This Week in Math Ed: January 5, 2018

My blogging dropped off in 2017 at the end of April, which coincided with the ramping-up of Colorado's review and revision of our academic standards. I kept telling myself, "If I just get a little more organized and motivated, I'll get back to blogging," but the reality was that my priorities just didn't (couldn't?) have blogging near the top. We're still in the process of reviewing and revising standards, but with a new year I decided it was time to renew my blogging efforts. Here are the highlights of the mathematics education world for the week of Friday, December 29, 2017, through Thursday, January 4, 2018.

Math Ed Said

December 29: Caitlin Tucker wrote "Battling Against Traditional Perceptions of Teaching and Learning," where she addresses the challenges of facilitating a student-centered classroom with students who either expect or prefer that activity is focused on the teacher.

Commentary: I experienced these struggles teaching a college intro to stats class, and some of my students were experienced teachers themselves in a master's program! When one of my students, who is a teacher, called me over during group work to tell me, "I know how to teach math, and you're doing it wrong. You need to be working examples at the board and giving us sets of similar problems to practice," I couldn't help but feel that our expectations were so far apart as to be unbridgeable, and that's a horrible feeling for a teacher to have.

Shared by: Brandi Moore, Maria H. Andersen, Cindy Brown, Tyler Anderson, Andrew Shauver, Laura Wheeler

December 30: Steve Wyborney shared "Cube Conversations," a large set of activities for students that give them practice visualizing, reasoning with, and discussing three-dimensional constructions of unit cubes.

Shared by: Rene Grimes, Kit, Lindel, Kat Hendry, Kit, Jon Orr, Richelle Marynowski, Robbyn Glinsmann, John Faig, Kyle Pearce, Steve Wyborney

December 31: Hmmm. Chalkbeat is holding a live event at SXSW EDU called "The Great American Teach-Off," where two pairs of elementary math teachers will execute some sort of teaching challenge on stage for a panel of judges. The organizers wish to highlight in public more of the work of teaching. If you wish to give it a go, the instructions for applying are at the link.

Shared by: Jessica Faurote, Kit, Dan Meyer, Heather Scott, Dan Anderson, Lisa Bejarano

January 1: Sunil Singh kicked off the new year with "Six Questions That Math Educators Need To Answer Honestly."

Shared by: Lisa Choate, Karen Vaites, Spencer Bagley, Kate Owens, Chris Brownell, James Tanton, Dana C. Ernst, Kit, Sunil Singh

January 2: James Tanton wrote "It's Time to Let Go of Antiquated Edicts in the Mathematics Classroom," which addressed topics such as "simplifying" radicals and "reducing" fractions.

Shared by: Spencer Bagley, Zach Cresswell, Heather Sugrue, Ann Crilley, Kathy Henderson, Amy Hogan, Jill Gough, Bob Lochel, Robert Kaplinsky, Jason Wilson, Benjamin Dickman, Kit, Francis Su, Brendan W. Sullivan, Hilary Kreisberg, Steven Francis, Dan Anderson, Patrick Honner, Matthew Oldridge, Matthew Beyranevand, Chris Brownell, Michael P Goldenberg, Sunil Singh, James Tanton

January 3: Toya J Frank is seeking participants for a survey to learn about the experiences of Black teachers of mathematics.

Shared by: Kate Johnson, Crystal Kalinec-Craig, Nicole M. Joseph, Laura Wagenman, Barbara Beske, Kit, Heather Johnson, Lou Matthews, Robert Berry, Erica Litke, Lynette Guzmán, Toya J Frank, Jennifer Lawler, Ilana Horn

January 4: More people shared and reshared Toya J Frank's request for participants in her study.

Shared by: Alison Hansel, Robert Kaplinsky, Brian R Lawler, Michelle Bailey, BBA Math Association, Naomi Jessup, Will M Dunn, Jenise Sexton, Jennifer Lawler, Annie Perkins, Dana Miller-Cotto, Tracy Johnston Zager, Ilana Horn

Research Report

For only being a few days into the new year, it's surprising that several journals have published new articles already. Some put 2018 dates on work done last year (I see you, Elsevier), and to keep things organized for myself I'm including those here, too.

