Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 190
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4758-4445-0 • Hardback • October 2019 • $71.00 • (£55.00)
978-1-4758-4446-7 • Paperback • October 2019 • $36.00 • (£28.00)
978-1-4758-4447-4 • eBook • November 2019 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
Dr. James Freemyer was a high school mathematics teacher for eight years, a high school principal for seventeen years, chair of a graduate education program for eight years, and currently teaches research statistics and organizational change at Indiana Wesleyan University in a doctoral program in leadership.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Call to Change
Chapter 2: The Case for Professional Learning Communities
Chapter 3: The BIG ASK
Chapter 4: Removing Barriers to Student Learning
Chapter 5: Engaging Students by Flipping the Classroom
Chapter 6: Student Centered Learning with Productive Struggle
Chapter 7: Applying a Theoretical Basis to Drive Change
Chapter 8: Exemplars of Professional Development
Chapter 9: Examples of Collaboration Observed in Europe and Asia
Chapter 10: Rigor Requires Relationships
Chapter 11: Scenario: Down in the Trenches
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Authors
Three decades have passed since the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics released its initial standards for teaching mathematics. Yet the controversy stemming from these recommendations continues, so teachers and schools are still debating how to effectively meet the needs of their mathematics students. Freemyer (Indiana Wesleyan Univ.) here builds on the assumption that change from the traditional approach is strongly needed, and that K-12 mathematics education must adopt a student-centered focus based on conceptual teaching, collaborative learning, and meaningfully challenging investigations. This is not a how-to book full of classroom lesson plans, but rather a guideline for what school leadership must do to initialize and support such change. Including eleven chapters, five of them authored by the editor, this work provides advice to principals and mathematics curriculum leaders on the steps needed to reform the mathematics teaching in their schools. All contributors are realistic about the existing spectrum of teacher attitudes and beliefs, which complicates the incorporation of such changes. They repeatedly emphasize that to change effectively requires a commitment of time and resources so that teaching staff can collaborate with one another, share materials, and discuss techniques. Otherwise, as argued here, change is unlikely ever to occur. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty and professionals.
— Choice Reviews
As a career Mathematics teacher educator, it is wonderful and rare to see the challenges facing school mathematics teachers in the early 21st Century articulated with such clarity, insight and empathy. The significance of this work is heightened because it is anchored in research, is tempered by many years of professional practice in mathematics teaching and education, and is very positive and realistic about what can be achieved in mathematics education for all students. The authors recognize the enormity of the task that mathematics teachers face in their professional lives and the personal effort needed to transform their practice in pursuit of better outcomes for all their students. This insight applies across the globe where reforms are embraced.All agree that change is necessary and there is a remarkable international consensus on the nature of this change, namely, a move to a more realistic, problem-based conceptual approach to school mathematics that facilitates better outcomes for all students regardless of ability. Achieving the necessary transformation of teachers’ own practice and student learning is an enormous task and demands a sustained concerted effort by all stakeholders. The authors identify local leadership as central to the success of such a major enterprise. They tackle the issue by offering a strong argument for teacher support by school leaders such as school principals and department heads focused on providing collaborative learning opportunities for their mathematics teachers, and time to engage in such learning opportunities. Taken together, one could view the book as providing a pathway to success in this most important undertaking in mathematics education. The book should be required reading for mathematics teacher educators, pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers, school principals, department heads of STEM subjects, and education policy makers at local, regional and national levels. Here I think it is appropriate to recast a famous American political maxim: ‘all mathematics education is local (and curriculum change happens a local level)’.— John O’Donoghue, Associate Professor (Emeritus) in Mathematics Education, University of Limerick, Ireland