Michigan State U: Want better math teachers? Train them!

[darksumomo]

Want better math teachers? Train them better, scholar argues
June 9, 2011

EAST LANSING, Mich. - It’s time for the United States to consider establishing higher standards for math teachers if the nation is going to break its “vicious cycle” of mediocrity, a Michigan State University education scholar argues in Science magazine.

As American students

Comments

[changeling0203]

California's got the toughest state standards right now and quite frankly, at least in innercity schools where I've been doing my student-teaching placements, it's all work that is way beyond the students' skill levels. A lot of the kids are too young to do the type of analytic and critical thinking required of them, and then a lot of schools and districts adopt programs that they use for teaching a certain subject. For instance, there's Foss for science, Open Court for reading, and enVision for math. Open Court requires 3 hours a day of instruction, then there's a 1 hour a day requirement for enVision, then 10 minutes for recess, 40 minutes for lunch and recess, and already that's 5 hour day. That leaves 1 hour to teach another lesson so we have to pick between PE, Art, Computer, Science, and Social Studies. There are PE and Computer requirements, then in Oakland Wednesdays are halfdays, so

[liselisa]

Great response.

I wish they'd apply some real science to education problems, instead of forcing teachers and students to jump through more useless hoops.

[ragnor144]

Michigan also does a good job with its requirements across the board. I'm secondary, but I know about enVision and volunteer a lot at the elementary level. I'm also a social studies / biology teacher, so I am doubly sad to hear about the choices that have to made at the elementary level.

My classwork was excellent, but it really is in the field where we learn. So much of what I was taught was useless in my urban placements. As in so many things the training and the reality don't meet up.

[liselisa]

I'd much rather have math teachers who took fewer advanced math classes in university but had a solid understanding of pedagogy and different learning styles. The math instruction at my high school was far better than that at my university, mainly because the high school teachers knew how to teach, whereas the university professors often had serious problems communicating with students. (I don't mean English language problems, but just general communications issues.)

I think it's great that there are people like you out there, who have studied both advanced math and learning theory, but I believe that it would be better to focus on teaching skills that actually matter in the classroom than to require Algebra I teachers to have studied Tychonoff's theorem.

Just my two cents. :)