ABSTRACT
The mathematics instruction that most American students experience in today’s classrooms embodies pervasive cultural myths that misrepresent the nature of mathematics as well as what it means to learn mathematics. Mathematics textbooks, pedagogical practices, and patterns of classroom discourse, especially, work in concert to perpetuate the idea that mathematics is the ‘discipline of certainty’. Together with a behaviourist view of learning, this myth has led students and teachers alike to reduce mathematical learning to the acquisition of ready-made algorithms and proofs through listening, memorizing, and practising. However comfortable these myths may be, they have debilitating consequences for students as they invite students to develop beliefs like ‘There is only one correct way to solve any mathematical problem[;]…mathematics is a solitary activity done by individuals in isolation[;]…formal proof is irrelevant to processes of discovery or invention’ (Schoenfeld, 1992, p. 359) as well as learning behaviours that are not conducive to success in mathematics (Borasi, 1990). Many students, in short, have come to perceive mathematics as a ‘stainless steel wall’ (Buerk, 1981)—cold, hard, and unapproachable, a mysterious activity quite distinct from their everyday lives and reserved for people with special talents.
