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Letters from the Northern Front

As I read through Gerofsky's "Battleground schools: Mathematics education", it struck me to recall my mathematics education in New Zealand, and how much it pointed towards elements of the conservative and progressive approaches. I quite enjoyed mathematics up until the senior years of high school. However, at the university level, lectures and tutorials seemed to point to a conservative view. As I scanned down the table comparing the different elements of mathematics education (2008, p. 392-393), I found myself ticking off the assumptions belonging to the conservative column, although as Gerofsky mentions, this dichotomy is not always the healthiest ways to understand approaches to math education. However, it does reveal how much of my pre-conceived notions of mathematic education derive from my background as a mathematics learner, and how I now face a paradigm shift in the way I orient myself as a mathematics educator.

 In a bullet point that described who conservative math belonged to, Gerofsky noted the assumptions of these owners as "eggheads, nerds, absent-minded professors, unable to cope with human interactions, and not fully mentally competent" (2009, p393), I can't help but chuckle while recalling how much my professors resembled these descriptions. Perhaps it is this culture of conservative math that I experienced at the university level that caused me to become jaded in the topic of mathematics in my early twenties, contrary to how passionate some of my math teachers made me feel in my earlier years of learning mathematics. It brings me sorrow to think of the many students who are still passing through similar systems and may become dissatisfied about learning mathematics.

 Reading through the three larger movements in math education makes me wonder how the New Zealand curriculum of mathematics was developed, and which, if not all, of the periods greatly influenced the development of the of our math curriculum, particularly the shifts of the former curriculum structure of School Certificate and University Entrance, to the current National Curriculum of Education Achievement, commonly referred to as NCEA. While both conservative and progressive approaches could be applied to the content in the curriculum, through my own experience, many math teachers still prefer to teach by a traditional algorithmic method through textbooks and the droning of exercises. I'm left more intrigued about the development of math curricula in both New Zealand, North America, as well as the countries which rank so highly in PISA and TIMSS.

 Gerofsky, S. (2008). Battleground schools: Mathematics education. In Mathison, S. and Ross, W. (Eds.), Battleground schools. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press (10 pp., 4100 words).

Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky16 October 2017 at 11:12

    Thanks Arthur! I would be very interested in learning more about similarities and differences with the New Zealand system. And those nerdy, egg-head, absent-minded professors -- not exactly role models that most young people would like to emulate!

    ReplyDelete

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