involvement with creativity and
giftedness in Mathematics. After some thought I decided to talk about my own
route, both as a teacher and a researcher, into this captivating subject.
My first work experience
with a group of very high achievers in Mathematics, took place between 2009 and
2012, when the Mathematics Department of Aveiro’s University created a special
program for students, not yet in the university, but that were showing great
promise at middle and high school math. In this program, which I developed
together with university professors, there were weekly sessions of math problem
solving. The problems we proposed at these sessions were not of the same type
of the problems those students faced in their regular Mathematics classes. They
were “out of the box” problems for which there wasn’t any predetermined set of
steps or algorithm to apply, and instead the students had to discover for
themselves a way to solve each one. For me, it was a source of great
satisfaction and of professional fulfilment to work with those students and see
how they tackled the unexpected challenges put in front of them. These sessions
have strengthened my fascination with high abilities students, and I was very
disappointed when the university ended this program.
In that process, I found that the main personal traits required in a high achiever in Mathematics are motivation, the willingness to engage in work consistent with deliberate practice, and self-regulation abilities. In turn, the data from the analysis of the creative performance of very high achivers in Mathematics denoted limited creativity, probably because in the school system the students aren’t frequently required to be creative in Mathematics.
Following the PhD completion, I was teaching at a middle school, and the next opportunity to work with high potential math students came in a project developed by myself, in which very capable middle school pupils voluntarily participated. This two-year program worked fine, both with good adherence form students and visible improvement of their problem-solving skills, and, for me, with great personal satisfaction.
But, in Portugal, some teachers, me included, must apply to a position every four years (as a result, a teacher can continue on the same school or be assigned to a different one), and, since I got a job at another school, that was the end of that project. When I got to the new school, I tried to motivate the school board to put in motion a similar project but, unfortunately, they were not supportive of the idea. Consequently, since then I did not have the chance to work with groups of high mathematical potential students.
In Portugal, whilst the school system is always concerned to provide the struggling students with all the support available – and rightly so – the same level of attention is not dedicated to the one´s with high ability. This happens despite the schools having legal instruments that could be applied to help these students further advancement, but most times no action is taken. I am a believer that the educational system has the responsibility to provide every student with the conditions to fulfill their potential, be it low or high. But, unfortunately, sometimes we must deal with the prevailing erroneous idea “student x is already getting excellent grades, he doesn’t need further assistance”, and sadly, this leads to the neglecting of the needs of the most capable.
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