Integration of algebraic habits of mind into the classroom practice

Abstract

Getting students adopt the habits of mind specific to many disciplines can be seen as an anchor that will support them to solve the problems in their daily lives. Starting from this premise, a new subject, featuring the habits of mind and how to use and improve them in educational environments seems to worth thinking on. This article describes an activity designed to integrate the components of algebraic habits of mind into the classroom practice. Data were collected in three weeks and analyzed by descriptive method within the analytical framework for algebraic habits of mind. As the results of the classrroom practice, students showed various ways of algebraic thinking, used multiple representations, generalized their solutions and made abstractions. They were also able to transform their relational and generalized thoughts, which have been verbally expressed at the beginning, to symbolic arguments and mathematical statements that allow development of formal algebra