Franco Favilli

Ornaments and Tessellations: Encouraging Creativity in the Mathematics Classroom

The presented paper focuses on encouraging creativity in mathematics lessons in heterogeneous mathematics classrooms. It is an extended version of a paper presented at ICME 2016 in Hamburg. It describes teaching experiments conducted within the frame of the project M3EaL: Multiculturalism, Migration, Mathematics Education and Language (526333-LLP-1-2012-1-IT-COMENIUS-CMP), a multilateral project whose aim was development of teaching units to support immigrant pupils and pupils from different socio-cultural backgrounds (m3eal.dm.unipi.it). The paper shows that if pre-service and in-service teachers face a situation in which they cannot rely on traditional textbooks and ways of doing mathematics—in this case a culturally heterogeneous classroom—they tend to be very creative in planning their lesson and at the same time encourage their pupils’ creativity. Thus cultural heterogeneity may be perceived as advantage as it may result in breaking down stereotypes in mathematics classrooms.