Spending too much time focusing on developing cognitive skills such as logics and reasoning, attention, and memory skills will cause neglection of developing student flexibility skill which mathematics learning can help obtain. As stated, holistic education means developing the whole person; education isn’t only the cognitive knowledge of facts but include the development of social skills and emotional maturity (Kolb & Shama, 2014)1. Training student flexibility is to foster their out-of-box thinking skill that prevents from errors leading to bias or blindness. In the real world, we can nurture the skill to reduce the risk so that an unnecessary loss cannot or less happen with them.
Why are there people who have a difficulty to stay in a job longer as job tasks going rise? It reflects we might need to make improvement on our training in skills starting from their school years as early as they are at teen times.
The issue is students who are at teen ages must deal with a heavy load that they strive to advance their learning levels. The reality is that they might lose opportunities to build job skills, for example, flexible skill, and it might negatively impact them if they seek a job that needs them to be flexible. Also, even if they show their flexibility during the process of study, they don’t have chances to make use of them in the practical world, particularly, for those who are with academic status. Thus, they will suffer dilemma compared to those who won’t because they have received the skill training timely, however, in our adult eyes, this is a common issue,
A question has been raised. How do we fit well with the situations so that students can get through this dilemma, and thus, achieve their potential to the maximum; how do we have our students trust us, and are willing to follow the advice that potentially benefits to them?
The model to allow students to fail cannot be only with talk but no action. In mathematics learning, our students are taught to learn basic concepts and skills, unlike other subjects in which students can attain more practical experience during class time. In mathematics class, students’ static practice time is restricted for the sake of introducing a variety of activities with objectives being set beforehand. A risk of the style may be found when we find our students are interrupted frequently – content prepared ahead of time isn’t sufficient for accommodating to the request of learning, which students cannot see mathematics as beauty since its beauty is not a simple picture, or a pattern, or a word that can be described.
When students are asked to plot a function with absolute value, what first comes down to our mind? Removing the absolute sign is a nature way to come up with a solution. However, there is no beauty, at least, not mathematical beauty when solving such a problem using the nature way where students will find it is boring later. In other words, if we help students create a table before plotting the absolute function rather than the nature method we described above, then we will receive more achievable feedback than we expect. Mathematical beauty isn’t designed to see with human eyes, but to experience in person. That is, mathematics learning is beautiful about if we have a sense of it, not how we see it, and how the outcome is.
The real beauty in mathematics learning is to see our student growth through a learning process. During this process, pain will not be avoidable. Mistakes never ask the forgiveness. Wise persons learn experience from textbooks, and learns from others, but thoughtless ones learn the experience from themselves, and learn from experiments.
Taking flexible teaching styles is the way to teach our students to be flexible. Dr. Joseph Lathan claims, no two students are the same, and there is a spectrum of different learning styles. An educator’s teaching style, therefore, can greatly impact a student’s ability to learn and comprehend. This is why knowledge of different learning styles is essential for teachers2. Our teaching cannot be successful without modification to teaching style, rather a flexible manner and the positive attitude when troubles come. It will influence the students to have a growth mindset, a signal of successful teaching.
Thereafter, our students learn how to be flexible through mathematics learning. They obtain the skill, then they will be promoted to be more powerful when they are ready.
Reference
1. Ida, Verna (2020). Flexibility in Learning and Teaching Styles in an Accounting Course International Business Research; Vol. 13, No. 11; 2020 ISSN 1913-9004 E-ISSN 1913-9012 Canadian Center of Science and Education
2. Dr. Joseph Lathan (2022). An Educator’s Guide to Teaching Styles & Learning Styles. An Educator’s Guide to Teaching Styles & Learning Styles (sandiego.edu)
