An innovative pedagogical strategy for teaching and assessing critical thinking in mathematics

This article describes and promotes an innovative pedagogical strategy for teaching and assessing critical thinking in mathematics. It can be applied at secondary and tertiary level. The idea is to use mathematics questions that are deliberately designed to mislead the solver and direct to an incorrect solution. We call such questions provocative questions. The intention is to encourage students to critically analyse a mathematical question first before applying certain techniques or software to solve it. That is to enhance a habit to question the question, pay attention to conditions and constraints, recognise mistakes and don’t take anything for granted which is an essential part of a mathematical way of thinking. Several examples demonstrate the idea in the article. Attitudes of secondary school mathematics teachers and university lecturers towards the suggested pedagogical strategy are presented and compared. Implications for teaching practice are also discussed.