Articles being referenced:
- Re-storying practice: Using stories about students to advance mathematics education reform by Tesha Sengupta-Irving, Elizabeth Redman, and Noel Enyedy
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- A Follow-Up Meta-analysis for Word-Problem-Solving Interventions for Students with Mathematics Difficulties by Dake Zhang and Yan Ping Xin
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Standing at the front of the room, writing on the chalkboard, and having students take notes no longer seems to be the most effective way of teaching. As Tesha Sengupta-Irving, et al.write, “Math education reforms are not, however, just about what students learn and do; they are also fundamentally about transforming teachers’ practices” (1). Teachers need to think of new ways that they can engage their students and make them excited about learning. If students are engaged and focused, learning will come easier to them.
But how do teachers begin to reform math education within their classroom? How do they know what is going to work and what isn’t? As Irving, et al.’s article discusses, teachers can learn simply be telling stories. They provide an example of a teacher who re-tells the stories of two students she taught and how the way they taught them affected their learning. By telling the story and reflecting upon it, she saw things that worked and didn’t. She thought about how the students reacted and how she could have changed the lesson to better the learning of each student. This ends up being a huge part of mathematics education reform- teachers looking at what is working and what isn’t working. What’s most important is that teachers think about how it is affecting the student. It should be an open conversation with them. Teachers need to listen to the needs of their students to determine what form of teaching is going to best work for them. By having relationships with your students, mathematics education reform becomes easier.
It’s then also important to see how reform over the years has worked within the classroom. Zhang and Xin look at how problem-solving skills for students who struggle in math have improved over a number of years, based on recent reform such as special education inclusion and standards-based teaching. They actually found that special education inclusion in the mainstream classroom was more effective than intervention in a separate classroom. A big part of mathematics education reform is looking at the results to see what works. Just like teachers use story telling to determine what is and isn’t working in the classroom, it is extremely helpful and necessary to complete official case studies to determine if a specific reform is working. We should be able to find proof that something is working… whether that be through test scores improving or students being able to read and talk about math more easily.