The Iowa Department of Education has come out with two documents detailing what it calls the Model Core Mathematics Curriculum. Prior to this Iowa was the only state in the USA that had not established state standards in subjects like mathematics. I will provide a link to the introductory article. In that article is another link to the downloadable curriculum document for high school mathematics. Teachers and parents can read it and draw their own conclusions.
One complaint about mathematics education in the USA has been that the curriculum is "a mile wide and an inch deep," meaning that it has attempted to cover way too many topics and therefore has not been able to cover them in the depth necessary for true understanding and mastery. I believe I first heard that at least as far back as 1983 when the "A Nation at Risk" document came out. I don't disagree with that comment but, if people think that simply decreasing the number of topics addressed in the course of study will solve all of the problems, they will end up being disappointed.
I think it is a first step but what is more important, perhaps even decisive, is the need to find ways to motivate students to do the hard work necessary to learn at a high level. We should work for a higher percentage of parents who put the proper emphasis on education but that is a segment of the population that educators have less control over. What I believe is that math teachers must work hard to determine the most effective ways to teach their students (people other than teachers determine what is to be taught). The effectiveness of a teaching method includes the particular way of having students learn the skill or concept but also must also include motivational ideas that will cause the student to want to spend the time necessary to learn the skill and overcome the obstacles involved in learning difficult things.
Students today have a large number of demands on their time and, getting them to choose learning academic topics over extracurricular activities or jobs or video games or TV or text messaging or phone calls or anything else, requires special attention. I am not saying that students can't do some of those things, some of the time. The ideal thing would be that the student, himself or herself, chooses to put their emphasis on academics and then work in the other activities as their available time permits. It is necessary but not sufficient to just tell them or show them that some particular topic is important to their future. Motivation, motivation, motivation can overcome many obstacles. Motivate daily, motivate weekly, motivate monthly, motivate yearly, and motivate creatively. Lesson planning (daily, unit or chapter) should include motivation.
Success is an excellent motivator but that requires teaching that is correct in how it teaches students to think about a skill or concept so that the success is real and not artificial. When students find that the brain that they have really does work, they get pretty excited and want to do more. Having fun is important to students, but it has to come in the context of learning, otherwise students get the idea that learning is necessarily separate from fun. Having fun is good for teachers too since they may be teaching the same lesson several times a day and/or many times over the course of their career.
So my prescription for the USA to do better in mathematics education (and all education for that matter) is to work to get more positive involvement from parents, find the most effective ways to teach the required content (requires a lot of time and effort on the part of the teacher), and then motivate, motivate, motivate. If you can do only one of those three things, MOTIVATE.
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2 comments:
I always thought a good motivator in your accelerated math class was that you demanded excellence from your students and would not accept anything less. But I think part of the reason that worked was because the class was optional; we all knew what we were getting into when we signed up for it, and we decided, "yes, I am up for the challenge." When you switched from teaching only accelerated classes to instead teaching all of the 8th grade classes, did you find a difference in your approach to motivation? Did you have to switch gears every time the bell rang?
Excellent question, Lori. You are absolutely right that one of the built-in motivators in your class was the challenge that kids had in succeeding in my class. I think many kids felt that their other classes were not challenging enough for them, so they really wanted to see how well they could do when things weren't so easy. With my other classes I did find it more difficult to motivate them. I actually don't feel I did a good job with that until later in my career. I love math and so the various skills and concepts have always been fascinating to me. I had to constantly remind myself that many of my students didn't have that built-in love for the subject - just the opposite in many cases. What I tried to do was to teach them as well as I could so that they could have real success and that would be the best motivator I could have. The point of my post was that the motivation also needs to be there to enable the learning to happen in the first place. I was not good at that at all. Since I have left teaching I have gained a much better understanding of the need for motivation to prepare the students to learn. One of my former students, Anne DuChene (Class of 98), did her master's thesis on this very subject. I think what most teachers do for motivation is to tell the students that what they are learning is important to their future (meaning a test the next day all the way through to their adult life) and that is okay, but more has to be done because the same message over and over will eventually get tuned out. If I got to have my career over again I would make motivation a much bigger part of my planning.
I wanted to also apologize to you for not noticing your response to my Feb. 7 post. I'm going to reply to that next.
I have enjoyed reading some of the posts in your blog too. Your life and experiences in the big city give you plenty to comment on. When you get a chance I would like you to tell me exactly what it is that you do in your job. My e-mail address is: crxos@yahoo.com if that is easier.
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