John Masons's Questioning in Math Education Reflection

I really like the idea of Japan's culture of asking "in how many ways can you solve the problem?". It's so much less structured and rigid than in Canadian schools and it promotes the freedom and creativity of mathematics. This lack of boundaries directly supports inquiry in the classroom.

I firmly agree with the complexity-oriented approach to pedagogy. Believing that your students are intellectually capable enough to attack a problem with little to know guidance is the foundation of what an inquiry-based classroom needs to succeed.

Carefully choosing constraints, not being too frequent, infrequent, or intrusive in my interventions, and creating an environment in which I am not the gauge of correctness in the classroom but the student themselves is a great way to foster an inquiry-based classroom. Building a conjecture-based classroom is something that really appeals to me, where "everything said needs to be tested and justified". I need to encourage students to ask questions and I need to be okay with not knowing the answers, and further, be okay with letting students know that I may not know the answer. I think this fosters an inquiry-based classroom as well as a trusting environment for students and myself.

To this end, inn my unit planning, I could build in a "question of the day" part of my lesson or my week where I simply open a discussion up to the class about a math concept that I may be unsure about or that has come up in the lessons during the week. This would promote good, relevant questioning and create a culture in the classroom that is trusting and inquiry-based.