>
>In the best of all possible worlds, only those who WANT to would teach
>developmental courses. I would certainly hope no-one who looks upon those
>students as undeserving of being in college would be permitted to teach them.
>
That point should go without saying -- but experience shows it needs to be said.
>
>My reaction is a shudder and a grimace. With the awful job market, you'll get
>plenty of people desperate for jobs applying for the position, but how many
>people go for a Ph.D. in pure mathematics in order to teach such courses? And
>what kind of professional training and development would they have received in
>their doctoral program to prepare them for this kind of teaching and
>leadership in curriculum development? CLEARLY, YOU NEED TO HIRE A PH.D. IN
>MATHEMATICS EDUCATION to have a real chance of getting the kind of person who
>would thrive in this job. They're already cognizant of many of the
>educational issues and solutions that have been tried, and they are already
>trained to do the kind of education-related scholarship and professional
>development that should be coming from someone who is immersed in a
>developmental education program. At the very least, open the job to both
>mathematicians and mathematics educators. I would also put in two very
>important incentives: 1) 3 credits release each year, for curriculum
>development and administrative duties, and 2) option to teach one calculus (or
>other non-developmental) course per year, for the change of pace and feeling
>of being less "walled off" and segregated from the other faculty.
>
There are other degrees and backgrounds that suit one for this kind of work.
While I have an MS in mathematics, my PhD is in Philosophy of Science. I
worked mostly on formal systems and their use to codify empirical and
mathematical theories. Most of the philosophical course work was squarely
in the analytic tradition; that is, we relied heavily on linguistic
analysis and sought to solve problems through 'logical reconstruction' of
their background. We took clear expression as a sign of clear thought.
While writing my dissertation, I took a job (and kept it) teaching
developmental mathematics. It turned out that analytic philosophy was an
excellent preparation for attacking some of the problems of developmental
education.
What developmental students need most (at least those I have taught) are
much stronger language skills, writing and speaking as well as reading and
listening. What developmental educators need most is clear thought and
very careful expression. Most textbooks are poorly written, their
explanations are hopelessly vague, and some of the problems are ambiguous.
The field is in serious need of analysis and reconstruction.
My life's work turned out to be making foundational mathematics more
accessible to the victims of very poor educational backgrounds. The
monetary awards have been rather slim, but the psychic rewards are
fantastic. Academic honors have been equally slim (I was recently denied
promotion; one objection raised against me was "he teaches [sneer]
developmental"); but my students' appreciation for my efforts has been, as
they say, phat.
Mathematical competence, of course, is the sine qua non of a math teacher.
There are many fields, though, with mathematically competent practitioners
who might find the challenges of developmental math professionally
rewarding. Off the top of my head, I would expect psychologists with an
interest in learning theory to find in the experience a strong stimulus
toward their own development. Developmental math would also benefit, I
feel, from a more inclusive search for new teachers with widely differing
backgrounds who could contribute new insights into the task we have chosen
to perform.
Road's in front o' me,
Nothin' to do but walk.
Langston Hughes
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