Update: The nomination for Elizabeth Fennema's NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award has been submitted!

The materials for Elizabeth Fennema's nomination for an NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award have been submitted! When I started this a few weeks ago (see my previous post), I really didn't know how much support I'd get. But do you know what? I found out that if you mention Fennema's name in the subject of your email, her collaborators and colleagues will reply, write letters, share petitions, and tell you stories. So I must thank Megan Franke, Jodean Grunow, Janice Gratch (with help from early CGI study teachers!), Linda Levi, and Walter Secada for writing five wonderful letters of recommendation. And I also need to thank David Webb, Meg Meyer, and Diana Kasbaum for helping to connect me with these generous friends of Elizabeth's, and to thank Farshid Safi for providing a list of Fennema's doctoral students. I didn't ask the letter writers for permission to share their letters to the world, but I'm posting the rest of the nomination materials below. We ended up with 276 co-signers of the nomination, including previous NCTM Lifetime Awardees Johnny Lott, Ed Dickey, Ed Silver, Frank Lester, Judith Jacobs, Douglas Grouws, Shirley Frye, and Mary Lindquist. Signatures were still coming in when I finalized the letter, so my apologies if you signed late today and your name didn't get included by the time I needed to email the nomination to NCTM. (I see you, Cathy Seeley!)

 

Let's Get Elizabeth Fennema an NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award

Elizabeth Fennema

I've never met Elizabeth Fennema and she retired long ago. But I know her body of work, and I believe she's conspicuously absent from NCTM's list of Lifetime Achievement Award winners. I've mentioned this on Twitter in the past in the hopes that someone who worked with her would snap to action, but this year I'm taking matters into my own hands and coordinating a nomination. And I'm giving you a chance to help me.

I'm assembling a letter of nomination and resume in a Google Doc that is open to public comments. Beyond this, I need up to 5 letters of recommendations. If you want to write one of the letters, let me know at raymond@mathed.net. I'll be recruiting a few potential letter writers personally, but will take any help people wish to offer. I encourage you to sign this petition in support of her nomination, and I'll collect names from this petition and include them as co-signers of the letter of nomination.

If you don't know Elizabeth Fennema or why she deserves an NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award, keep reading for a short biography of her below. You can also read her biographies on Wikipedia and the University of St. Andrews. And don't forget to review and contribute to the letter of nomination, resume and petition.

Elizabeth Fennema Biography:

Elizabeth Fennema is an Emerita Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her active career in mathematics spanned about 40 years, starting as a graduate student at UW-Madison in the 1960s, then as a faculty member until the mid-90s, then continuing in retirement as an emerita professor.

Fennema is known for two field-changing bodies of work, either of which alone would be worthy of lasting recognition. First is her work about gender in mathematics. After publishing a review of gender differences literature in JRME in 1974, she teamed with Julia Sherman to produce what are now known as the Fennema-Sherman studies. With methodological rigor and new measurement tools (the Fennema-Sherman Scales), the pair redefined knowledge and perspectives on the intersection between gender and achievement in mathematics, showing that under-performance by females was sociocultural in nature and a function of opportunity, and not due to differences in biology.

In the 1980s, Fennema combined with Thomas Carpenter and others for another grand body of work, now known as Cognitively Guided Instruction and summarized for teachers in the book Children’s Mathematics. The research program was a model for applying new theories of constructivism to children’s mathematics learning, and took equally seriously the development of professional development to empower teachers to use their findings to improve elementary mathematics education. Few, if any, mathematics research programs to date have been as comprehensive, rigorous, and beneficial to the field of mathematics education as CGI.

NCTM’s book Classics in Mathematics Education Research (2004) contains articles representing both of these bodies of work (Fennema & Sherman, 1977; Carpenter, Fennema, Peterson, Chiang, & Loef, 1989), making Elizabeth Fennema the only author with two articles recognized as classics in mathematics education. According to citation counts in Google Scholar, Fennema has authored 7 articles or books that have been cited over 1000 times. Searching the JSTOR archives of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education for “Fennema” yields 431 results, putting her ahead of her contemporaries Thomas Romberg (332 results) and Douglas Grouws (379 results), both NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award recipients. Fennema served NCTM as the chair of the Research Advisory Committee in the late 1970s and was on the JRME editorial panel from 1977-1979, in addition to editing a number of books co-published by the council in the 1980s and 1990s. Fennema has been awarded for her work by the American Educational Research Association and the Association for Women in Mathematics Education, holds an honorary doctorate from Mount Mary College, and was named a member of the National Academy of Education in 1997.

