An interesting article about teaching that showed up on my Facebook news feed (facebook as a new source is also a fascinating topic, but that is a different discussion
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It was Deborah Ball's original research article around the point that the paragraph is making that made me fall in love with her area of research (mathematical knowledge for teaching). Deborah Ball is one of the people profiled in this article.
I think it's very important to distinguish the kind of math that teachers need to know from the kind that mathematicians need to know -- I see it as part of the long road toward making teaching a "profession" in the sense that actuaries, doctors, and lawyers are; and hence making teaching a competitive profession.
"Know" in this case should be interpreted broadly -- content, skills, etc.
Reading the comments to that article makes me sad. As usual, everybody is an expert. The article may say "research shows that X does not affect performance" and there will be nevertheless dozens of comments saying that X will fix everything.
That quote is 100% what I do in my whole numbers class (almost). After this past year I could give you an itemized list of *exactly* where people go wrong in the process of long division and why--where their thinking screws up. My new plan for math this term is to have people explain to me what they're doing as often as possible--both to give them language for talking about math and also to see what their thinking is and where it might be going wrong.
This article about teaching was also really interesting.
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I think it's very important to distinguish the kind of math that teachers need to know from the kind that mathematicians need to know -- I see it as part of the long road toward making teaching a "profession" in the sense that actuaries, doctors, and lawyers are; and hence making teaching a competitive profession.
"Know" in this case should be interpreted broadly -- content, skills, etc.
Reply
Reply
That quote is 100% what I do in my whole numbers class (almost). After this past year I could give you an itemized list of *exactly* where people go wrong in the process of long division and why--where their thinking screws up.
My new plan for math this term is to have people explain to me what they're doing as often as possible--both to give them language for talking about math and also to see what their thinking is and where it might be going wrong.
This article about teaching was also really interesting.
Reply
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