“Book of Nature”: How to Teach Children to Read It?
“Book of Nature”: How to Teach Children to Read It?

Summary/Abstract: Modern science and technology are founded on the belief in therationality and mathematical structure of the world. Learning aboutit, the progress and quality of our lives are related to the popularizationof thinking about mathematical education as equipping studentswith the competencies necessary to read the Galilean “Book ofNature.” The article presents the idea of a mathematical understandingof reality and the leading emotional-volitional and instrumentalcompetencies that should be provided to students of elementary educationin order to shape their beliefs about the effectiveness of thisway of cognition and support them in acquiring appropriate knowledgeand skills.In terms of field-specific and social competencies, it is about: awakeningcognitive curiosity, building the attitude of epistemic and ethicaloptimism, belief in the inevitability and cognitive value of error,developing the ability to cooperate and compete in small groups, andto shape the attitude of researcher reliability.In terms of instrumental competencies, these would be: the abilityto model phenomena at the level of substitutes (simulations), knowledgeof numbers, decimal positional system and four arithmetic operations,the understanding of measurement and practical knowledgeof measures, the ability to problematize phenomena from the naturalworld, having elementary knowledge of heuristics, a certain level ofcalculation efficiency and knowledge of basic geometric figures.

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