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For kids to do better in math, their teachers might have to go back to school. Elementary-school teachers are poorly prepared by education schools to teach math, finds a study being released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
and here's a surprise (please excuse my sarcasm)...
Math relies heavily on cumulative knowledge, making the early years critical.
The study by the nonpartisan research and advocacy group comes a few months after a federal panel reported that U.S. students have widespread difficulty with fractions, a problem that arises in elementary school and prevents kids from mastering more complicated topics like algebra later on
Our math teachers don't understand the basics and how math concepts build on one another
Author Julie Greenberg said education students should be taking courses that give them a deeper understanding of arithmetic and multiplication. She said the courses should explain how math concepts build upon each other and why certain ideas need to be emphasized in the classroom.
Teacher candidates know their multiplication tables, but "they don't come to us knowing why multiplication works the way it does," said Denise Mewborn, who heads the University of Georgia department of math and science education.
Somehow I doubt any of this surprises KTM readers but perhaps it will start to slowly open the eyes of school administrations.
15 comments:
Math is one of my strong suits. I come from a family of mathematicians and math teachers.
My opinion of the quality of math instruction at the elementary level actually motivated my desire to be an elementary school teacher as opposed to a middle or high school math teacher.
The report of the National Math Advisory Panel suggested the possibility of having math teachers in elementary school similar to middle and high school. Currently, elementary school teachers must teach all subjects: English, math, history, etc. The Asian countries do this.
Having said that, my teachers in the 50's and 60's in elementary school all were competent in the math they taught. Far be it from me to suggest that this might be evidence that math was taught better in the 30's and 40's than it is now. I wouldn't wish to contradict the statements made by school boards members and superintendents that traditional math worked for only a small segment of the population.
Well, am I the only one who worries about where the teachers will be expected to go to get more "basics training"? Why, let me see. Hmmmm, to the Education Departments, do you think?. Would anyone in any Education Department ever be so foolish as to recommend that teachers get math training in the Math Department?
The early traditional math teaching I got worked for me also. And I go back a little farther than Barry.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that this really isn't rocket science.
For the most part, I want teachers that will understand what they are teaching.
We all know that EM and TERC and programs of that sort have errors and mistakes that are pretty obvious to anyone with a basic (algebra/geometry) understanding of math. How often do teachers recognize the errors? Things like mixed up or poorly defined terminology?
Elementary teachers should be able to handle basic algebra and geometry. The skill sets they are teaching are leading to algebra. If they don't understand how fractions and balanced equations lead to algebra, then it is all hopeless.
If they don't understand how fractions and balanced equations lead to algebra, then it is all hopeless.
An alarming number don't. Hence the call in the NMP report for specialized math teachers in the lower grades, like they have in middle and high school.
The alternative is math coaches who frequently are dumber than a bag of hammers.
Parentalcation, Thanks so much for taking up the challenge of teaching math at the elementary school level. I agree with your implication that getting children started off on the right foot is so very important.
We waited too long to get additional help for our older daughter (a rising Senior now) and got her started in Kumon in 5th or 6th grade. She went through the motions but it was like a "state of mind" had already been set inside here head.
We started the younger one (a rising 7th grader) in 2nd or 3rd and although she isn't taking Kumon any more she's easily one of the top 2-3 students in her class (the Russian guy skipped a grade!).
This is not an endorsement of Kumon, or bragging about our kids, I'm trying to point out that getting kids started off on the right foot for math is critically important as I've seen in my own family.
Full NCTQ report is available
here.
Report rolled out today in DC, with a panel moderated by none other than Checker Finn. One of the panelists is Skip Fennell.
Oh, great!!!!!
"Sometimes you have to remind yourself that this really isn't rocket science."
I agree with LynnG. I always come back to this.
"An alarming number don't. Hence the call in the NMP report for specialized math teachers in the lower grades, like they have in middle and high school."
I don't know if I buy into this completely. It lets them off the hook. How specialized do you have to be to do K-6 math? This makes it sound like they are doing a fine job, but the powers that be have decided that things would be better if they brought in experts.
Math should be workable for most teachers if you have a good curriculum. What do we have? Everyday Math which lets them off the hook. It says that it's OK not to master the material at any one point in time. Schools are also not headed for algebra in 8th grade. What will happen is that the specialists will be better at going in the wrong direction.
"The alternative is math coaches who frequently are dumber than a bag of hammers."
I've met one of those. She was an Everyday Math cheerleader. That was her job.
Read any of the papers by Prof. Wu on fractions. Read my posts here on his papers to get a flavor for what he's trying to spell out. He delineates between k-3 and 4-6 grades in terms of what needs to be taught, and how.
Many 4th grade-6th grade math teachers do not know that a fraction IS A NUMBER. They do not know why you "invert and multiply" to divide fractions. They don't understand long division. They do not understand how to count using a number line without getting confused by the goalposts.
If you can't understand these things above, you really can't teach it properly, and understanding these things isn't enough to teach it properly either. Will a good curriculum fix that? For bright kids, and average kids, who can handle the ambiguities, it's possible. But that's not good enough. For the struggling students? no, because the teacher can only read Singapore Math and do what it says--they still won't understand why it's true, and the stuggling student will ask questions they simply can't answer.
they still won't understand why it's true, and the stuggling student will ask questions they simply can't answer.
And the advanced and gifted students will really throw them for a loop.
It shouldn't be rocket science but it might as well be. My kindergartener came home from school distraughta couple of weeks ago. It seems the teacher asked the students what numbers they could count by (2's, 5's... etc.) and my daughter said "elevens" to which the teacher responded "No. You cannot count by elevens." She said, "Yes I can... 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, ...." The teacher still insisted that it is not possible to count by elevens.
Of course, then I spent that very afternoon convinving my five year old she was right and the teacher was, well, mistaken. Kindergarteners tend to believe their teachers know what they're talking about. Sometimes, they even think their teachers know more than their parents. You should have seen her little face-- she was crushed. This kind of stuff just shouldn't be happening but it certainly does. And it starts as early as kindergarten, I'm afraid.
There are two levels of argument. One centers on basic competence, direction, and accountability, which can go a long ways towards fixing many problems. The other centers around what I will call advanced topics. It could also be called the "balance" argument.
Schools try to focus on advanced topics as an equal partner in the debate. They claim that they teach understanding and traditionalists are only interested in rote skills. They concede that more work needs to be done on mastery of skills, but they still claim the high ground in the debate. It's just rubbish. Math specialists in K-6 won't help if schools don't fix a lot of other basic things.
You cannot count by elevens
wow
The alternative is math coaches who frequently are dumber than a bag of hammers.
What will happen is that the specialists will be better at going in the wrong direction.
As someone who is working on a reading endorsement and a Masters degree in reading, I heartily second these comments.
A specialized math teacher will end up somewhere down the line becoming a math coach because, don't ya know, it's more efficient to teach teachers how to teach than to teach students directly? This is what has happened/is happening with reading teachers. The model where the reading specialist works directly with children is being overtaken by the model of a reading coach who works only with teachers.
Of course, it's not as if the reading specialist really knows anything anyway. Of the 7 classes I've taken so far for my endorsement) only one of them has been of any use to me. I get my information about how to teach reading on the internet and from books - from sources that believe in and cite research. Ed school classes are still teaching "whole language."
I don't see that this situation will be different for math. Ed school students will take math classes in the ed school that will mire them deeply in fuzzy math. Whether they become classroom teachers or specialists they'll then go out and spread the manure around, in the same way they do with fuzzy language, because that's what they've been taught and therefore it must be right.
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