Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

Throughout my years in primary and secondary school, my general attitude towards mathematics was a rather positive one. This had a lot to do with the fact that I was brilliant at maths and always scored impressive marks. I consider myself really lucky to be blessed with talented teachers who taught me well. As a result, I can recall only a few instances when I actually had to question my teacher's on how or why we came to a certain solution, especially when it involved using real life situations.

According to Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory (Churchill, 2011), I believe that as an existential learner, I learn best when I apply what I have learned (through mathematical problems) to real-life situations. However, it was fifteen years later that I decided to return to university with the determination to investigate how I learn best as I believe that every individual learns in their own distinct manner. Another major reason why I believed maths to be a positive experience for me was that every problem could be placed under a specific heading - multiplication, division, addition or subtraction.

Bearing this in mind, it seemed to me to be a simple task to solve the problem under the specific headings since I knew the problem would be division if the heading was multiplication. This was one method that I found to be particularly effective in solving word-based problems. Apart from this, memorising formulas was my speciality. I left school after completing Maths Methods year 12.

I decided to join the university after a gap of more than fifteen years and this has been one of the most difficult and challenging aspect of my learning. Last year when I enrolled in Liberal Arts at VU, I developed a particular anxiety in maths. This may have had something ...