Why does there have to be such feelings? Most of this, I have found, stems from people having a bad experience growing up. This bad experience may have been from a teacher, from a particular topic/area (ie. fractions), or through the person having a lack of confidence due to some struggles that they may have encountered. I believe that a lot of these things could be turned around through changing the way at which well all view the teaching of math as both students and teachers alike.
Through investigating and reflecting on the practice of teaching of math, I have come to the belief that there are a lot of changes teachers could be making to help make their classroom more successful. Some articles that have lead me to this belief are as follows:
This is wonderful Prezi presentation arguing against the traditional ways at which math is taught. The presentation offers a clearly researched and honest viewpoint that offers solutions to some of the issues we have while teaching math, or that students claim to have while learning math. It addresses the facts that math is not linear, but rather a more complicated process. We should, as educators, be giving our students more reasoning as to what and why we are teaching concepts rather than because it "is the next chapter in the book," or "because you will need this for a class later." We should also for challenges and exploration to occur rather than filing all of our students along through a damaged system.
Along with that presentation, this article on "A Better Way to Teach" discusses that we need to change the way we are teaching so as to give our students more confidence in the classroom. It is important to offer our students opportunities in mathematics to succeed so they do not become discouraged A successful way to do this is through scaffolding the material. By taking small steps and breaking a larger concept up into mini steps can allow for more students to follow along and learn. This will instill confidence in the students and aid in getting rid of their math anxiety! It was also discussed that it can be helpful to separate math problems from math and simply relate the concepts to real world situations.
Lastly, this article discusses using a flipped classroom technique. This technique works by creating a podcast or a video of the lecture you would normally give your students. The catch is, however, that the podcast or video is watched at home, rather than in the classroom. The watching of the podcast would be the "homework." Then, in the classroom you give the students the actual "work" to accomplish together. This allows for students to share, work, and collaborate with one another rather than having them hit bumps or struggle on their own at home (as typically happens per the traditional methods of sending the students home to work alone on their homework problems). I believe that the author of this article drove this concept when he stated that:
Maybe "homework" no longer means that "work you do at home," but "the work" you do IN CLASS that drives the concepts "home."Note: Another KEY book to look up is The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. This book offers another look into how we should be viewing our classroom instruction, or rather, how to better any talent in general. This summary discusses how there are some key points that we miss when we are approaching the art of creating new skills. We focus too much on the idea that practice makes perfect, without considering the other parts that come into play. The author talks about how master coaching, ignition, and deep practice are the major ingredients at which talent develops.
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