ABSTRACT The Zen concept of beginner's mind describes how one's level of awareness can open one's mind to growth and possibilities, an attitude that would be beneficial for many mathematics students. In this naturalistic case study, two small groups of middle years students engage in the same mathematical task, one group demonstrating the characteristics of beginner's mind and the other not. One group focuses on making sure that all its members can follow the steps of one member's proposed solution. The other group, which displays characteristics of beginner's mind, explores the task thoroughly, and in its openness to ideas it notices mathematically salient details in the task that the first group overlooks completely. This paper suggests that through beginner's mind, students may develop habits of mind that enable them to attend to and think about mathematical possibilities deeply.

中文翻译：

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初心与初中数学生

摘要 禅宗的初学者心智概念描述了一个人的意识水平如何可以让一个人的心智向成长和可能性敞开，这种态度对许多数学学生来说是有益的。在这个自然主义的案例研究中，两小组中学生从事相同的数学任务，一组展示初学者思维的特征，另一组不展示。一组专注于确保其所有成员都可以遵循一名成员提出的解决方案的步骤。另一组表现出初学者思维的特点，对任务进行了彻底的探索，在思想开放的情况下，它注意到了第一组完全忽略的任务中数学上的显着细节。本文建议通过初学者的头脑，