The purpose of this article is to suggest one of the many ways in which values education can be incorporated into existing mathematics curricula and approaches to teaching mathematics. In particular, it will focus on ways in which values education can be enhanced by utilising a problem-solving approach to teaching mathematics. The articles include quotations, printed in italics, from the Sathya Sai Education in Human Values program, which originated in India and is now active in more than 40 countries around the world. Increasing numbers of individuals need to be able to think for themselves in a constantly changing environment, particularly as technology is making larger quantities of information easier to access and to manipulate. They also need to be able to adapt to unfamiliar or unpredictable situations more easily than people needed to in the past.
Teaching mathematics encompasses skills and functions which are a part of everyday life.
It allows the students to see a reason for learning the mathematics, and hence to become more deeply involved in learning it. Teaching through problem solving can enhance logical reasoning , helping people to be able to decide what rule, if any, a situation requires, or if necessary to develop their own rules in a situation where an existing rule cannot be directly applied. Problem solving can also allow the whole person to develop by experiencing the full range of emotions associated with various stages of the solution process. The problem that we worked on today had us make a hypothesis. Through testing, our hypothesis was proven incorrect.