Re: [MATHEDCC] Re: Flanigan and the Good Old Days

Edward Laughbaum (elaughba@MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:20:19 -0400

All,

Kathy's and other comments reminds me to let you know about the AMATYC Summer Institute "Teaching in Context" held in Duck, NC. The summer of 2000 will be the second Institute. We will have a booth at AMATYC in Pittsburgh. Stop by and learn about the 1999 Institute. Next summer we will hold the Institute at the Field Research Facility in Duck June 12 to June 16 with an evening reception on June 11 and finishing about noon on the 16th.

We take a different approach on the idea of context  than Kathy mentions -  not being able to do the mathematics within a context. I expect that many of the teachers of the people in the study didn't use a context from which to teach mathematics, but use "context" as "word" problems AFTER the mathematics was taught. That is, I expect this might be the teaching/learning situation of the people referenced in the N.A.E.P. study.

In the AMATYC Institute we promote the use of contextual  problems, data, or situations to TEACH mathematics. We do not teach math first then try to apply it to problems, data, or situations second.  There is a wealth of pedagogical value lost forever when problems are not used to teach mathematics. When students are taught "in context" there is no fear of "word problems" because they have been used up front and they LEARNED mathematics from the data, problem, or situation. So problems become a tool for learning - not an assessment to see if they can figure out how to APPLY seemingly unrelated mathematics they had to memorize.

Yea, yea, I know I am on a soap box. Sorry.

Everyone welcome in Duck on the 11th of June.

Ed
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At 10:02 AM 10/26/99 -0600, Kathy Burgis wrote:
>John,
>
>I don't know about your peers, but the last time a large-scale national
>assessment was made of adult mathematical knowledge (the N.A.E.P. data,
>available from ERIC and other sources), it generally supported Jeff's
>contention. The N.A.E.P. test was given to a cross-section of adults of
>various ages. Most adults, who were educated in the golden pre-calculator
>age, did not have mastery of fraction, decimal, and percent computations,
>when the computations were embedded in a context, such as computing the
>simple interest paid on a loan.
>
>>You make good points, and I agree with most. (Except that at least among
>>my peers a generation ago--no, make that two generations ago--nearly
>>everyone would have been able to do the 25% thing pretty routinely).
>
>Kathy Burgis
>Dept. of Mathematics
>Aquinas College
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