Sept 11, 2023 Entrance Slip ... Relational and Instrumental Understanding

Looking back on my life and how I ended up understanding math compared to many of my friends, I realize that I shifted from an instrumental understanding to a relational one at some point in my education. Throughout the reading, I frequently stopped at all the parts on how he described students understanding math instrumentally. I compared it to how many of my friends only cared about how I got the solution rather than why when they asked for my help. Seeing how many of my friends' attitudes are represented in this paper brings a sense of relevance to the current math education system today.

It was pretty intriguing as Skemp tries to justify why so many teachers teach instrumental mathematics. Looking back on my math teachers, they taught math in a mixed view of relational and instrumental. Yet, in the end, the biggest takeaway with my classmates was usually the instrumental understanding, as everyone mainly cared about the how and not the why. Since this paper is quite old, or I was lucky to have the teachers incorporate some relational mathematics, nowadays, I think there is an effort to show some why rather than only the how in mathematics. While Skemp tries to justify a shift into relational mathematics, presently, many teachers incorporate a mixture of instrumental and relational. However, given the need for exams to assess students, many teachers teach math instrumentally since the student's primary goal is to get a good mark. I learned mathematics with a weird hybrid of relational and instrumental math. I understand how relational math can more easily allow a student to see the beauties of mathematics. However, unless there is a clear shift in how we do assessments in math education, most students' goal is to answer as many questions correctly, which leads them to embrace the "How" over the "Why."