Our Future … Are we Creating it? Or, Putting up with It?

We are familiar with the types of changes that are currently happening in developmental mathematics and general education mathematics, with pathways and co-requisite structures. Certainly, large forces in these changes are external — legislation, state direction, and institutional leadership. Are we abrogating our responsibilities to create the future shape of college mathematics?

The most fundamental nature of a profession is that it changes over time to reach a more ideal state; you might even call this ‘making progress’. When change is primarily imposed on the profession (which has occurred frequently in our profession), the changes do not normally reflect the values and standards of the profession. Obviously, quite a few of us are distressed for this very reason.

However, it occurred to me that these external forces might tend to make some of us more conservative than we would have been. Are you resisting basic curricular changes because of fear … fear that somebody is going to tell you what you are going to do? Perhaps those of us who have not yet been ‘mandated’ are holding on to our traditional curriculum with a tight grip, although we would be open to basic change if it came from ‘us’.

I encourage you to continue thinking about what the future of college mathematics should look like. What types of courses do you want? What should the content be focused on? What types of support for student learning do you want? We need to have a vision, an idea about what the future should be, before we can make progress towards achieving that vision.

As part of that process, you might plan ahead for an AMATYC Webinar I am scheduled to deliver (April 3, 2018 at 3pm EDT). The webinar is entitled “Dev Math: Past, Present, Future”, and my goal is to provide you with some ideas and tools so that you can formulate a clearer vision of what OUR future should look like — at the basic college level as well as pre-college level. I will share both what my institution is currently doing, and a specific projection to a future state (‘a vision’) for you to consider. Part of this ‘projection’ is a structure to modernize our STEM mathematics program (especially pre-calculus and the calculus sequence).

If you are not creating our future, you are merely putting up with the future. Our students depend upon us creating that future in ways that we believe will help them succeed.

Developmental Mathematics Revival!

Bringing a new vitality to college mathematics 2011 to 2019