The Hechinger Report – Corey Drake
“This is an exciting time to be a mathematics teacher-educator. In the past two decades, we have developed a much better understanding not only of how children learn math, but also of how to teach math – and how to prepare teachers to teach math. A short (though incomplete) list of teaching practices that we know work to support student learning includes posing challenging tasks that connect to children’s prior understandings and out-of-school experiences, providing opportunities for children to make sense of and talk about mathematics, and promoting the use of mental mathematics based on patterns in our number system. Yet it is also a challenging time to be a mathematics teacher educator because these teaching practices are not being used in most classrooms and schools. Further, there are many constraints limiting the use of these practices — ranging from high-stakes testing to crumbling schools.”(more)