The American education community has been in the thrall of a long-running conversation about the correct style of maths teaching. The debate has boiled down to whether you are a fan of ‘reform’ or ‘traditional’ maths (Americans, read: ‘math’).
A recent edition of The Scientific American looks at this fraught discussion, which seems to have brought an apparently dull world to life with anger and arguments over fundamental ways of life and learning.
The SciAm summarises the ‘Math Wars’ thus:
Advocates of traditional math tout the practice of algorithms and teacher-centered learning, whereas reform-math proponents focus on underlying concepts and student inquiry.
The piece is worth a read if you want to catch up on the kind of debates that get the worlds of maths and education hot under the collar, and concludes by looking towards USA’s forthcoming 48-state Common Core Standards, a development that will have repurcussions on many curricula beyond America’s shores.
To take a sidewards step, it seems there’s something deeper about discussions over the right way to teach maths, something that reveals more about our individual attitudes than any real educational or developmental truth.
But the bottom line, in the God of Whizz’s estimable opinion, is that we can fixate on method at the expense of content. I’ve written about teaching standards and the values we put on maths before.
At Maths-Whizz we’ve tried to make the best online maths tutoring system by splitting the difference between so-called ‘reform’ and ‘traditional’ methods with this simple formula:
(solid maths concepts + engaging animations) x repeat exposure + motivational tools = Raising standards in maths!
OK, so the equation above is a bit silly, but the point I’m trying to make is that the fundamentals should always be solid mathematical principles and a love and thrill in the subject. Teachers convey this in person, Maths-Whizz conveys this with animation and careful design.
Engagement and student enquiry don’t come at the expense of rigour, and a didactic approach doesn’t come at the expense of fun.
