While the federal government and the nation’s school systems have made strides toward improving mathematics education, the knowledge base supporting these efforts has been weak. In response, the RAND Mathematics Study Panel has proposed an R&D program supporting the improvement of mathematics proficiency among U.S. school students. The panel identified three areas for focused R&D development of teachers’ mathematical knowledge, teaching and learning of skills for ma… More >>
#1 by Jared Phelps on July 2, 2010 - 6:56 pm
The following quote gives a fair summary of this wonderful book’s goal: “Within such a community [as proposed in the book] we hope that debate among those with varying and competing views concerning standards of proficiency, curriculuar designs, pedagogical styles, and assessment methods will evolve into a discourse that is based _less_on_ideology_and_more_on_evidence_.”
It should be clear from the title of this book that its brief 93 pages would be about mathematical proficiency for all students. Further, its subtitle would lead us to believe it will develop this through a proposal for a research and development program within mathematics education. In the first few pages, it becomes perfectly clear that the Research and Development Program the authors are suggesting doesn’t vary much from the R&D Programs that private sector businesses are continually running.
At first, you’ll wonder why this book was ever written. Haven’t we been doing research about mathematics education for as long as we’ve been educating students about mathematics? The answer is a quiet “not really.” To be exact, this book is revolutionary because it considers a program that would bring real, scientific data about mathematics education to educators in a meaningful way.
By focusing a realistically considered budget, the author proposes a program researching three key areas: The development and use of teachers’ mathematical knowledge, teaching and learning mathematical practices, and teaching and learning algebra in kindergarten through 12th grade. The proposed program would focus its energy on these three areas and develop useful theories, curricula, and materials over the course of a 10-15 year period. At the end of this time, the group would have developed all of the knowledge necessary to help all teachers teach algebra effectively to all students.
This book is absolutely wonderful. The book is only a blueprint for this program, and hence doesn’t offer solutions. Rather it provides an extremely well thought out path to reach these solutions. I would highly recommend it to anyone in the field of mathematics education, as we should all hope that this will be the future of mathematics education.
Rating: 5 / 5