Still Doing Old School


This blog post is a vent post! Please excuse my ranting.

I don't understand why some teaching practices in early childhood and elementary mathematics have not evolved. I have had preservice teachers talk to me about witnessing antiquated teachings mathematics practices for younger children and special needs children. The frustration comes from that part of me that wants to advocate for professional development for teachers to learn new pedagogical methods. The other part of me thinks it's just a waste of time. One crucial aspect of being an educator is to become a life long learner. Teaching and learning both go hand in hand. However, if a teacher is used to one method and that methods is not working with students, shouldn't that teacher want to research and learn better practices. The excuse for using old practices should not be "I'm old school and this is how you are going to learn".
If students are having a hard time with making tens, teachers should use pedagogical practices that require students to think and reason with numbers and counting in order  to develop and believe that skills. Rituals like Counting Collections and Number Talks strengthen those counting and grouping skills. Tens frame introduced in Number Talks can be used as tools for Counting Collections. Those two activities fall under the high-level cognitive demand task. Students are actually doing mathematics. Smith and Stein (1998) posited that doing mathematics requires the following:
  •  Complex and nonalgorithmic thinking
  •  Children to explore and to understand the nature of mathematical concepts, processes, or relationships
  •  A demand for children to self-monitor or self-regulate
  • Children to access relevant knowledge in working through the task
  • Children to analyze the task and actively examine task constraints
  • Considerable cognitive efforts.
In additions to what previously mentioned, Counting Collections and Number Talks  involve students to approach the task with multiple entry and exit points. This allow for students to make sense of the task and persevere to solve the task. This allow for students to reason abstractly and quantitatively and to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 
I am not far removed from the testing era to understand teachers constraints dealing with time to meet standards. In higher education, we have our own accountability systems set by state and nationals standards. However, I do feel if we continue to use old methods such as teaching using worksheets only, we will have a students not making those necessary connections in mathematics and hence not enjoying mathematics. 


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