When you devote yourself to making math “fun,” you are almost implying that math isn’t already enjoyable, Liu-Constant says. We’d never say that about art, she adds. The assumption is that art is inherently interesting. And for people who love math, it’s already like art, she says.
It’s crucial for the sense of play in math to extend beyond just activities and games, she says. It should be more pervasive. That’s how it is with her brother, an engineer in Taiwan, who finds math so absorbing he could spend all his spare time thinking about numbers, Liu-Constant says.
So these days, in her work with Project Zero’s Pedagogy of Play, a research arm at Harvard relying on a “whole school approach” to learning, Liu-Constant has tried to reconstrue play as a strategy for learning, and not simply a set of activities for which teachers need to find time.
It’s about uncovering the fun that’s already in math, rather than trying to use games as an apology for teaching math, she says.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2025-02-19-could-play-boost-students-math-performance
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