Discrete Mathematics For Teachers

Hopkins collects the work of 35 instructors who share their innovations and insights about teaching discrete mathematics at the high school and college level. The book's 9 classroom-tested projects, including building a geodesic dome, come with student handouts, solutions, and notes for the instructor. The 11 history modules presented draw on original sources, such as Pascal's "Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle," allowing students to explore topics in their original contexts. Three articles address extensions of standard discrete mathematics content. Two other articles explore pedagogy specifically related to discrete mathematics courses: adapting a group discovery method to larger classes, and using logic in encouraging students to construct proofs.

(Originally Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) There is a national consensus that teachers who teach middle-grades and elementary mathematics need deeper and broader exposure to mathematics in both their undergraduate and in their graduate studies. The Mathematics Education of Teachers, published by The Conference Board on the Mathematical Sciences, recommends 21 semester hours of mathematics for prospective teachers of middle-grades mathematics. In several states pre-service teachers preparing to teach middle-grades mathematics and pre-service teachers preparing to teach elementary school must complete 6- 9 semester hours of mathematics content at the junior-senior level. Graduate schools across the nation have developed special programs for educators who specialize in teaching mathematics to elementary school children and to middle grades students. However, there is a paucity of text materials to support those efforts at junior-senior level and graduate level courses. Faculty members must choose to teach yet another course out of one of the “Mathematics for Teachers” texts that have formed the basis of the curriculum for the last two decades. These texts tend to treat a very limited set of topics on a somewhat superficial level. Alternatively, faculty members can use mathematics textbooks written primarily for students majoring in mathematics or the sciences. Neither the topic choice nor the pedagogical style of these texts is optimal for pre-service and in-service teachers of middle grades and elementary mathematics. Discrete Mathematics for Teachers is a text designed to fill this void. The topic is right. Discrete mathematics provides a rich and varied source of problems for exploration and communication, expands knowledge of mathematics in directions related to elementary and middle school curricula, and is easily presented using our best understanding of the ways that mathematics is learned and taught. The presentation is right. In the spirit of NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, topics are presented with careful attention to the best traditions of problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections with other disciplines and other areas of mathematics, and varied modes of representation.

Note: This is a custom edition of Levin's full Discrete Mathematics text, arranged specifically for use in a discrete math course for future elementary and middle school teachers. (It is NOT a new and updated edition of the main text.)This gentle introduction to discrete mathematics is written for first and second year math majors, especially those who intend to teach. The text began as a set of lecture notes for the discrete mathematics course at the University of Northern Colorado. This course serves both as an introduction to topics in discrete math and as the "introduction to proof" course for math majors. The course is usually taught with a large amount of student inquiry, and this text is written to help facilitate this.Four main topics are covered: counting, sequences, logic, and graph theory. Along the way proofs are introduced, including proofs by contradiction, proofs by induction, and combinatorial proofs.While there are many fine discrete math textbooks available, this text has the following advantages: - It is written to be used in an inquiry rich course.- It is written to be used in a course for future math teachers.- It is open source, with low cost print editions and free electronic editions.

This book discusses examples of discrete mathematics in school curricula, including in the areas of graph theory, recursion and discrete dynamical systems, combinatorics, logic, game theory, and the mathematics of fairness. In addition, it describes current discrete mathematics curriculum initiatives in several countries, and presents ongoing research, especially in the areas of combinatorial reasoning and the affective dimension of learning discrete mathematics. Discrete mathematics is the math of our time.' So declared the immediate past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, John Dossey, in 1991. Nearly 30 years later that statement is still true, although the news has not yet fully reached school mathematics curricula. Nevertheless, much valuable work has been done, and continues to be done. This volume reports on some of that work. It provides a glimpse of the state of the art in learning and teaching discrete mathematics around the world, and it makes the case once again that discrete mathematics is indeed mathematics for our time, even more so today in our digital age, and it should be included in the core curricula of all countries for all students.

A collection of articles written by experienced primary, secondary, and collegiate educators. It explains why discrete mathematics should be taught in K-12 classrooms and offers guidance on how to do so. It offers school and district curriculum leaders material that addresses how discrete mathematics can be introduced into their curricula.

Now is a time of great interest in mathematics education. Student performance, curriculum, and teacher education are the subjects of much scrutiny and debate. Studies on the mathematical knowledge of prospective and practicing U. S. teachers suggest ways to improve their mathematical educations. It is often assumed that because the topics covered in K-12 mathematics are so basic, they should be easy to teach. However, research in mathematics education has shown that to teach well,substantial mathematical understanding is necessary--even to teach whole-number arithmetic. Prospective teachers need a solid understanding of mathematics so that they can teach it as a coherent, reasoned activity and communicate its elegance and power. This volume gathers and reports current thinkingon curriculum and policy issues affecting the mathematical education of teachers. It considers two general themes: (1) the intellectual substance in school mathematics; and (2) the special nature of the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching. The underlying study was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The mathematical knowledge needed for teaching is quite different from that required by students pursuing other mathematics-related professions. Material here is gearedtoward stimulating efforts on individual campuses to improve programs for prospective teachers. This report contains general recommendations for all grades and extensive discussions of the specific mathematical knowledge required for teaching elementary, middle, and high-school grades, respectively.It is also designed to marshal efforts in the mathematical sciences community to back important national initiatives to improve mathematics education and to expand professional development opportunities. The book will be an important resource for mathematics faculty and other parties involved in the mathematical education of teachers. Information for our distributors: This series is published in cooperation with the Mathematical Association of America.

The title of this book, Learning Discrete Mathematics with ISETL raises two issues. We have chosen the word "Learning" rather than "Teaching" because we think that what the student does in order to learn is much more important than what the professor does in order to teach. Academia is filled with outstanding mathematics teachers: excellent expositors, good organizers, hard workers, men and women who have a deep understanding of Mathematics and its applications. Yet, when it comes to ideas in Mathe matics, our students do not seem to be learning. It may be that something more is needed and we have tried to construct a book that might provide a different kind of help to the student in acquiring some of the fundamental concepts of Mathematics. In a number of ways we have made choices that seem to us to be the best for learning, even if they don't always completely agree with standard teaching practice. A second issue concerns students' writing programs. ISETL is a pro gramming language and by the phrase "with ISETL" in the title, we mean that our intention is for students to write code, think about what they have written, predict its results, and run their programs to check their predic tions. There is a trade-off here. On the one hand, it can be argued that students' active involvement with constructing Mathematics for themselves and solving problems is essential to understanding concepts.