Math Musings

As I read through articles I hope will be helpful with my inquiry project I am often struck by what I find. Recently I read "Improving Mathematics Instruction through Classroom-Based Inquiry", Ebby,Ottinger and Silver, (Teaching Children Mathematics, October 2007) Some of what I found as I read, made me think about Phoenix Park and the concerns I have already expressed in previous discussions (blog and class). To understand what I mean I think I should explain the basics of what I read.

The article describes "a university mathematics educator's efforts to support teachers in adopting a stance of critique and inquiry by developing a teacher research community" Ebby designed a course that would give teachers the opportunity to work together, research ideas and make their classrooms served as the site for inquiry into their own teaching practices.In one of the examples discussed the teacher involved discovered she was thinking wrongly about equity. She thought equity was all about allowing students total choice in all things. She based her thinking on what she had learned from Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding ( Hiebert et al. 1997)which said that 'equity entails the assumption that all children can learn mathematics, as well as the assumption that each student must have the opportunity to learn mathematics with understanding" The teacher took this to mean that she must allow her students the choice of working together or alone and so took a hands off approach in her first cycle of inquiry. Over time she found that the students needed more 'explicit guidance' about how to work collaboratively and communicate with one another.

This is a point I raised in the last class, we expect students to work together in partners or groups and explore a problem without having shown them how. Some students may exhibit these skills naturally as part of their innate inquisitive nature, for others, the quality of learning could only be enhanced by knowledge of how communicate thinking with one another. It is true that I may not yet know everything about the preparation process the Phoenix Park teachers went through in developing the curriculum and tasks for students. I wonder if they too thought incorrectly about equity. Their hands off approach to the on or off task behaviours of students may indicate they thought students needed to be given total power of choice. Would direct guidance on how to communicate and work with these open-ended projects have benefited those students who didn't engage in this type of learning. Would their collaboration skills improved to the point where the students themselves came to value the usefulness of working this way? It will be interesting to find out.