Rethinking Mathematics

In this unique collection, more than 30 articles show how to weave social justice issues throughout the mathematics curriculum, as well as how to integrate mathematics into other curricular areas. Rethinking Mathematics offers teaching ideas, lesson plans, and reflections by practitioners and mathematics educators. This is real-world math-math that helps students analyze problems as they gain essential academic skills. This book offers hope and guidance for teachers to enliven and strengthen their math teaching. It will deepen students' understanding of society and help prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy. Blending theory and practice, this is the only resource of its kind.

Every child has a right to make sense of math, and to use math to make sense of their worlds. Despite their gifts, students with disabilities are often viewed from a deficit standpoint in mathematics classrooms. These students are often conceptualized as needing to be fixed or remediated. Rethinking Disability and Mathematics argues that mathematics should be a transformative space for these students, a place where they can discover their power and potential and be appreciated for their many strengths. Author Rachel Lambert introduces Universal Design for Learning for Math (UDL Math), a way to design math classrooms that empowers disabled and neurodiverse students to engage in mathematics in ways that lead to meaningful and joyful math learning. The book showcases how UDL Math can open up mathematics classrooms so that they provide access to meaningful understanding and an identity as a math learner to a wider range of students. Weaved throughout the book are the voices of neurodiverse learners telling their own stories of math learning. Through stories of real teachers recognizing the barriers in their own math classrooms and redesigning to increase access, the book: Reframes students with disabilities from a deficit to an asset perspective, paving the way for trusting their mathematical thinking Offers equitable math instruction for all learners, including those with disabilities, neurodiverse students, and/or multilingual learners Applies UDL to the math classroom, providing practical tips and techniques to support students′ cognitive, affective, and strategic development Immerses readers in math classrooms where all students are engaged in meaningful mathematics, from special education day classes to inclusive general education classrooms, from grades K-8. Integrates research on mathematical learning including critical math content such as developing number sense and place value, fluency with math facts and operations, and understanding fractions and algebraic thinking. Explores critical issues such as writing IEP goals in math This book is designed for all math educators, both those trained as general education teachers and those trained as special education teachers. The UDL Math approach is adapted to work for all learners because everyone varies in how they perceive the world and in how they approach mathematical problem solving. When we rethink mathematics to include multiple ways of being a math learner, we make math accessible and engaging for a wider group of learners.

Why is it that so many pupils are put off by maths, seeing it as uninspiring and irrelevant, and that so many choose to drop it as soon as they can? Why is it socially acceptable to be bad at maths? Does the maths curriculum really prepare pupils for life? This book presents some answers to these questions, helping teachers to think through their own attitudes to teaching and learning, and to work with pupils towards more effective and inspiring mathematical engagement. Part I of the book explores the nature of school mathematics - showing how the curriculum has been developed over the years, and how increasing effort has been devoted to improving the quality of mathematics teaching, with little apparent effect. Part II focuses on ways of thinking about classroom mathematics which take account of social, cultural, political and historical aspects. The chapters bring together a collection of activities, resources and discussion which will help teachers develop new ways of teaching and learning maths. This book will be essential reading for all maths teachers, including maths specialists on initial teacher training courses.

Each teacher and student brings many identities to the classroom. What is their impact on the student’s learning and the teacher’s teaching of mathematics? This book invites K–8 teachers to reflect on their own and their students’ multiple identities. Rich possibilities for learning result when teachers draw on these identities to offer high-quality, equity-based teaching to all students. Reflecting on identity and re-envisioning learning and teaching through this lens especially benefits students who have been marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, or gender. The authors encourage teachers to reframe instruction by using five equity-based mathematics teaching practices: Going deep with mathematics; leveraging multiple mathematical competencies; affirming mathematics learners’ identities; challenging spaces of marginality; and drawing on multiple resources of knowledge. Special features of the book: Classroom vignettes, lessons, and assessments showing equity-based practices Tools for teachers’ self-reflection and professional development, including a mathematics learning autobiography and teacher identity activity at nctm.org/more4u Suggestions for partnering with parents and community organisations End-of-chapter discussion questions

In Democracy and Mathematics Education, Kurt Stemhagen and Catherine Henney develop a way of thinking about the nature and purposes of math that is inclusive, participatory, and thoroughly human. They use these ideas to create a school mathematics experience that can enhance students’ math abilities and democratic potential. They locate mathematics’ origins in human activity and highlight the rich but often overlooked links between mathematical activity and democratic, social practices. Democratic mathematics education foregrounds student inquiry and brings to light the moral dimensions of a discipline that has both remarkable utility and inevitable limitations. For math educators, the book’s humanities approach helps to see the subject anew. For philosophers, it provides an important real world context for wrestling with perennial and timely questions, engaging democratic and evolutionary theory to transform school math. This alternative approach to mathematics and mathematics education provides a guide for how to use math to make democracy a larger part of school and wider social life. 2021 Winner of the AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award.

In this country we have done a poor job of helping students come to see the wonder, beauty and power of mathematics. Standards can be brought into the picture, but unless we think about what it means to truly engage students in mathematics we will continue to be unsuccessful. The goal of this book is to begin to change the way students experience mathematics in the middle and high school classrooms. In this book you will find a theoretical basis for this approach to teaching mathematics, multiple guides and questions for teachers to think about in relation to their everyday teaching, and over 30 examples of problems, lessons, tasks, and projects that been used effectively with urban students.

Low mathematics scores are a good predictor of high school dropout rates. Even when students do graduate, only 1 out of 4 are proficient at high-school level mathematics. In college, 69% of STEM majors switch to fields with fewer mathematics requirements. Math anxiety is real, and it prevents many adults from pursuing careers in math-related fields. America has a real problem with math illiteracy. That problem largely results from the way we teach our children math in school. All too often, math is reduced to memorization, in an environment that doesn't accommodate students' individual learning speeds. In Rethinking Math Learning, Dr. Aditya Nagrath shows how you can empower your child with the tools needed to overcome math illiteracy. Using a proven system of six basic concepts, steeped in years of research, Dr. Nagrath explains how to banish math anxiety forever and ensure that your child has the math skills necessary for their future economic success.

Mathematics Education and Technology-Rethinking the Terrain revisits the important 1985 ICMI Study on the influence of computers and informatics on mathematics and its teaching. The focus of this book, resulting from the seventeenth Study led by ICMI, is the use of digital technologies in mathematics teaching and learning in countries across the world. Specifically, it focuses on cultural diversity and how this diversity impinges on the use of digital technologies in mathematics teaching and learning. Within this focus, themes such as mathematics and mathematical practices; learning and assessing mathematics with and through digital technologies; teachers and teaching; design of learning environments and curricula; implementation of curricula and classroom practice; access, equity and socio-cultural issues; and connectivity and virtual networks for learning, serve to organize the study and bring it coherence. Providing a state-of-the-art view of the domain with regards to research, innovating practices and technological development, Mathematics Education and Technology-Rethinking the Terrain is of interest to researchers and all those interested in the role that digital technology plays in mathematics education.