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LITERATURE REVIEW
The State of South African Mathematics Education: Situating the Hidden Promise of Multiple-solution Tasks
1
North-West University, SOUTH AFRICA
Publication date: 2020-11-28
EURASIA J. Math., Sci Tech. Ed 2020;16(12):em1921
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
We live in the challenging times of the 21st-century with the increased need for humans to
possess specific skills that will help them to be successful in this era. This means that education
should in learners, develop these skills effectively. Different global countries have begun to
recognize the significance of multiple solutions tasks in the teaching and learning of mathematics
in the 21st-century. However, this practice is not visible in South Africa. Hence, the current study
explores and synthetize the sparsely available literature on MSTs to answer the question: What is
the significance of multiple-solution tasks (MSTs) in mathematics education and why is it relevant
for South African mathematics education to make the exercise of producing multiple solutions
accessible to learners? The literature that is being synthetized here is viewed through the optic
lens of the social constructivism theory as proposed by Vygotsky and explicated in Jean Lave and
Etienne Wenger`s Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. In the conclusion I engage
in an argumentation that illuminates the significance of MSTs in mathematics education and
provide reasons why it would be beneficial for the South African mathematics curriculum to
incorporate MSTs.
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