This is Hard Work … Why It is Important!

The AMATYC 2014 conference is almost over.  Many conversations and sessions have dealt with changing the curriculum in basic ways, whether shifting to a New Life model or Dana Center or Carnegie … in part, whole, or modified.  Some of us get so enthusiastic about this change that we don’t get slowed down by worries or concerns about the amount of hard work this will take; for us, it’s like nothing will stop us from reaching  our goal.

Most of us, however, are facing constraints.  We are intimidated by the work involved — the hard work of developing an idea, getting consensus or approval in the department, and building institutional support, all of which is required before we get to develop the teaching in the new courses.  Perhaps, we think, it would be best to take a small step like replacing one chapter in the current course with a new one, and see how the ideas work out at other institutions.

Take the biggest step you think you can.  In fact, take a step a little bigger than you think is realistic.

I could justify these statements by citing policy initiatives that are coming, by showing data on how ‘bad’ things are now, or by invoking the Common Core mythology.  Today, I want to take a different approach to the rationale for why it is important to make changes a little bigger than you think is realistic.

Call it personal, or perhaps religious.  My world view, informed by my beliefs, goes something like this:

• Do no harm to others
• Place the needs of others ahead of (some) of your own needs

For a large portion of students placing below calculus, we are doing harm to them.  They come to us with dreams and aspirations, and we place steps in front of them that are frequently and artificially difficult.  Yes, we bear some responsibility for students giving up on their dreams.  We have been doing significant harm, even though our work is driven by a desire to help.  We must stop doing harm to such a degree.

We should be placing the needs of students above our own needs.  We will have jobs, though different, even if we eliminate half of our developmental courses; sure, it’s not comfortable … it can even be threatening.  However, continuing what we have been doing is not putting students’ needs first.  Does any student need the 100 learning outcomes of my college’s developmental mathematics courses?  Absolutely not.  Those 100 outcomes are there because we there might be a need sometime for somebody to use them in some situation; much of this ‘need’ is driven by assessments within mathematics courses.

Herb Gross, founding president of AMATYC, gave a popular keynote speech here at the conference.  At one point, Herb said that we should re-phrase the golden rule; instead of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” it should be “Do unto others as they would do unto themselves.”  I appreciate the intent with this re-phrasing, but it totally misses the faith justification for the original … we are called to see ourselves as the other person; the ‘do unto you’ refers to what they could do to you or for you if your roles were reversed.

So, envision yourself starting at college, and your initial mathematics course is not very ‘advanced’.  Perhaps you are the person who had AP Calculus in high school who is told that you now must take two courses before taking college calculus.  Perhaps you are the person who passed two algebra courses with weak grades who now finds herself sitting in a class reviewing grade school arithmetic with 25 other students of color.  Perhaps you are the person who did not do well before, and really needs help building a mathematical base … and you find yourself in a math course which deals strictly with procedures, with some drive-by attention to concepts, and no real applications in sight.

The issues I am talking about are definitely not just in ‘developmental’ or remedial courses.  At all levels, we tend to have a mismatch between student needs and what we provide.  The harm is done in pre-algebra and pre-calculus, in algebra and calculus, and even in statistics.

I have never met a math teacher at any level who wanted to do harm to students.  Almost all of us have a sincere desire to help students, to provide the best mathematics possible.  Change can involve a risk to do harm; the profession has enough knowledge about mathematical needs and learning to avoid much of the risk.

Do no harm, as much as possible.  We must take the biggest step possible … and a little more … to reduce the harm we do.  We should take advantage of the external forces, and create the types of change we think are best — to put our students’ needs first.

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Status of New Life Math Courses; AMATYC 2014 sessions

Here is a summary of “where” New Life courses are being taught currently:

Arizona California Colorado Florida Iowa Illinois
Kentucky Massachusetts Michigan North Carolina New York Texas
Wisconsin
Alaska Minnesota Ohio Oregon Utah

These 18 states involve over 50 colleges. Over 500 sections with enrollment over 10000 students are represented by those colleges.

Mathematical Literacy is the most common course being implemented; Algebraic Literacy is being taught at the same level that Math Lit was two years ago. I expect the Algebraic Literacy course implementations to follow the same trend as Math Lit; Algebraic Lit is about two years behind.

At the AMATYC 2014 conference next month (https://amatyc.site-ym.com/?page=2014ConfHome) I will be doing two sessions on the New Life courses.
On Friday (November 14, 8am) the session is The Missing Link: Algebraic Literacy to Replace Intermediate Algebra  .  I will describe the purposes for the Algebraic Literacy Course and provide details on the learning outcomes.  Included in the handouts will be a sample lesson representing what might be done in an Algebraic Literacy course.