On Major Problems and Grand Challenges, Part 1

Last month the NCTM Research Committee asked its members to help it identify the grand challenges for mathematics education. Grand challenges, said NCTM, (a) are hard yet doable, (b) affect millions of people, (c) need a comprehensive research program, (d) are goal-based with progress we can measure, and (e) capture the public's attention and support. I'm a month too late to contribute to NCTM's survey, and before blogging my thoughts into the wider conversation I thought I should look back at someone else's previous attempt. Maybe I'd gain some perspective on what grand challenges are and how persistent they might be.

Hans Freudenthal (Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA)

In 1980, Hans Freudenthal gave a plenary address at ICME that later turned into an article in Educational Studies in Mathematics titled, Major Problems of Mathematics Education. I've briefly summarized the article on the MathEd Wiki and here I'll note the progress I think we've made on Freudenthal's 11 problems.

1. Freudenthal believed we "need[ed] more pardigmatic cases, paradigms of diagnosis and prescription, for the benefit of practitioners and as bricks for theory builders" (p. 135). In the case of arithmetic, which was Freudenthal's example, I think Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is very much the kind of thing Hans was looking for.
2. Freudenthal wanted us to more carefully consider how people learn and observe their learning processes. I think several decades of teachers' awareness of constructivist theories of learning has changed how most people think of learning, and newer work in the area of teacher noticing puts fine points on what teachers notice and why.
3. How do we design curriculum and instruction around progressive formalization? There is always more to learn, but the Freudenthal Institute in the Netherlands has now worked on this for decades and the frameworks for curriculum design are well-established.
4. How do we retain and leverage mathematical insight? Freudenthal wrapped this into the conceptual vs. procedural debate, one that's still very much alive. However, I think we have better examples of productive approaches to this problem, and some research results (the BEAR project work at Berkeley comes to mind) showed that more focus on the conceptual didn't come at the expense of procedural facility. Still, this problem gets wrapped up in people's beliefs about mathematics and the teaching and learning of mathematics, and those beliefs sometimes aren't swayed by current evidence.
5. How do we reflect on our learning? This is another problem we now know much more about, particularly due to Schoenfeld and his work on metacognition.
6. How do we develop a mathematical attitude? This is still a challenge, and not just because some students say they don't like math. I think this problem might be closest to what Jo Boaler is currently trying to change with her focus on mindsets in learning mathematics.
7. How do we coordinate students working together when the are at different levels of learning? Many teachers and scholars have worked quite hard on this problem and I feel like most teachers now see the benefit of heterogeneous ability groups. For more, I'd suggest Ilana Horn's book, Strength in Numbers.
8. How do we create contexts for mathematizing? I think there's been a wealth of work in this area, from work based in Realistic Mathematics Education, work on word problems like that from Verschaffel, Greer, and de Corte, and, most recently, Dan Meyer's work. I could go on, as there are many more examples, and perhaps future work will give us a clearer picture about which contexts work best and why.
9. Can we teach geometry by having the learner reflect on spatial intuitions? Maybe it's my lack of expertise in geometry education research, but I really don't know where we stand on this problem. Freudenthal seemed to be reaching in his article on this problem, and maybe a more tangible articulation of the problem would have helped me better judge any solutions we might have.
10. How can technology increase mathematical understanding? Freudenthal admitted not being tech-savvy even in 1981 (he used "the ballpoint" as an example of technology that changed instruction, and not in an obviously historical way), but I think we now have numerous examples of tech that helps increase understanding. We also have a lot of examples of tech that doesn't, and I'm sure Freudenthal would have seen problems in our ability to judge the good from bad.
11. How do we use a holistic approach to educational development for change? In his native Netherlands, Freudenthal would likely be pleased today to see his colleagues' commitment to design-based, participatory approaches to research. We have some of that here in the U.S., too, but we also struggle for a "scientific" approach to finding "what works" based on experimental studies. We also have too much faith in how standards affect change; if Freudenthal thought curriculum development for change was a wrong perspective, surely he'd think the same about standards. Those things are just part of a much bigger picture.

Looking at this list, I think we have a lot to be proud of. Even though Freudenthal's article wasn't some sort of directive or command to fellow and future math education researchers and teachers, many people over many years worked so we'd have some answers to these questions. Still, there's a gap between ''what the field of math ed knows'' and ''what a teacher does with this knowledge, if they know it," which hints at what might be a grand challenge of its own. I'd like to get to that, but in a later post. Next, I'll look at some of the grand challenges that I've seen others post on the web in response to NCTM's call for input.

Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, Chapter 5: Ideas Without a Foothold

In the first four chapters of From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education, Jack Schneider details how four ideas (Bloom's taxonomy, multiple intelligences, the project method, and Direct Instruction) traversed the gap between the education research world and K-12 classrooms. Now, in Chapter 5, he identifies counterparts to each idea that failed to make the leap: Krathwohl's taxonomy for the affective domain (the sequel to Bloom's Taxonomy for the cognitive domain), Sternberg's triarchic theory (which paralleled multiple intelligences), Wittrock's generative learning model (see Michael's post), and the behavior analysis model (similar to Direct Instruction in more ways than one). If my personal experience is any indication, Schneider has chosen these well, as I knew as a teacher about all the ideas in Schneider's first four chapters (to various degrees, anyway) but can't say I knew any of the four ideas compared in Chapter 5. To be honest, Chapter 5 served as my proper introduction to these latter ideas — not only did I not know of them as a teacher, I can't recall having learned about them in grad school, either.

In his review of Chapter 5, Michael Pershan takes the position that even though he hadn't heard of Wittrock's generative learning model, surely there existed some path by which he was at the tail end of some chain of Wittrock's influence. I think this is probably true; while teachers might only recognize Piaget and Vygotsky by name, the rise of the study of cognition and how we construct knowledge is the result of the work of many scholars, not just two. I think this falls under Schneider's concept of perceived importance: Piaget and Vygotsky seem important because so many scholars built upon their work, even if the scholars in that crowd remain nameless to us.

Still, it's difficult to say this is good enough. Even though it's not possible for a teacher (or anyone!) to have a direct connection to all available research, shorter paths would be preferable to long ones. I agree with Michael: teachers would likely benefit from knowing Wittrock and his work. But to what degree?

One of the things we learned from Schneider's first four chapters is that familiarity sometimes does not breed fidelity in education research. This felt most true in the multiple intelligences chapter, where some consultants seemed to play fast-and-loose with Gardner's theories, and I imagine the teachers who sat through those workshops or read those books played even faster-er and looser-er with multiple intelligences. Should we be worried that a little bit of knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing in education research?

I would be more worried if not for one thing: constructivist theories of learning tell us that not only to bits of knowledge matter, they're the stuff upon which more knowledge is constructed. In fact, there's a particular learning theory that addresses this called knowledge in pieces, and, if you can find it, it's worth reading Andy diDessa's 1988 chapter by that title. This should be of particular interest to Michael as the theory gives a nice way of explaining misconceptions, whether they be the ones we see in students or the ones we see teachers make when research finds its way to them by vague and indirect paths. In short, misconceptions aren't just the acquisition of "wrong" knowledge that needs to be confronted with "right" knowledge. Rather, knowledge in pieces says learners systematize their pieces of knowledge. What we think of as a "misconception" can be explained as a system of knowledge built upon pieces of available knowledge. The pieces aren't "wrong" and neither is the system, but as more pieces of knowledge get added we expect the system to adapt and become more sophisticated. Now, I admit that my understanding of the theory might be short a few pieces, but I think the key to wrapping your head around it is to force yourself to think knowledge exists with the learner, and nowhere else. Knowledge gets constructed from experience, not with the acquisition of knowledge from an external source. (See also: radical constructivism.)

Opening quote from diSessa's 1988 chapter

This leads us back to one of the ideas Michael mentioned in his post: teachers need exposure to research followed by opportunities to engage with the research more deeply. Teachers will take the pieces of knowledge they have — whether gained from teaching experiences, experiences engaging with research, or elsewhere — and systematize that knowledge in variously sophisticated ways. What we need, then, are opportunities for teachers to further systematize their knowledge. I'll talk about that in my next post, a review of Schneider's recommendations for improving research-to-practice.

Note: Michael Pershan (@mpershan) and I are reading Jack Schneider's book From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education. Our previous posts:

• Chapter 1: Bloom's Taxonomy (Michael's post, my reply)
• Chapter 2: Multiple Intelligences (My post, Michael's reply)
• Chapter 3: The Project Method (Michael's post, my reply)
• Chapter 4: Direct Instruction (My post, Michael's reply)

References

diSessa, A. A. (1988). Knowledge in pieces. In G. Forman & P. B. Pufall (Eds.), Constructivism in the computer age (pp. 49–70). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, Chapter 4: Direct Instruction

The fourth chapter of Jack Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education represents a needed turn in the overall narrative of the book. As a bonus, this chapter will likely keep me from throwing around the phrase "direct instruction" in unintended ways.

