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[Phys-L] Re: student mathematical capability



At 21:47 -0400 9/14/05, Peter Schoch wrote:

There is nothing more frightening than watching a room full of 5th
grade teachers NOT be able to solve a simple fractions problem! When
posed with a word problem, I thought some would flee in terror,
exclaiming that they never liked or understood those in school.
After three 8 hour long sessions, the facilitator reports that most
feel reasonably sure of the basic concepts and could teach them;
however, none would say they are comfortable enough to teach a word
problem.

and then bc responded with:

I rather doubt the above refers to California credentialed teachers, as
they must pass the CBEST to be fully credentialed. The maths. section
is not trivial; I know.

It is probably true that conditions vary from place to place, but I
am most worried about Peter's last sentence above. Does even the
CBEST test adequately for that skill? I see the problem as a
lingering lack of understanding about just how important it is that
students be taught properly from the beginning. We have too long
labored under the misapprehension that in the early grades the main
thing the kids are learning is discipline and a few very basic
things, so the teacher doesn't need to know much herself (and the
vast majority of them are women), and we can expect them to be
generalists who know enough about all the curricular topics to be
able to teach them.

We now know that this is a serious error, especially in math and
science, and I suspect in other fields as well. Teachers whose
knowledge of a given topic is minimal tend to transmit to their
students only disconnected facts, since that is mostly all that they
know. They don't see the structure of the subjects, their
interrelation, and the logic that is involved. They may understand
the psychology of early school-age children, but not much about what
they need to understand. The obvious solution, of course, is to bring
in specialist teachers for the subjects that it is not reasonable for
the regular teachers to be expert at. Not only will this help the
students to learn, but it also puts a second adult in the classroom
(I understand the educators' unwillingness to have little kids
tramping from room to room like HS students--its only marginally
successful in middle schools--so the solution is to bring the
specialty teachers into the class) at a time when it can be most
helpful, especially if the class sizes are too large, as they are in
far too many schools.

Another side benefit of specialty teachers is that they are likely to
be more capable of dealing with the mostly execrable textbooks
available for elementary grades (and later, too, but that is another
issue for another day). If the teachers using these books were
knowledgeable enough to understand when the books were wrong, it is
possible that the publishers might even be prodded into making them
better (only possible, not certain).

Yeah, I know this will cost money, but it seems to me to be money
well-spent, and as long as most states have "education lotteries"
(still another issue for another day--yeah, I am still pissed about
NC finally passing a lottery bill, and not just because of the
underhanded methods used by the legislative leadership to do it) I
can't think of a better way to spend those ill-gotten gains. At least
if they are used overtly for something in addition to what is there
now, the legislatures will have less excuse for cutting other
contributions to the education budget.

I applaud California's effort to improve the knowledge base of their
elementary teachers, but I think it is futile to expect every teacher
to be as expert in every subject taught as we now know is necessary
for these kids. We can go a long way to solving the problem by the
use of specialty teachers in elementary schools. In fact many of them
could come from the ranks of the "curriculum specialists" that are
employed in most school districts, and that I have not been able to
figure out what they do to earn their keep.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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