Early in my carreer I was heavily inspired by "Lockhart's Lament", a short essay written by Paul Lockhart, a research mathematician. The essay is mourning for mathematics in the current education system, which, in his opinion, strips all joy, agency, and creativity from the subject.

My own subject, chemistry, suffers from many of the issues lamented in Lockhart's work. It is traditrionally taught as a set of Cannon skills, topics, and computations, a dead set of tasks and ideas that the students are taught to regurgitate.

Much like Lockhart, I believe that there are better ways of educating students in these areas, and this project will be my research into the landscape of theory, reserach, and teacher practices surrounding the matter.

For the theoretical, I plan to use Vygotsky's conception of Creativity as givin in "Imagination and Creativity in the Adolescent". As for Authorship, I haven't found a theoretical source yet, but I have a few places where I want to look.

For practical research, I will probably begin with the works of David Hestenes on the FCI and modeling instruction. It doesn't specifically address Creativity or Authorship, but I know from past research it will be a good jumping off point. Addittionally, I also have a work by Fellus that provides a good overview in the area of mathematics.

As far as practical aspects in the classroom, I'm not really sure where I'm going to go for this, and, if something gets cut, this is probably it. I'm mostly concerned with using academic work in this area.

Questions for peers:

Is Math and Science too broad? Should I restrict it to just one or the other? Or even further to just "chemistry"? It's as broad as it is because the research that I have found is also broad.

Have you read Lockhart's Lament? Do you agree with his ideas?

My perception is that most of the American public education system in science and math is focussed on didactic educatitonal practices and more committed forms of knowledge. Does this match with your experiences? What exceptions have you seen?

I'm a bit stuck as to where to start on practices in the classroom. Where are the best places to find academic work on classroom practices?