Using Solution Strategies to Examine and Promote High School Students’ Understanding of Exponential Functions: One Teacher’s Attempt

Much research has been conducted on how elementary students develop mathematical understanding and subsequently how teachers might use this information. This article builds on this type of work by investigating how one high-school algebra teacher designs and conducts a lesson on exponential functions. Through a lesson study format she studies with her colleagues how other algebra students have mathematically modeled a bacteria growth problem with no prior formal instruction. Analysis revealed that the teacher was able to use students’ algebraic thinking to structure her class and begin promoting mathematical understanding. The implications for building on students’ conceptions of algebra are explored throughout the paper

Urban Students Acquiring English and Learning Mathematics in the Context of Reform

Urban schools face a dilemma. Should their efforts at reforming school mathematics specifically address the status of students acquiring English? Or should urban schools assume that these students' needs will be addressed under the broader aegis of reform? This article provides a rationale as to why educators should choose the former: the danger of re-creating stratification of opportunity to learn mathematics is simply too great to ignore the status of students acquiring English. The bilingual education literature that is related to mathematics teaching fails to address critical mathematics reform issues. Yet, bilingual education research provides a foundation on which to build efforts that combine attention to bilingual education and mathematics reform. This article ends with an elaboration of ways to think about the bilingual learner of mathematics, curriculum, teaching, assessment, and evaluation where collaboration between mathematics reformers and bilingual educators could be productive

Agenda setting, enlightened self-interest, and equity in mathematics education

In many recent documents and calls for reform in school mathematics, issues of educational equity have been transformed into concerns that are couched in terms of enlightened self-interest. That self-interest is predicated on the need for increased levels of mathematical, scientific, and technical knowledge for people to participate in the workforce, world economy, and our social institutions. Failure to educate women, minorities, and the poor adequately will result in the creation of a permanently unemployable underclass within our society, in exacerbated social problems, and in economic problems for our country. Equity, on the other hand, is defined in terms of social arrangements as judged against standards of justice. When these issues are scrutinized in terms of equity, it becomes clear that-though there are large areas of overlap between concerns for equity and for enlightened self-interest- these are two distinct constructs that should be kept separate. This article ends with an indication of three broad ways in which the setting of an agenda for equity in mathematics education might proceed

Book Review: All You Need Is Math: A Review of What's Math Got to Do With It?: Helping Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject-and Why It's Important for America

In What's Math Got to Do With It? Jo Boaler joins a heady list of public intellectuals such as Jo Sanders (1986) and Sheila Tobias (1994) who seek to engage public policy by explaining extant research to “just plain folk” (Lave, 1988) and to empower their audiences to “do something about it.” Boaler's audience is parents; the “it” is the dreary mathematics teaching that is provided to their children. In fact, one girl told Boaler: “In math, you have to remember; in other subjects, you can think about it” (p. 40). For parents and their children, Boaler presents alternatives, such as Emily Moskam's classroom at Greendale High School, in which mathematics is taught using complex problems that engage students and that result in authentic mathematical activity

IV. Eficacia escolar en escuelas bilingües en Puno, Perú

Si bien por muchos años, salvo excepciones, en el sistema educativo peruano no se ha prestado mayor atención a las características y necesidades educativas de la población indígena, en las tres últimas décadas han aparecido normas y programas que, principalmente desde el Ministerio de Educación, han promovido un modelo de educación bilingüe para el mantenimiento de las lenguas indígenas y el aprendizaje del español3 como segunda lengua. Este modelo debería sustituir al modelo de asimilación de las poblaciones indígenas a la lengua y cultura dominantes en el país, es decir, al español y a una cultura que en términos generales es la occidental