Schneider's previous three chapters focused on Bloom's Taxonomy, multiple intelligences, and the project method. Each of those cases seemed to rely heavily on Schneider's constructs of philosophical compatibility and transportability. In other words, fidelity of implementation didn't seem to matter much: teachers adoption of the research seemed tied to their freedom to interpret and implement the research in whatever way they saw fit. In more than a few instances, Schneider leaves the reader to question if the research has been implemented with any fidelity at all, or if teachers are adopting it in name only.
In this chapter, titled Lessons of Last Resort, Schneider tells the story of Direct Instruction. I've heard and used the term direct instruction (little "d" little "i") to simply describe teaching as telling, but it has a more specific research heritage exending back 50+ years. The researcher there from the beginning is Siegfried Engelmann, seen here:


Unlike Bloom's Taxonomy, multiple intelligences, and the project method, Englemann's Direct Instruction works (with the research to show it) when teachers are philosophically compatible with the method and they implement it with fidelity. The actual effectiveness of research wasn't addressed in Schneider's first three chapters, but it is here because it's one of the big reasons for Direct Instruction's success.

This success isn't something that makes some progressive educators very comfortable, as they resist the scripted nature of the curriculum. These progressive educators are usually in schools where illiteracy and innumeracy isn't a persistent problem, and they're given autonomy to choose other, more philosophically compatible curriculum and methods. (To be clear, just because Direct Instruction has been shown to be effective, that doesn't mean it's the only effective thing, or the most effective. Also, it should go without saying, showing something to be "effective" is a tricky business, even when we agree what "effective" means.) But in schools where illiteracy and innumeracy persists, often in low-income schools with underrepresented populations and difficulties finding skilled teachers, Direct Instruction is more popular. Schneider addresses the issue of philosophical compatibility:

In addition to its effect on teacher authority, scripting also promised to reduce the responsibilities of those in classrooms. Working with a program like Direct Instruction, teachers would no longer be responsible for lesson design, for expertise about children, or for the task of dealing with the uncertainty of classroom life. As Direct Instruction promoters put it on their Web site: "The popular valuing of teacher creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed instructional practices." And as Englemann put it: "The teacher is a teacher—not a genius, an instructional designer, or a counselor. The teacher must be viewed as a consumer of instructional material." Engelmann saw this aspect of Direct Instruction as occupationally realistic, and he may have been right. But reducing teacher responsibility also raised serious philosophical compatibility issues insofar as it threatened teacher professionalism. (p. 122)

You might be reading this right now and saying to yourself, "No way. I'd never use this stuff." That's the philosophical incompatibility talking. There's reasearch for that, too: reform curricula might be good, but the results aren't nearly as good when placed in the hands of a traditional teacher. I believe vice-versa has been found to be better, but still not as good as reform curriculua with reform teachers. But where do we draw the line between philosophical compatibility and the need for teachers to be open minded? To be learners? As professionals, when should our philosophies give way to what we can gain from research, regardless of compatibility?

I don't have an answer for this question, but perhaps Michael Pershan (@mpershan) will have some thoughts in his reply. If you haven't been following along, we've been reading the book together and here are our posts so far:

• Chapter 1: Bloom's Taxonomy (Michael's post, my reply)
• Chapter 2: Multiple Intelligences (My post, Michael's reply)
• Chapter 3: The Project Method (Michael's post, my reply)

Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, Chapter 3: The Project Method

Michael Pershan and I, in our chapter-by-chapter review of Jack Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education, now take issue with the project method and, more generally, the promotion of academic research. I'll make a comment or two about the chapter and the project method, and then turn to responding to Michael.

Of the chapters and ideas Schneider has presented thus far (Bloom's Taxonomy, multiple intelligences), it's hardest to get a grip on the project method. The reason comes in the second paragraph: "The project method is so well accepted that modern educators simply view it as property of the educational commons" (p. 79). I found myself grasping to Schneider's few hints about what education was like before the project method, and imagined classroom activity based around lecture, exercises, drills, and recitations. Certainly there were some counterexamples, but I'll take Schneider's word that William Heard Kilpatrick made the project method famous, and made himself famous in the process.

In the last chapter about multiple intelligences, Schneider discusses Howard Gardner's efforts to promote his work: writing books published by popular presses, making speaking engagements, and supporting the work of those using (and sometimes misusing) the idea of multiple intelligences. In this chapter, a considerable amount of attention is given to Kilpatrick's desire to achive "power and influence" (Kilpatrick's diary, as cited by Schneider, p. 81). In his introduction, Schneider gave us four characteristics of research that traverses the divide between research and practice: perceived significance, philosophical compatibility, occupational realism, and transportablility. Here we seem to be concerned with a characteristic not of the research, but of the researcher. I don't feel like Schneider makes the distinction entirely clear, but I think you can relate the ego and ambition of the researcher to the perceived significance of the research.

In his post, Michael takes issue with Kilpatrick's quest for educational fame. Michael used "It's the Celebrities That We Need to Doubt" as the title of his post and warns us, "Famous people become famous because they want to be famous, and we need to judge their ideas with the skepticism that sort of person deserves." Fame can be a tricky thing in academia. In an enlightening (yet private¹) Google+ conversation last year, I heard from several faculty members that despite the stated requirements for publishing, teaching, and service, what your department and university would really love is for you to help make them famous.

Note the difference between making your university famous and making yourself famous. Teachers College didn't need much help from Kilpatrick to make it famous, and Schneider makes it clear that Kilpatrick was interested in his own fame, hoping to be given the same esteem and recognition that Dewey had achieved. I share Michael's skepticism of self-promoters. In my teaching career here in Colorado, the only researcher I heard much about was Robert Marzano. Marzano runs an independent research lab here in Colorado and does work throughout the country. He sells lots of books, workshops, and "customized educational services." In grad school, on the other hand, I hear next to nothing about Marzano's work. I have a sense that Marzano has done good work, but perhaps quality has wavered as he's grown his operations. I have an even stronger sense, however, that Marzano's work just doesn't interest academia because it's not from academia, and he's not in academia. Marzano made himself a product and that's not a welcomed move by (at least some) people in scholarly circles.

I can think of a few other makes-some-people-uneasy examples even closer to academia. One is the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. Founded by Lauren Resnick, IFL offers workshops, contracts with districts for professional development, and self-publishes its research. One key product for them is Accountable Talk®, and yes, I have to put that registered trademark symbol there because they trademarked it. I think some might look at Jo Boaler's youcubed.org effort with some skepticism, and Dan Meyer attracts some doubters, too. (It sure sounds like Kilpatrick would have loved being recognized for a well-watched TED Talk.) This might make readers of this blog uncomfortable, but I wouldn't doubt there are teachers who are skeptical of teachers using social media, thinking we're just in this for the fame.

Some of this sentiment is rooted in a culture spanning K-12 and higher education that says we educators are supposed to be humble, to be selfless, and to be dedicated to the service of others. I admit to feeling this way: just let me serve the public and, in return, let me be supported by the public. In my current work with teachers, I'm happy the National Science Foundation provides the funds for us to work together, rather than doing the work for the district on a contract basis. I don't want the role of salesman. That said, there's some unclear middle ground between this culture and edupreneuership. For example, I've seen some negative reactions on Twitter towards those who try to sell things on Teachers Pay Teachers, yet positive reactions towards those who have self-published a book on Amazon or co-authored something for NCTM.

Yet somewhere between the selfless and self-promoting cultures there needs to be the realization that if we're interested in research being taken up by K-12 educators, it simply isn't enough to let the science speak for itself. If it makes people feel better, think of it as "outreach" instead of "marketing," and "sharing" instead of "promotion." Schneider gives considerable credit to Gardner and Kilpatrick's efforts to widely share/promote their work for the success of multiple intelligences and the project method. Now that sharing is easier than ever, I'm hopeful that we'll see more blending of the research world and the practice world, and what might have been seen as self-promotion in Kilpatrick's day morphs into a genuine practice of a sharing-based educational community.

Note: Michael Pershan (@mpershan) and I are reading Jack Schneider's book From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education. Our previous posts:
Chapter 1: Bloom's Taxonomy (Michael's post, my reply) Chapter 2: Multiple Intelligences (My post, Michael's reply)

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1. I love that Google+ offers so much flexibility to make conversations public vs. private, but I'm frustrated by the number of high-quality posts shared only in small circles of math educators. But that's another post for another day. ↩

Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, Chapter 2: Multiple Intelligences

In my last post I reviewed the first chapter of Jack Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education. There Schneider describes how Bloom's Taxonomy, despite never being designed for K-12 use, managed to make it way into practice at all educational levels. In Chapter 2, Schneider looks at Howard Gardner's Multiple intelligences, another idea that made its way from the research world into K-12 classrooms.

