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ZDM

, Volume 49, Issue 1, pp 95–105 | Cite as

Lesson Play tasks as a creative venture for teachers and teacher educators

  • Rina Zazkis
Original Article
First Online:

Abstract

This study focuses on instances of creativity in the design of Lesson Play tasks and in prospective teachers’ responses to the tasks. A Lesson Play task assumes a theatrical interpretation of the word ‘play’ and requires teachers to write a script for an imaginary interaction between a teacher-character and student-characters, attending to a particular instructional situation. These instructional interactions are triggered by ‘prompts’ that present an unexpected student claim, or a particular erroneous conclusion or reasoning. I present a brief overview of the various iterations of task development. I then demonstrate instances of creativity in the design of Lesson Play tasks by teacher educators and in responses to the various prompts in the tasks by prospective teachers. The prompts for the plays and teachers’ responses to the tasks are analysed using an extension of Lev-Zamir and Leikin’s model of Creativity in Mathematics Teaching. While the original model attends to teacher-directed creativity and student-directed creativity, the proposed extension attends to mathematics educators in the role of teachers, and teachers in the role of students. I illustrate cases of pedagogical flexibility and originality as well as of mathematical creativity and originality, noting that multiple facets of creativity can be recognized in particular instructional choices. I conclude that Lesson Play tasks present a fruitful avenue for displaying and supporting teachers’ creativity.

Keywords

Creativity in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT) Lesson Play Teacher educator Mathematical creativity Pedagogical creativity 
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Copyright information

© FIZ Karlsruhe 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Simon Fraser UniversityBurnabyCanada

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