Humor in mathematics teaching: tasks for the classroom

This book, Humour in Mathematics Teaching: tasks for the classroom, is a corollary of HUMAT Research Project (Humour in Mathematics Teaching), developed by the Higher School of Education of Viseu (Portugal), in partnership with the University of Minho (Portugal), the University of Granada (Spain) and the University of Mendoza (Argentina), with the support of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (Portugal) and of the CI&DETS. The project rests upon two fundamental assumptions. On the one hand, it assumes that humour plays a crucial role in creating a learning environment that can boost the students’ motivation and encourage them to learn mathematics. On the other hand, it assumes that the understanding of humour and the learning of Mathematics are two activities that require a good reasoning capacity. It also recognises that the inquiry-based mathematics teaching, grounded on the work of the students leading to the completion of challenging mathematical tasks, provides a high potential for learning. All those considerations led to the birth of this book that offers mathematical tasks with a humorous twist and whose main goal is to fulfil these two functions: to persuade students to learn and make them think about humorous situations that involve mathematical concepts. To achieve this goal, the book is organised into two sections. The first is devoted to a brief introduction to the concept of humour and the other concepts that are associated to it approaches the concept initially in a broader sense, then focusing on the teaching of Mathematics. The largest section of the book, the second, is devoted to the presentation of mathematical tasks that are based on panels or comic strips involving humorous and witty content. ; FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnología, I.P., under the project UID/Multi/04016/2016. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion