Amber Hill - Keeping with Tradition

Kudos to Sharon for her fantastic presentation last week!

You pointed out many important ideas from the text and brought about an engaging conversation. Some of the main ideas that came through for me (and that I am still trying to make sense of or understand a little more) are:


• The difference that exists between what we “believe” good math teaching is, and how we present this so-called “good teaching” to teaching. It is safe to say that educators, including those at Amber Hill, would consider student understanding to be essential to “good teaching”. However, for the most part students in math classes at Amber Hill were not understanding, they were simply “getting on with it” or “going through the motions”, students were completing numerous practice questions in class and recreating these same types of questions on tests, yet when students had to take these ideas and apply them in context or in a way other than which they were used to they couldn’t do it, they didn’t understand...... which certainly leads to the question, did they ever understand it? The answer is an alarming “no”; the students themselves are reporting that they are simply “following the rules”. If the students themselves believe that the most important part of math is remembering, how then can we expect them to use these skills in future situations when the formulas and rules are long forgotten and they don’t have the understanding necessary to derive these “rules” on their own?

• Teachers at Amber Hill recognize that students are not developing a true understanding of mathematical concepts and are unable to transfer their knowledge (“Tim: Students are generally good unless a question is slightly different to what they are used to, or if they are asked to do something after a time lapse, if a question is written in words or if they are expected to answer in words.” p. 34). If teachers are recognizing that students do not understand, what are they blaming this lack of understanding on? Teachers are quick to point out factors related to the students background, time on task, etc, but do not readily examine their own teaching practice as a possible contributor. Why is this? Are we afraid to admit that we perhaps don’t have all of the answers? We need to see a pedagogical shift emerge that supports the idea of “Have they learned it? If not, how can I help them to learn it?” as opposed to the view of “I taught it so they better have learned it.”

• Student success appears to be one of the forces driving instruction at Amber Hill, yet the success is not evident. Teachers “care deeply about their students” yet this level of care is not such that it translates into the methods of instruction that are selected for students. Teachers rely heavily on a traditional method of instruction, they are confident that the level of structure provided by the textbooks will serve their students better. Students however, are more satisfied with the learning taking place when working on the open ended course work, something which they only experience for 2-3 weeks each year beginning at the end of year 9. There is an obvious disconnect here in what students believe to be important to mathematical understanding and what teachers believe, more opportunities for open ended work and student dialogue would serve to bridge this gap and produce greater understanding.


I would suspect that much of what is happening at Amber Hill is happening right here at home. Teachers here, there, everywhere are concerned with the success of their students, but the instructional methods being used in our classrooms are not necessarily delivering that level of success that we would like to see.

A host of reasons can be suggested as to why these instructional methods are still heavily relied upon many years after studies have proven them to be not nearly as effective as the hands-on student centered approaches Boaler describes at Phoenix Park School. Curriculums are loaded with objectives and time is something there is never enough of, teachers are pressured to complete the curriculum in a “suggested” time-frame.

Money.....something else often in short supply, with large class sizes and a lack of manipulatives in many classrooms, completing lessons that stray from the traditional approach described at Amber Hill can certainly pose a challenge.

The traditional approach is one that has been tried and tested in our classrooms for many years, and while it is perhaps not providing our students with maximum mathematical understanding, it is not outright failing them (when it comes to standardized testing anyway.....) so as teachers we may be inclined to stick with what we know (as this is how many of us ourselves were taught.)

CRT’s much like standardized tests taken by students at Amber Hill have a drastic effect on instruction at the grade levels in which they are administered. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on teachers to have their students meet certain expectations, and the teachers are in turn putting this pressure on students to perform. What is the purpose of these tests? What do they really show us about student understanding? Can a multiple choice test that has in many ways been rehearsed really show us what our students truly know and understand? Is this how we define success in mathematics, the ability to do well in a standardized test situation?

Whatever the reason for the inadequacies in Amber Hill’s mathematics program and in our own mathematics programs in Newfoundland and Labrador, it is obvious that student success must be first and foremost our goal. Defining what it means to be successful at mathematics will perhaps lead us to change within our instructional strategies.