If there are a few questions that ought to guide our continual improvement process in American mathematics education, this one should be near the top of the list. Why is it that so many people leave school feeling that mathematics is inaccessible, irrelevant, or even scary?
If I were to try to offer a response to these questions, I would suggest that we need to consider the content that we expect all students to learn and master — particularly at the secondary level — and we need to consider, at all levels, what we “teach” students (both explicitly and through our actions) about what is important in mathematics learning.
I am very interested in conducting research (formal or otherwise) on the mathematics that adults use in their daily lives and in various careers. I often wonder if some (not all) of the more specialized mathematics that we teach at the high school level could be delayed for later career-oriented coursework, when it will be much more relevant for the students who must learn it...
Further, on her website, Dr. Jo Boaler from Stanford cites research that indicates that about 50% of all people (regardless of ability level or past performance) are anxious about timed tests. 1 out of 2!! Consider how much emphasis, historically, we have placed in typical math classes on finishing problems quickly. In doing so, we may be turning off half of the students in our classrooms — even those who might otherwise be excellent at reasoning through problems… our future mathematicians and scientists.
[Important note: I do not believe that we should never gived a timed test. Fact fluency, especially, is vital for students as they move into the middle grades. However, I have worked with teachers who avoid the “issues” of time and anxiety by having students set goals for themselves for increased fluency during the course of a year, rather than fighting a battle with a clock every time a fact test is given. Further, consider what students must believe is important about math when the main math bulletin board postings in the classroom are fact test results… is this really want we want?]
The Standards for Mathematical Practice (also see my blog entry from 8/9/14) give us excellent guidance for what we should be helping students learn to do as life-long mathematical thinkers and problem-solvers. These standards stress the importance of making sense of problems and making connections among ideas as well as being precise and using previously established concepts and procedures. Perhaps if we were to truly focus on these as the main goals in our mathematics classrooms, K-12 and beyond, we might eventually make a difference in how the general population feels about — and uses — mathematics.