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

Journal of Teacher Education

Journal of Curriculum Studies

Teachers College Record

Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, 2017 NCTM Research Conference

Teaching and Teacher Education

Numeracy

Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal

This journal links to lightly-edited PDFs and Word docs, so it's best to go to the main issue page and access the following articles from there.
  • Paul Ernest and Anna Sfard: A Dialogue on Dialogue
  • Nenad Radakovic: Towards the Critical Pedagogy of Risk in Mathematics Education
  • Karen François, José Ricardo e Souza Mafra, Maria Cecilia Fantinato & Eric Vandendriessche: Local Mathematics Education: The Implementation of Local Mathematical Practices into the Mathematics Curriculum
  • Andrew Schroter: In Defence of Platonism in the Mathematics Classroom
  • Michael. Gr. Voskoglou: Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered by Humans?
  • Hélio Rebello: Deleuze on Kant's Mathematics of the Sensory Body: The Differential Relation in the Instance of Learning
  • Constanta Olteanu and Lucian Olteanu: Investigating Difference and Repetition in Mathematics Teachers' Professional Development
  • Luiz Carlos Leal Junior: Ethics and Research in Mathematics Education: Philosophical Provocations
  • Rosemeire de Fatima Batistela and Maria Aparecida Viggiani Bicudo: The Importance of Teaching Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem in Mathematics Teacher Education
  • Philip J. Davis: Mathematics, Politics, and Law
  • Bronislaw Czarnocha: Working Class, Intelligentsia and the "Spirit of Generalization"
  • Adam Hams: Educational Sciences for Mathematics: Mathematics Didactics as a Scientific Discipline
  • Allan Tarp: A Heidegger View on how to Improve Mathematics Education
  • Paul Ernest: A Semiotic Theory of Mathematical Text
  • Jacques Bair, Piotr B Laszczyk, Karin U. Katz, Mikhail G. Katz, Taras Kudryk and David Sherry: Analyzing Benardete's Comment On Decimal Notation
  • Pierre Sutherland: Mechanisms of Emergence: Influence of Open Student Responses Collected using an Online Survey Tool in Mathematics Classrooms

Math Ed in the News

Math Ed in Colorado

Colorado Academic Standards Review and Revision

On Monday, January 8, the online feedback collected from the public last fall will be published to the CDE website. If you would like to send additional feedback, you can do so by emailing it to standardsreview2018@cde.state.co.us. The mathematics committee will next meet on Wednesday, January 10, to work on finalizing their revisions ahead of their consideration and approval by the State Board of Education later this spring.

Math Teacher Circles

  • Looking at the new website for the Rocky Mountain Math Teacher Circle, it looks like their next meeting is Saturday, January 13 from 8:30-12:00 at the CU Denver Student Commons Building. This appears to be a change from dates announced earlier in the year. Please RSVP if you wish to attend.
  • The next meetings of the Northern Colorado Student Math Circle will be Tuesday, January 23rd from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm. Please RSVP if you wish to attend.

CCTM

The CCTM Board of Directors is meeting Saturday, January 6. Following the meeting, expect to hear news about upcoming workshops, the 2018 Annual Conference, and board member elections.

CML

The next meeting of the Colorado Math Leaders is Wednesday, January 17 from 10:00 to noon. The meeting is online and we will be discussing Chapters 3 and 4 of Visible Learning for Mathematics.

CoMMIT

The next meeting of the Colorado Metropolitan Math Intervention Team (CoMMIT) is Friday, January 26, from 9 am to noon at The Ames Facility in Littleton Public Schools. The topic of the meeting will be the latest draft of CDE's revised guidelines for identifying and supporting students with specific learning disabilities.

Math on the "Planes"

Math on the "Planes" this year is February 23-24, when we'll welcome Dr. Barbara Dougherty for a workshop on algebraic concepts and skills. For more information, see the website of the Colorado Council for Learning Disabilities.
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Location: Boulder, CO, USA