Abstract
Life in today’s world is characterized by complexity and rapid change. Twenty-first century skills and especially mathematical understanding are supposed to crucially contribute to meeting the demands of our world since mathematics offers strategies to structure or simplify complex problems. An open question is which teaching practices are appropriate to provide all students with such skills and to broaden the participation of underprivileged students. The present article explores these aspects by focusing on complex tasks, a practice that can be considered highly accepted in the context of mathematics education all over the world. We will concentrate on the perspective of the German mathematics education community as the foundation of our considerations. Based on an analytical investigation of mathematical literacy and twenty-first century skills (such as creativity, critical thinking, or problem-solving), we will address central ideas and characteristics of complex mathematical tasks. To complement the analytical approach, we will illustrate their characteristics as well as possible intersections with twenty-first century skills by presenting an elementary school teaching experiment. Finally, we will critically discuss the potentials and pitfalls of complex mathematical tasks from an abstract perspective and conclude by debating practical consequences for organizing mathematical learning-teaching-processes.
Highlights
Modern society in the twenty-first century is characterized by complexity and rapid change.The problems we encounter in daily life are increasingly diverse and demand a variety of problem-solving skills
The present article explores these aspects by focusing on complex tasks, a practice that can be considered highly accepted in the context of mathematics education all over the world
We argue that fostering mathematical literacy in school can contribute largely to the development of twenty-first century skills
Summary
The problems we encounter in daily life are increasingly diverse and demand a variety of problem-solving skills. This got more obvious than ever in the corona crisis of 2020, when the Daily News offered a variety of diagrams (with a linear or logarithmic scale) as well as infection, mortality, and recovery rates. Making sense of this increasingly complex world and dealing with its challenges require a variety of tools, skills, and approaches. Providing students with opportunities to acquire those skills and tools is a basic goal of mathematics education and the core meaning of mathematical literacy
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