Timeline for What does a mathematician expect from mathematics education?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20, 2013 at 18:39 | comment | added | Steve | comes down to too many intangibles. It is a real relationship with real people, and I think that those are too varied and complex to have anything like universal solutions. I have participated in wildly successful classes which had charismatic leaders who have completely opposite perspectives on how to teach. | |
| Apr 20, 2013 at 18:36 | comment | added | Steve | @Scott: I have high hopes for big data in education. The computer can get a huge amount more information about a student than I ever could in an even moderately sized classroom. Being able to look at the whole pattern of a students history, pinpoint what the difficulties likely are, and then address those will revolutionize everything in my opinion. Only time will tell I guess. Things like "classroom best practices" are important, and I have a lot of personal opinions about these. These opinions are subject to revision based on what I see others doing. But fundamentally, I think it | |
| Apr 20, 2013 at 16:33 | comment | added | S. Carnahan♦ | I would have voted this up, but the third paragraph was a bit of a buzzkill. If anything, our increasing tilt toward numerical data in education reform is causing us to focus on quantifiable-but-noisy-and-unimportant things like standardized tests, at the expense of important-but-inherently-fuzzy things like classroom best practices. Also, I think the notion of "objective science" is incredibly slippery. Even though we mathematicians have mostly agreed on what constitutes a proof, hiring and journal acceptance processes are far from objective, and they strongly influence future research. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 22:07 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | @Benjamin Dickman: I've heard that there is very little funding for studies or experiments in education, and this makes it hard to resolve disagreements on what is effective, that people end up using anecdotal evidence instead. However, I'm getting that third hand. Can you say anything about the amount of experiments whose results are published in education versus other fields? | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 22:06 | comment | added | Steve | I can say that I personally know some great math ed people, who are just fantastic teachers. I also think that the teacher education courses at my university really are some of the best math classes being offered. I also think Sybilla Beckman's contributions have been outstanding. But I also think that all of these are opinions. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 21:16 | comment | added | Steve | @Benjamin: I will read some of Kilpatrick's work. Thanks for recommending it. Is it okay for me to email you sometime to chat about it, whenever I get around to reading it? I guess this is really the heart of my troubles: Mathematics education research can only address implications. If I do this, then this is likely to be the outcome. That is a matter of science. It cannot decide which outcomes are the desirable ones! That is a political question, or a moral question. It seems very often that mathematics educators are trying to address the moral question. Do you agree? | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:59 | comment | added | Steve | For example, think about teaching double digit arithmetic. There are a lot of mathematics educators who will tell you that teaching the algorithm is essentially killing any chance that the student will understand it. There are others who say that you have to learn the mechanics first, and then you have the structure to start trying to understand what is going on. Put these two people in a room, give them access to the whole internet worth of studies, and there is basically no chance that either person will budge an inch. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:56 | comment | added | Steve | I think one reason that I got turned off to the field is that is not really being done as a science in my opinion. Everyone involved cares deeply about education (a good thing!), but there is so much opinion. I mean, you might say "Even though students using such and such approach score lower on these tests, they are actually thinking more as evidenced by such and such". In the end, everything is subjective enough that people basically stand by what they think is the best way to teach. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:53 | comment | added | Steve | @Benjamin - I have read a lot of papers in mathematics education. I thought about getting a Ph.D. in mathematics education at one time. It is not an objective science, and there are huge culture wars in the field. For example, between constructivists and people who encourage rote memorization. Read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… for example, including the criticism section. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:52 | comment | added | Amir Asghari | I haven't downvoted your answer! Indeed, I haven't found it rude at all. On the contrary, I enjoyed it a lot, though It was real close to the bone. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:47 | comment | added | Steve | Also I would like to comment that the ultimate solution is probably economic - find a way to fund mathematicians to do research without having to teach. This way the people who want to teach can be hired on the merits of their teaching, and the people who want to do research can be hired on the basis of their research. Until this changes, I really do not see hope - there are too many researchers who are only teaching because that is how you get access to a university job, not because they want to be teachers. You will never help those. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:46 | comment | added | Benjamin Dickman | Your penultimate paragraph makes me wonder: (1) What is your "experience" that has led you to believe "the vast majority of mathematics education research is essentially at the level of anecdotes"? (2) Why do you think that "meaningful education research" is only now possible with "huge data sets" and online course-taking? | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:46 | comment | added | user9072 | I did not downvote and have no personal problem with it but this sentence (in its generality and vagueness, in particular) "In my experience the vast majority of mathematics education research is essentially at the level of anecdotes." is something I could well find somebody seeing as problematic. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:44 | comment | added | Steve | Was this downvoted for being rude? I sometimes have difficulty understanding rudeness. I did not intend any ill will with my answer, only to give my real perspective on this issue. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 20:26 | history | answered | Steve | CC BY-SA 3.0 |