Teach Math!
We are urgently calling on Alberta to teach math teachers to teach math!
That may seem like a silly request, but read on to find out which math-like-substance is being sold to teachers as “teaching math” now.
It’s a perennial struggle in parent advocacy.
Parents want to know the basics are being covered in every subject, with time-tested, evidence-based approaches, so we can see our kids are learning.
Whenever we win once, though, the next fad – with the same fundamental flaws – comes packaged in new terms.
First it was “discovery math”.
Now it’s “Building Thinking Classrooms”.
Peter Liljedahl, a professor of math education at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, has seen his “Thinking Classrooms” pervade Alberta.
For him, a teacher demonstrating how to work a problem before the students work it themselves is “mimicking” rather than “thinking”.
Practicing math facts like reciting “2+2=4” and multiplication tables is deemed “memorizing” rather than “thinking”.
And on it goes.
2007 math forum audio video
Discovery Math
Singapore Math
Remedial math
Madison’s most recent Math Task Force