Howard Gardner (CC BY-NC-ND by The Aspen Institute)

Schneider suggests that the success of multiple intelligences is as much a product of an age as it is a product of a scholar. It certainly helped that Gardner was a Harvard professor with a MacArthur "genius grant," but the year of publication — 1983 — plays a big part in the theory's success. The U.S. was well into the "back to basics" era that began in the 1970s, and 1983 was the year A Nation at Risk declared that the country's future depended on the reform of schools to make them economic drivers, namely by focusing on math, science, and technology. This focus on curriculum, especially a focus on a narrow part of the curriculum, is not what progressive educators want to hear. Progressives, in the tradition of Dewey, want to focus on students and their experiences, where curriculum plays the lesser role as merely the means to potentially many learning ends.

According to Schneider, many of these progressive educators were in independent/private schools and they became the early adopters of Gardner's theory. For those schools and teachers, multiple intelligences was a way to distinguish their philosophical stance on education from that of the oncoming (and still ongoing) accountability movement in public schools. Tuition-paying parents certainly didn't object to the idea that their children could be intelligent in more than one way, and the theory seemed to validate the idea of getting a well-rounded education.

The growth of multiple intelligences beyond independent schools, says Schneider, is owed to the transportablility of the theory. Like Bloom's Taxonomy, multiple intelligences is summarized by a limited set of categories with seemingly self-evident descriptions. It's not specific to a particular content area or grade level and matches what teachers see in practice: that different students have different ways of learning and develop different kinds of talents. As with Bloom's, transportability comes with risks of misinterpretation, as Schneider describes:

Multiple intelligences was a theory with different uses for educators. It could challenge the validity of tests, open up standardized curricula, and defend cherished beliefs about teacher professionalism and student ability. But whatever the use, it was a theory philosophically compatible among public school teachers. And it was highly transportable—seemingly easy to understand from the names of its "intelligences" alone. The ironic downside of this, of course, was that it could also be used as a bulwark against real deliberation or debate. As Gardner himself wrote, "It is possible to wave the MI flag without having to think, change, or grow." Though likely not a majority, that was certainly true for some. (p. 64)

In the latter part of this chapter I was surprised and impressed by Schneider's description of how consultants and professional developers played a major role in spreading the use of multiple intelligences. Schneider gets my skepticism of all-too-typical PD:

Competing with one another for often lucrative contracts, third-party providers have a strong incentive to entertain their clientele without asking too much in return, and to develop a message general enough that it can be adapted in multiple settings. Thus, despite research indicating that effective professional development is time-intensive, context-specific, and content-rich, a great deal of training relies on traditional methods of delivery and is strongly shaped by consumer desire. (p. 69)

For those looking for an educational disaster narrative, Schenider's description of how some consultants and authors twisted multiple intelligences is interesting reading. Gardner's role in this is equally interesting, as he seems to sway between defending his theory and supporting those who sometimes misinterpret it for their personal gain. Schneider asserts that Gardner "was not in control [of the interpretation of multiple intelligences], and that perhaps he never had been" (p. 73).

If there was one thing I wish Schneider would have expanded upon, it would have been the commingling of multiple intelligences and learning styles. It's addressed in a couple of paragraphs but only briefly. I'd guess that Schneider could have a chapter dedicated to how theories of learning styles became pervasive in K-12 education, but it might have been too similar and perhaps redundant next to a chapter on multiple intelligences. Similarly, other often-believed theories (like right-brained/left-brained) might have fit in Schneider's book, but I'll take this chapter as representative of the lot. I can always look for additional commentary elsewhere, such as in a recent blog post titled Can Teachers Stop Believing in Nonsense? that addresses common K-12 misapplications of neuroscience.

As I spend more time in the research world, I have an opportunity to not only learn more about theory, but to get to know the researchers behind those theories. Some are at peace with the idea that others will "do what they will" with their work, while others want more control. Gardner took an active role in promoting his work, either directly or through the work of others, and I think he was right to do so. Academics are notoriously poor marketers of their work, which causes useful and legitimate research to get lost among the better-promoted work of think tanks or others whose marketing exceeds their scholarship. Part of the problem is a mismatch of incentives, but I think Gardner, for his struggles, did get some things right: write for a wide audience, advocate for your work, use your work to advocate, and support others who make productive adaptations to your work.

