ABSTRACT
As I begin writing a book for teachers on approaches to mathematics, I reflect on the irony of this. At school, I hated maths. By the time I was in Year 6, I was certain that I was destined never to be any good at the subject. Three of my previous teachers had been very clear about this fact. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand some of it; my main problem was I often rushed my sums and made what the teachers very specifically defined, in red pen on all my books, as careless mistakes. I fidgeted a lot at school. I got bored easily. I was easy to engage in a subject, but just as easily distracted if I didn’t see the point in something.
