This Week in Math Ed: March 4, 2016

Math Ed Said

February 26: The most-shared post of this day was last week's TWiME post, which I'm taking as an indicator that the time it takes me to assemble these posts is well-spent. That said, I'd rather recognize two other popular posts from last Friday. First, Rachel Lambert shared a presentation she gave at UCLA, "Including Learners with Disabilities in Meaningful Mathematics," and second, folks were tweeting about Megan Schmidt's "We Read. And then We Math."

Shared by: Rachel Lambert, Andrew Gael, Tim Hudson, Shauhna Feitlin, John Golden, Kent Haines, Kim Webb, Michelle Naidu

February 27: I'll admit that this one got a laugh out of me when I first saw it, so I'll not spoil the fun and hope you get a laugh out of it, too.
Note: Despite thousands of retweets and likes, Adam Becker understands that for some, this is not an easy topic to laugh at. Sadly, I understand, too.

Shared by: Mike Thayer, Steven Strogatz, Kate Owens, Martin Joyce, Kent Haines, Michael Ferrara

February 28: Twenty-four (!) people shared a link to Andrew Hacker's NYT op-ed, "The Wrong Way to Teach Math." By my count, this is the third reference I've made to Hacker's new book and his NYT appearances in the past four weeks.

Shared by: Markus Sagebiel, Mister Suever, Meleia Bridenstine, OCTM, Brian Marks, Amy Hogan, Douglas Weathers, Jonathan Schoolcraft, Sherri Adler, Cassy Turner, Matthew Oldridge, Susan Davidson, Susan Wilson, Chris Shore, Kristin Manna, Brian Lawler, Bryan Meyer, Gregory White, Glenn Waddell, John Golden, Sadie Estrella, Anthony Purcell, Robert Berry, Eric Milou

February 29: Jose Vilson graces us with a post on the Teaching Tolerance blog called "Why I Teach: Solving Problems Beyond Math Class."

Shared by: Jose Vilson, Shannon Houghton, Andrew Gael, Carrie Muir, Julie Wright

March 1: Shall we have more Andrew Hacker commentary? Keith Devlin responds to Hacker with a widely-shared post, "The Math Myth that permeates 'The Math Myth'."

Shared by: MAA, Keith Devlin, TedCoe, Egan Chernoff, Denise Gaskins, Carrie Muir, Bowen Kerins, Ilana Horn, Ilona Vashchyshyn

March 2: Even more people were talking about Keith Devlin's post.

Commentary: As with many heated discussions about mathematics education, dig deep enough and you're likely to find some fundamental differences in what people believe mathematics is. At CU-Boulder we offer a class called "Perspectives on Math and Math Education," and I find what I learned in that class both interesting and highly valuable when sorting out where people stand in debates like this, or like the arguments I typically see in the math wars. Devlin's specific criticisms aside, if anything, Hacker prompted a lot of math educators to ask themselves, "What is this stuff I'm teaching, and should I be teaching it?" It's not a bad question to ask ourselves, and something the field of math ed seems to do one syllabus, one textbook adoption, and one standards revision at a time. (With or without the NYT op-eds.)

Shared by: Keith Devlin, Ashley Walther, Erik Johnson, Shannon Houghton, Jack Brown, Samuel Otten, Joshua Bowman, John Golden, Bob Lochel, Farshid Safi, Patrick Honner, Pam Wilson

March 3: Corey Drake of Michigan State wrote an opinion piece in The Hechinger Report, "The Fantastic New Ways to Teach Math That Most Schools Aren’t Even Using." The article is written mostly for teacher educators, but I think all in math ed could read this and take away a sense of the progress we've made in math education. This is the first I've seen Corey Drake write outside the normal academic venues, and I hope it's not the last.

Shared by: Emily Clare, Greg George, Earl Samuelson, Christie Madancy, Mrs. Math Teach, Melissa Soto

Around the Math Ed Web

NCTM extended their Innov8 conference proposal deadline to March 7.

The next #TCMchat is March 9 at 9 pm ET. The focus of the chat is the article "Promoting Mathematical Argumentation" by Chepina Rumsey and Cynthia Langrall.

Next week's Global Math Department session is "Using Peer Feedback to Increase Student Understanding." I thought last week's was about Desmos Activity Builder, but I think I was a full month off and that one will come at the end of March.

Research Notes

Week by week I've been waiting for the dam to burst with a surge of research articles, and it will be easy to drown with everything published this past week. Bear with me!

New in the March 2016 issue of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education:
Meanwhile, the June 2016 issue of The Journal of Mathematical Behavior is in progress:
Also, new articles in the March 2016 issue of Mathematics Teacher Educator:
Wait, there's more! How about the March 2016 issue of the Mathematics Education Research Journal:

Math Ed in the News


Math Ed in Colorado

I'm posting this later this week because I spent a long but worthwhile day with teachers in Ellicott, one of Colorado's great rural places on the eastern plains with big skies and views of Pikes Peak:

The view of Pikes Peak in the distance from Ellicott

The next session of the Northern Colorado Math Circles is March 7. See their website for more details. The Rocky Mountain and Northern Colorado Math Teachers' Circles are teaming up for a summer workshop in Winter Park from July 11-15. There's also a Rocky Mountain Math Teachers' Circle listserv you can sign up for to receive updates.

CCTM is taking nominations for their leadership award and teaching award, both of which are due by March 11. The CCTM board is also seeking to appoint a technology integration specialist to the board. See the link for details. There is a CCTM workshop for Region 7 (Douglas, El Paso, Elbert, and Teller counties) on March 12 in Colorado Springs. The topic of the workshop is fractions, ratios, and rates of change.

CU-Boulder is looking for a master teacher in mathematics for their CU Teach program. It's an awesome opportunity to help prepare the next generation of math teachers in Colorado, as well as a great place to work.

The "Expanding Your Horizons" symposium for middle school girls interested in STEM registration begins March 1.

eNet Learning has resources and courses.
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Location: Boulder, CO, USA