Reminder: Michael Pershan (@mpershan) and I are reading this book together, and for this chapter it's his turn to reply to my post. Keep an eye on his blog at http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.com/ for his follow-up.

Schneider's From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, Chapter 1: Bloom's Taxonomy

I hold some grudges when it comes to the topic of research to practice in education. A few highlights: A principal who (probably rightly) thought I was struggling to engage my students told me to watch Barbara Streisand's performance as a college professor in The Mirror Has Two Faces and "do what she does, because her students love her." The question, "Which academic journal did she read that in?" sarcastically crossed my mind, and no, I never watched the movie. At a state conference presentation about RtI, a presenter told us to only use research-based intervention strategies. When a teacher at my table asked, "How do we know if a strategy is research-based?" the presenter responded, "I figure if it's something you find in writing, and didn't just make up by yourself, then it's research-based."

My curiosity for research eventually landed me in graduate school and I now spend more time than ever thinking about the intersections of research and practice. When I saw Jack Schneider (@Edu_Historian) had a new book called From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education, I ordered it right away. Michael Pershan (@mperhsan) also picked up a copy and we're reading it together, taking turns reviewing and replying chapter by chapter. You'll probably want to read Michael's thoughts on the introduction and first chapter, as my post is partly a review of Schneider and partly a reply to Michael.

It would be rather pedestrian to write a book showing how education research doesn't make it into the world of K-12 education. If you randomly selected an article from an education research journal, and randomly selected a classroom, you'd be hard-pressed to find any impact of that article in that classroom. Repeat that process 5-10 times and you've got yourself a (lousy) book. Schneider, on the other hand, turns this on its head: he identifies four ideas from education research that have made their way into widespread practice. These four ideas have somehow beat the odds — odds determined not by a lack of teacher knowledge or interest in research, but, Schneider claims, the "fundamental separation of the capacities and influence needed to move research into practice" (p. 4).

The first of Schneider's four ideas to bridge the research-practice gap is Bloom's Taxonomy. I remember working with Bloom's Taxonomy as a student, perhaps as early as middle school. I certainly saw it in some of my teacher education courses, usually when we were learning to write educational objectives. Schneider, an education historian, reveals that the taxonomy wasn't never built for use in K-12. Instead, it was a tool for categorizing learning objectives for undergraduate courses and making comparisons across institutions. This was in the late 1940s, when behaviorist theories of learning said a learning objective should describe observable changes in student behavior.

Michael's review highlights two of Schneider's arguments for why Bloom's Taxonomy became well-established in K-12. First, teachers saw in the taxonomy support for things they were already doing, and second, the taxonomy "meant many different things to many different educators." Michael takes the bold step of wrapping these together as "Schneider's Dilemma," asking if there's much hope for changing practice if the only research teachers adopt is research that tells them to keep doing what they're doing.

I'm not quite ready to subscribe to the Schneider's Dilemma theory, and I'm not sure Schneider would be, either. This is just the first of Schneider's four cases, after all, so I'll withhold judgement for now. I see hints of ideas here that I've seen elsewhere, in particular Michael Apple's (1992) description of the 1989 NCTM Standards as a "slogan system," where statements or claims are general enough to get wide support without being specific enough to garner disagreement. Schneider offers many complimentary reasons why Bloom's Taxonomy became popular, including such things as the number and prominence of Bloom's grad students who could carry the taxonomy far and wide, and (more importantly) what Schneider calls transportability, a characteristic of an idea that makes it easy to convey to teachers, relevant across diverse contexts, and applicable on demand. Wrapping many of these reasons together, Schneider writes:

In short, the taxonomy was a shape-shifter. It seemed to address major questions about the process of schooling without proposing a major theory to be refuted. As a consequence, it was philosophically compatible among different—and sometimes ideologically opposed—groups, some of whom worked as teachers and many of whom worked in other positions. Yet despite all this inherent complexity, the taxonomy was, at its core, quite simple. Made up of six hierarchical categories, beginning with knowledge and ending with evaluation, it could be easily described, represented, and transported. (p. 35)

Michael is right to ask if Bloom's Taxonomy has done us much good for all its widespread popularity, but that's not really the question Schneider set out to answer. I'm okay with that: Asking how Bloom's Taxonomy gets into practice is different than asking if it's been used effectively, and I'm more interested in the first question than the second. Schneider says, "Without question, the taxonomy has had an uneven life in practice" (p. 49) and I have no doubt he's right. I'd like to believe that Bloom's Taxonomy has done more good than harm, even if it's shallowly used and applied in ways Bloom never imagined.

