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This book is written to educate principals of middle and high school mathematics teachers on the many challenges teachers face as they seek to re-invent their teaching approach.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Call to Change
Chapter 2: The Case for Professional Learning Communities
Chapter 3: The BIG ASK
Chapter 4: Removing Barriers to Student Learning
Chapter 5: Engaging Students by Flipping the Classroom
Chapter 6: Student Centered Learning with Productive Struggle
Chapter 7: Applying a Theoretical Basis to Drive Change
Chapter 8: Exemplars of Professional Development
Chapter 9: Examples of Collaboration Observed in Europe and Asia
Chapter 10: Rigor Requires Relationships
Chapter 11: Scenario: Down in the Trenches
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Authors
About the author
Dr. James Freemyer was a high school mathematics teacher for eight years, a high school principal for seventeen years, chair of a graduate education program for eight years, and currently teaches research statistics and organizational change at Indiana Wesleyan University in a doctoral program in leadership.
Summary
This book is written to educate principals of middle and high school mathematics teachers on the many challenges teachers face as they seek to re-invent their teaching approach.
Additional text
As a career Mathematics teacher educator, it is wonderful and rare to see the challenges facing school mathematics teachers in the early 21st Century articulated with such clarity, insight and empathy. The significance of this work is heightened because it is anchored in research, is tempered by many years of professional practice in mathematics teaching and education, and is very positive and realistic about what can be achieved in mathematics education for all students. The authors recognize the enormity of the task that mathematics teachers face in their professional lives and the personal effort needed to transform their practice in pursuit of better outcomes for all their students. This insight applies across the globe where reforms are embraced.
All agree that change is necessary and there is a remarkable international consensus on the nature of this change, namely, a move to a more realistic, problem-based conceptual approach to school mathematics that facilitates better outcomes for all students regardless of ability. Achieving the necessary transformation of teachers’ own practice and student learning is an enormous task and demands a sustained concerted effort by all stakeholders. The authors identify local leadership as central to the success of such a major enterprise. They tackle the issue by offering a strong argument for teacher support by school leaders such as school principals and department heads focused on providing collaborative learning opportunities for their mathematics teachers, and time to engage in such learning opportunities. Taken together, one could view the book as providing a pathway to success in this most important undertaking in mathematics education. The book should be required reading for mathematics teacher educators, pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers, school principals, department heads of STEM subjects, and education policy makers at local, regional and national levels.
Here I think it is appropriate to recast a famous American political maxim: ‘all mathematics education is local (and curriculum change happens a local level)’.
