5 research outputs found
Lived-in Room: Classroom Space as Teacher
This paper is a portrait of a public elementary school classroom in light of the relationships, history, and ideas that have formed its physical space. In describing Judy Richard’s classroom, the author shows how a creative teacher’s commitment to seeing her classroom as a living space inevitably brings her to overstep the narrow limits of the traditional mandates of classroom management. The author presents this portrait as an example of the ideological and creative stance teachers can assume in relation to their classrooms. Addressing challenges that are specific to urban public schools, the author also suggests that public schools must abandon their oversimplified conception of learning spaces and develop support systems that help teachers incorporate the socio-emotional, developmental, and cultural needs of their students into their classroom settings
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Lived-in Room: Classroom Space as Teacher
This paper is a portrait of a public elementary school classroom in light of the relationships, history, and ideas that have formed its physical space. In describing Judy Richard’s classroom, the author shows how a creative teacher’s commitment to seeing her classroom as a living space inevitably brings her to overstep the narrow limits of the traditional mandates of classroom management. The author presents this portrait as an example of the ideological and creative stance teachers can assume in relation to their classrooms. Addressing challenges that are specific to urban public schools, the author also suggests that public schools must abandon their oversimplified conception of learning spaces and develop support systems that help teachers incorporate the socio-emotional, developmental, and cultural needs of their students into their classroom settings
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Purpose and Education: The Case of Mathematics
Why do schools teach mathematics, and why do they teach the mathematics that they do? In this three-part dissertation, I argue that the justifications offered by national education systems are not convincing, and that students are tested on content whose purpose neither they nor their teachers clearly understand. In the first part of the dissertation, I propose a theoretical framework for understanding the content and pedagogy of school mathematics as a set of practices reflecting socio-political values, particularly in relation to labor and citizenship. Beginning with a critical study of history, I trace the origins of modern mathematics education, in the process unearthing common, unexamined assumptions regarding the place and form of mathematics education in contemporary society.
In the second part of the dissertation I use the above theoretical framework to re-examine the literature on mathematical word problems. Word problems have interested research because they operate at the intersection between mathematics, education, and labor. I argue that scholarly discussions of word problems have so far adopted unexamined assumptions regarding the role of history, the structure of everyday life, and the relationship between mathematics and other disciplines. Through the lens of political economy I examine these assumptions and offer new categories and explanation for understanding word problems.
In the final part of the dissertation, I apply my theoretical framework to practice. Using a dialogical approach, I present a group of undergraduate students and pre-service teachers with artifacts and problems that embody some of the defining tensions of mathematics education. Through twelve weeks of in-depth discussion, fieldwork and exploration, students eventually arrive at a more critical understanding of the social purpose of mathematics and the impact of this purpose on its teaching and learning in various contexts. The results for the students include an expanded vision of the possibilities of mathematics, a radical critique of its place in society, and reports of reduced math anxiety as well as increased curiosity toward mathematics.Culture, Communities, and Educatio
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Session F: Contributed Oral Papers – F1: Physics Education: Play Ball!: The House That Euclid Built
Our video begins in the classroom. One student laments to his fellow classmates that his baseball team will be forced to forfeit their next game if they cannot find a field to play on. In response, the other students suggest constructing a baseball diamond of their own. As soon as the first student agrees, they all begin brainstorming ways to go about making a 90ft x 90ft perfect square, the dimensions of a standard MLB baseball diamond. First the students try using a protractor. They soon realize, however, that the scale of their project is too massive to rely on such a small instrument. Next, the students attempt to make a square using GPS technology. This time it is the margins of error on these machines that stymie their pursuit. Finally, one of the class members who has been silent to this point suggests that the answer lies in the 2000 year-old propositions of Euclid. Suddenly, the ancient Greek geometer himself appears in the distance ready to assist our students. Using a synthesis of Euclidian proofs, the students then construct a baseball diamond in time for the game. Play ball
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Session F: Contributed Oral Papers – F1: Physics Education:Messing about with Euclid
How to make Euclid educative and inspiring in a video demonstration for school students? This curiosity motivated our group of university students to participate in a university pilot program whose mission is to support students in producing educational videos that demonstrate classic experiments from history. The educational objective and the historical experiment focus of the pilot program intrigue us. We mess about while we encounter the geometry of Euclid\u27s classic text. The making of the video is woven into our own exploring and our understanding of Euclid. In turn, our exploratory process strengthens our capacity to make Euclid inspiring to school-aged audiences