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Essential Qualities of Math Teaching Remain Unknown
In a stunning reversal of the oft-heard phrase "Research shows...", the panel is said to claim that research does not show what makes a good math teacher:
Research does not show conclusively which professional credentials demonstrate whether math teachers are effective in the classroom, the report found. It does not show what college math content and coursework are most essential for teachers. Nor does it show what kinds of preservice, professional-development, or alternative education programs best prepare them to teach.
As a result, while the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, released last month, offers numerous conclusions about math curriculum, cognition, and instruction, many of its recommendations about improving teaching are more tentative and amount to a call for more research.
“It is, in some ways, where the action has to come next,” said Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the member of the panel who chaired its working group on teacher issues.
“We should put a lot of careful effort over the next decade into this issue so that we can be in a much different place 10 years from now.”
The uncertainty about math teaching skills emerges at a time when policymakers at all levels see a need to boost students’ math and science achievement as a key to sustaining the nation’s future economic health and producing a skilled workforce.
One reason the panel found a paucity of evidence on effective math instruction is that it set a high standard for the type of research it would accept, as Ms. Ball acknowledged.
Yet its members found a deeper pool of research in other areas of math, such as how students learn in the subject, and how students’ confidence in their ability influences their persistence and engagement in math study.
Duh!
4 comments:
As long as states care more about teachers being "certified" rather than qualified, nothing will really change. You can't reasonably expect quality teaching from teachers who are not appropriately qualified (e.g., "math" teachers who never majored in math, are scared of fractions, and wouldn't know Lebesgue measure if it bit them in the arse).
look at the false dichotomy in the article:
"while the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, released last month, offers numerous conclusions about math curriculum, cognition, and instruction, many of its recommendations about improving teaching are more tentative and amount to a call for more research.."
they discuss math curriculum, cognition and instruction...
but teaching is separate....
what does the word INSTRUCTION mean to others, hm?
but NMAP is right: the ability to judge what explanations, notions, etc. work would require studies. As no one knows how to make a study that separately assesses the teacher from the student, it's kinda difficult unless you start from, say, a script as your control. As long as you study teachers based on kids' outcomes, you can always blame the kids.
I have actually seen good teaching in action and I can tell you exactly what it looks like.
I am sitting through an entire semester of Math for Elementary Teachers just because this teacher is so good.
Of course, a topic like this is huge, but let me condense it down to a few key features:
First of all, she has the time and the ability to develop each topic completely. She teaches each topic first with a physical model, then with a visual model and then she teaches the topic in mathematical language (mathematical symbols). When she teaches the mathematical symbols, she is precise and requires the students to be precise also. The problems she uses and assigns are interesting and all require conceptual knowledge of elementary mathematics.
Most of the students do quite well. But we have students who a failing the class. Even with a brilliant teacher in front of them.
Even a brilliant teacher can't make up for all the gaps in a student's understanding of math in one semester.
Hear! Hear!
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