On Saturday (November 15, 2:15pm) the session is Accelerate and Improve Developmental Mathematics: The New Life Model  .   I will provide an overview of the New Life Model and how it fits in to a curriculum to provide acceleration along with improved content.  Each course (Math Lit, Algebraic Lit) will be reviewed, and handouts will include the learning outcomes for each course.

I hope to see you there!

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Obi Wan and Mathematics Education

I’ve been thinking about my perceptions this semester.  You see, for the first time in about 4 years, I am not teaching a ‘reasoning’ course — neither our Quantitative Reasoning course (Math119) nor our Math Lit course (Math105).  Of course, I miss those classes.  However, I am actually not aware of missing them on a daily basis.  In fact, I am quite comfortable.

Which led me to the memory of a certain movie moment.  Jedi-to-be Luke is angry with the Jedi master Obi Wan, after learning that Obi Wan did not tell him the truth.

Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Our point of view is primarily determined by our environment and attitude.  My environment is more traditional this semester; symbolic manipulation and correct answers are high on the list of outcomes.  Like most of us, my attitude when in this environment is impacted by the ‘comfort’ and ‘familiar’ feelings.  I know this … I have competence … this is good.

As a profession, most of us have not yet had the opportunity to take a different point of view about mathematics education.  The majority of math classes are traditional at this time; over the next 5 years, that will change.  So … what comes first: a point of view that supports a reform curriculum, OR experience teaching a reform curriculum?

Like most philosophical questions, there is not a good answer for this question.  However, I will suggest that some of us will need to support a reform curriculum before we have a point of view that is consistent with it.  Understanding comes from experience, and understanding something as complex as the mathematics curriculum in college is a long process.  Early in our New Life Project, some colleagues were suggesting that the best thing to do was to teach a lesson for instructors in the way a reform class would teach it; this would have been a waste of effort: those who do not yet understand why a class would be taught that way … would not understand what they are seeing.

Change just happens.  Progress occurs when some of us are willing to walk a path we do not yet understand.  In some ways, there is nothing more rewarding than beginning a journey without understanding and then finding both understanding and things of beauty along the way.

However you look at issues in developmental mathematics and college mathematics in general, do not let other people put you in a box that says ‘inferior’ or ‘will not change’.  I have faith in each of us, that we are able to become more than we have been.  Our environment determines much about our point of view, and it’s hard to move out of that causality loop.  It takes courage; it takes some inspiration.  I have been impressed by math faculty who have grown in this way.

Especially if you think that the traditional curriculum has much to offer, I hope you will join me on this journey to a better place … a place where we do more for our students, where students are enabled to reach their goals, a place where good mathematics shines in our classrooms.  You are needed; we can not reach our goal without you.

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Language as an Impediment to Improving Mathematics Education

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education was:

Remedial Educators Contest Reformers’ ‘Rhetoric of Failure’ ( http://chronicle.com/article/Remedial-Educators-Contest/145351/)

This is a good article, worth the time to read and think about.  I was drawn to the phrase “Rhetoric of Failure”, a phrase that Uri Treisman used in a presentation at the NADE conference.  However, I’ve been bothered by another aspect.

Think about the word ‘reformers’ in the title … the word is being used to describe the groups (mostly external) who are trying to impose a different design for getting students in to credit-bearing courses (Florida, Connecticut, etc) with the most common strategy being the avoidance of developmental education.

One can not reform a system by avoiding it.

Reformers are those who seek significant changes in an existing system.  I am a reformer; perhaps you are.  We seem to have little power to resist the revolutionaries who want to avoid the system.  Part of this lack of power is likely due to the fact that few people outside of our profession know of the reform work we’ve been doing.  Sure, many have heard of the Carnegie projects (Statway™ and Quantway™); as a high-profile endeavor, that work has been widely publicized outside of mathematics education.  However, few (very few) outside of our profession have heard of our effective work at truly reforming developmental mathematics — the New Life project.

Do the destroyers know that we have a better model that will accelerate students to credit-bearing courses based on a professional re-design of the curriculum combined with a modernization of teaching?  How many people know that there are far more New Life implementations than any grant funded work, past or present?

Calling a group ‘reformers’ is assigning them an intent to improve a system; when revolutionaries make drastic changes, a better word would be ‘destroyers’.  Now, sometimes we need revolutions … sometimes we need destruction.  As I understand the views in the social sciences about change, revolutions and destruction are usually ineffective at producing long-term change.  I know of no reason why mathematics education would be any different.

As long as the ‘reform’ word is used for revolutionary changes, improving mathematics education will be very limited; we are, in fact, likely to regress (which is the most common result of a revolution).  We need to articulate our visions for reform with clear statements of our rationale; we need to challenge statements that attribute ‘reform’ to a revolutionary process.  We need to be comfortable telling external groups that imposing change (a bullying behavior) is not going to fix a problem; revolutions seldom work.

Calling something a ‘reform’ does not make it a good thing.

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