Reflecting....3,2,1

After reading Shoenfeld’s Introduction and Chapters 1-3 of Boaler’s book I was left with an alarming feeling of déjà vu. I felt as though I had been a student at Amber Hill, sitting alongside the students working through those same textbook exercises after listening to the teacher explain the procedure to be followed. Having been taught in a traditional way, much like the teaching methods at Amber Hill, I wasn’t surprised to read in the introduction that students at Phoenix Park outperformed those from Amber Hill in standardized tests, tests in which students were to take what they knew about mathematics and apply it in new and unusual circumstances. Amber Hill students were programmed to take a formula/procedure, memorize it, and plug in new numbers to find an answer.....without ever really understanding where the formula or procedure came from or why they were using it.


Students at Phoenix Park on the other hand spent a great deal of time using what they knew in mathematics to help them work towards an understanding of new concepts, they worked from the known to the unknown using their own knowledge and experiences as a guide in their discovery. Students at Phoenix Park were the driving force of the instruction in their classrooms, the goal of math lessons was understanding. Students were encouraged to think about and understand the mathematics on their own; the teachers provided guidance to the students as they worked on open ended tasks, but the students did not rely on the teachers to help them find the right answer as did students at Amber Hill.

I’m interested in reading more about the math instruction in each of these schools, I am already wishing that I had been a “Phoenix Park” student rather than an “Amber Hill” student.

Melanie