From Games to Structures. In the traces of Zoltan Dienes’ ideas

Abstract

Zoltan Dienes the Hungarian origin mathematician and psychologist aimed at the renewal of
mathematics teaching. He argued that teachers should promote the development of authentic
mathematical thinking instead of teaching mathematical knowledge. The aim of teaching
mathematics is the mental development of mathematical structures. For this purpose Dienes
introduced games for children to gain mathematically relevant experiences. Through the accumulation
of these experiences, argued Dienes, learners get to understand and represent the
abstract mathematical structures. In the course of structure creation he emphasized the role
of multiple embodiment of the abstract relations. In my paper I follow Dienes in analyzing
the process how the structures develop as well as reveal the further psychological highlights
in the background that Dienes failed to refl ect on. I think that the comprehension of mental
structure creation leads us to better understanding of insight.