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Elementary school teachers' ways of doing and knowing mathematics
Abstract
At the present time reforms called for in mathematics education involve substantial changes in classroom activities from memorizing formulas and procedures to debating, questioning, and justifying claims about concepts (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989; 1991). However, most inservice programs in teacher education are unprepared to help practitioners make this kind of transition. Most instructors feel hampered both by insufficient backgrounds in mathematics and by unfamiliarity with new teaching methods. This study illustrates how women teachers might come to do and know mathematics in ways consistent with proposed reforms. It explores four practitioners' old and new perspectives on learning mathematics and their performance on a specific task (writing word problems on fractions). All of these instructors had previously attended SummerMath for Teachers, an inservice teacher education program designed to provoke teacher change by having them work on conceptually-challenging problems like the one in this study. The investigation utilized qualitative, case-study methods and its findings were interpreted through the lens of an epistemological framework to describe more fully factors promoting intellectual development in women. The participants demonstrated that they now recognized the relevance of mathematics to their lives and sought to construct meaningful connections among its principles and concepts. They used diagrams as a means for uncovering and sorting out mathematical relations, thought about content in terms of their students' learning and redefined their commitments as learners and teachers of mathematics in the context of other serious and important responsibilities.
Subject Area
Elementary education|Mathematics education|Developmental psychology|Teacher education
Recommended Citation
Betke, Elizabeth Stone, "Elementary school teachers' ways of doing and knowing mathematics" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9316620.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9316620