Best Practice In Mathematics Learning: A Theoretical Discussion For Consideration

The concept of optimal best practice, reflecting the paradigm of positive psychology, gained extensive research interests from scholars in the fields of Psychology and Education. Optimal best practice, from the perspective of academia, is concerned with the maximization of a person's cognitive competence in a specific domain of academic learning. Achieving optimal best practice, in this sense, requires the 'activation and enactment' of the process of optimization. In recent years, with the emergence of the study of positive psychology, educators and researchers have explored and focused on the development of different theoretical and methodological conceptualizations that could explain a experience of optimal best. Our significant theoretical and empirical contributions, which consisted of research development in Australia, Malaysia, and Taiwan, have involved the proposition of the Framework of Achievement Bests.

The Framework of Achievement Bests (Ngu & Phan, 2018), recently introduced, emphasizes a person's optimal best practice in daily settings. Best practice encompasses three major components: acquired knowledge, personal experience, and personal functioning. The coining of this term 'best practice,' in particular, focuses on different levels of best practice that may exist on a continuum, for example: realistic achievement best and optimal achievement best. This book chapter, in line with the scope of progressive education, explores in detail the concept of optimal best practice, situated within the context of secondary school mathematics learning. In particular, reflecting our recent research development, we provide a complex methodological conceptualization for understanding of optimal best practice, which takes into account cognitive load imposition.