What's Happening in Math Class? Volume 1: Envisioning New Practices Through Teacher Narratives / Volume 2: Reconstructing Professional Identities

School Science and Mathematics, Mar 1998 by Rahim, Medhat H

What's Happening in Math Class? Volume 1: Envisioning New Practices Through Teacher Narratives

Volume 2: Reconstructing Professional Identities Author

Deborah Schifter (Editor) Teachers College Press & The International Reading Association 1996; 212 pages

Paperback; price unavailable Reviewer

Medhat H. Rahim Lakehead University

Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B SEl Internet web site:

http://www.lakeheadu.ca/-mrahimwwwmedhat.html

What's Happening in Math Class? addresses crucial areas in mathematics learning and classroom practices spanning over nine chapters (five in Vol. 1 and four in Vol. 2). These two volumes, edited by Deborah Schifter and written by classroom teachers, scholars, and researchers, describe and report a variety of contemporary approaches, themes, and strategies in the field of mathematics education, in general, and mathematics instruction, in particular. The volumes came from a project originally prepared as an arena for teachers' sharing of ideas and approaches in mathematics instruction.

In Vol. 1, "Envisioning New Practices Through Teacher Narratives," the prime focus is on constructing meaning for the rhetoric of mathematics reform. The editor notes,

The teachers' narratives included in this book offer content for the rhetoric of mathematics reform-in effect, giving voice to the new pedagogy ....With so much still to be learned about how the reform agenda translates into day-to-day mathematics instruction, these efforts cannot be considered definitive....The success of the movement for reform cannot rest on individual teachers constructing the new practice classroom by classroom, independently of one another and without engaging in many-sided exchanges about their effort. And teacher educators, curriculum developers, and researchers must both encourage and attend to such exchanges if they hope to play a consequential role in the reform process. In the end, it is the teachers who must show one another, as well as the rest of us, what the new mathematics instruction can be like. (p. 2-3.)

Through fascinating experiences reported by real people of the classroom, Vol. 1, in particular, deals with major aspects in contemporary mathematics teaching and learning in the classrooms: 1. Facilitating students' construction of their own mathematical understanding.

2. Turning students into powerful mathematical thinkers.

3. Turning the mathematics classroom into a community of inquiry.

4. Teaching mathematics to all students. 5. Transforming mathematics instruction with computer technology.

As Suzanne M. Wilson said in her forward of the volume: "Good teaching-like good cooking-is part art, part science. All too often in our writing we focus more on the skill and science, less on the sensory and art. These narratives help us redress that imbalance." In Vol. 2, "Reconstructing Professional Identities," the editor touches once again on the most sensitive cords of math instruction:

Out of a convergence between social needs and two decades of research in cognitive psychology, a new vision of mathematics instruction has emerged in the United States.... In contrast to traditional classrooms, in which a teacher broadcasts materials that her students then rehearse individually, the proposed pedagogy emphasizes students working together (posing questions, formulating conjectures, discussing the validity of various solutions) while the teacher, guided by close analysis of her students' thinking, frames appropriate problem-solving contexts for them, and steers them toward confrontation with important conceptual issues.

It is obvious, Shifter says, that the kind of change presented cannot be simply a matter of presenting new instructional strategies such as cooperative learning, the use of manipulatives, or computers; nor can it be "teacher proof)' curriculum designed by "experts" for transmission to the student population. In fact the new math pedagogy can only be enacted whenever teachers construct for themselves practices appropriate to its principles (p. 1). Thus, it is the teacher who can really make a change, provided that there is a continuous effort of introducing teacher-made curricula and exchanging experiences in the trial of their products.

The classroom stories presented in this volume contradict the assumption that competent teachers already know how and what to teach. The message is loud and clear here: Learning is never complete.

Specifically, Vol. 2 introduces to the readers another set of thoughtful ideas and very recent experiences in the classroom instruction. The volume covers four main paradigms in mathematics instruction and mathematics learning:

1. As mathematical thinkers, confronting one's own mathematics miseducation.

2. As managers of classroom process, inventing new patterns of authority.

3. As monitors of student learning, inquiring into students' mathematical conceptions.

4. The new mathematics pedagogy, an open-ended practice.

In her forward, Patricia Wasley said this volume "is a book that gives me confidence that important transformations are occurring in elementary mathematics education, and provides me with hope that it might eventually make its way to high school classrooms."