Search

Challenging mathematics problems were posed as a substantial part of homework in an elective combinatorics course. The intent was to encourage undergraduate students' exploration as well as develop their technical writing skills. The bulk of students' grades on these problems rested on a three-page reflective write-up using a rubric on mathematical creativity, the Creativity-in-Progress Rubric on Proving. Through student reflections, this structure led to a self-reported boost in students' proving confidence and led them to view themselves as practicing mathematicians. Descriptions of the problems, how students used the rubric as their guide, and grading structure are detailed in this article.

A growing body of mathematics education research points to the importance of fostering students' mathematical creativity in undergraduate mathematics courses. However, there are not many research-based instructional practices that aim to accomplish this task. Our research group has been working to address this issue and created a formative assessment tool, the "Creativity-in-Progress Rubric (CPR) on Proving". This tool is developed to help students evaluate their own proving process, as well as provide instructors insight into students' self-evaluation and process. In this paper, we provide a brief description of the CPR on Proving and explain its implementation in two courses at different institutions. Additionally, we share several students' usages of the CPR and provide some practical implementation suggestions.

Although many policy documents include equity as part of mathematics education standards and principles, researchers continue to explore means by which equity might be supported in classrooms and at the institutional level. Teaching practices that include opportunities for students to engage in active learning have been proposed to address equity. In this paper, through aligning some characteristics of inquiry put forth by Cook, Murphy and Fukawa-Connelly with Gutiérrez's dimensions of equity, we theoretically explore the ways in which active learning teaching practices that focus on inquiry could support equity in the classroom.