Promoting Mathematical Thinking of University Students: The Case of a Numeracy Course

Should math educators care about what is happening in numeracy education research? Is the addition of a numeracy course something that mathematics departments should consider in their course offerings? Numeracy is often conflated with math-lite and dismissed as not useful to mathematicians and math educators. The term is used interchangeably with quantitative reasoning (QR), quantitative literacy (QL), and mathematics literacy (ML) which does not help educators figure out just what it is that we are supposed to help students be good at when teaching numeracy. We will use the term ‘numeracy’ to represent all of these threads without prejudice to its primacy. In the commentary, we make the case for numeracy tasks as a distinct form of mathematics tasks. We also show how numeracy tasks are a distinct form of what are loosely called ‘word problems’ and a distinct form of mathematical modelling task by focusing the discussion on what each is about. We make the case for quality numeracy tasks (i.e. those that inspire transfer between concrete and abstract thinking spaces) as ones that strengthen mathematical thinking, whether one sees mathematical thinking as made up of a series of thinking actions (e.g. making conjectures and generalising), or as engaging in the discourse of mathematics. High-quality numeracy tasks are key to a high-quality numeracy course—we describe a case of a numeracy course ‘Numbers for Life’ that attempts to address these challenges directly.