References

Apple, M. W. (1992). Do the standards go far enough? Power, policy, and practice in mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 412–431. doi:10.2307/749562

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 6 of 6, Focusing the Council on Standards)

(See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of this six-part series.)

The successful release of the 1989 NCTM Standards paved the way for the release of the next two NCTM standards documents, the Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991) and the Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (1995). While neither received all the attention of the 1989 Standards, a change in administration in the federal government and changing attitudes at private foundations meant money for later Standards-based projects was more easily obtainable.

In order to provide teachers and district-level mathematics specialists a clearer vision of what Standards-guided lessons would look like, the NCTM launched a project called the Addenda Series, with a committee chaired by Bonnie Litwiller of the University of Northern Iowa¹. Although initially intended to produce just a few books a year for one or two years, the project eventually produced 22 books in five years, covering all grade levels K-12. Each book in the Addenda Series provided a set of lesson plans that a teacher could use directly in his or her classroom, offering some of the specificity lacking in the original Standards. The Addenda Series also supported NCTM financially, as it became their most profitable set of publications (S. Frye, personal communication, April 19, 2013).

In order to focus all the NCTM publications on the Standards, a deliberate effort was made by the editors of NCTM's journals to acquire and publish articles that cited the Standards (Lindquist, 2003, p. 837). Authors of research articles that did not refer to the Standards were asked as part of the peer review process to refocus their writing to include the Standards. With this de-facto policy in place, soon nearly every article listed the Standards as a reference. Somewhat ironically, the Standards themselves contain a reference list of only 27 sources (NCTM, 1989, pp. 257-258).

Conclusion

The creation and publication of the NCTM Standards is generally recognized as the event that launched our current era of standards-based reform. Given the rapidity with which educational reforms come and go, such a lasting impact from a document published almost 25 years ago deserves to be well-understood by education policymakers as well as teachers and other education stakeholders. The most significant positive, negative, and fortunate aspects of NCTM's Standards process can be summarized as:

Positive:

• Leadership desired an organization-level policy influence.
• Working groups possessed expertise and represented diverse stakeholders.
• Goals were set conservatively in an effort to broaden public acceptance.
• Drafts of the Standards were sent to a very wide audience for review and commentary.
• Standards were promoted through a massive public relations campaign.

Negative:

• Despite seeking consensus, reconciliation with the most vocal critics in the mathematics community has yet to happen.
• The working groups lacked writing talent.

Fortunate:

• A well-timed "crisis" came in the form of A Nation at Risk.
• NCTM membership rebounded in the mid-80s before the Standards project had an opportunity to put the organization in greater financial jeopardy.
• Attitudes about the federal government's role in education, as well as national efforts like the Standards, became more favorable after the end of the Reagan Administration.

It's evident that NCTM's leadership in standards-based educational reform didn't come without a sizeable bit of good fortune. The shifting of any number of events by a year or two might have jeopardized the entire process, or relegated the Standards to be that "book on the shelf" to which few paid much attention.

When compared to the Common Core State Standards, a few significant differences stand out to me. First, the NCTM Standards were created largely for the purposes of comparing and judging curriculum, whereas the CCSSM were created as student learning targets and as part of a larger accountability structure. The NCTM Standards were not grade-level specific like the CCSSM, nor were they ever "adopted" wholesale by states or districts. Instead, the NCTM Standards became a foundation for states and districts to write their own standards, and the CCSSM represents the effort to de-duplicate the efforts of states by having a single, agreed-upon set of standards. Although not without their detractors, standards efforts on this scale do have the potential to drive positive change and anchor collaboration between educators across states and districts. Time will tell if any lasting effects of the CCSSM measure up to those of the NCTM Standards, and how.

References

Lindquist, M. M. (2003). My perspective on the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 819-842). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1989). Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: Author.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1991). Professional standards for teaching mathematics (p. 196). Reston, VA: Author.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1995). Assessment standards for school mathematics (p. 102). Reston, VA: Author.

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1. Bonnie Litwiller was my academic advisor and twice my methods professor while I was an undergraduate mathematics major at UNI. 

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 5 of 6, Making a Draft Widely Available for Review; Publishing and Promoting)

(See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this six-part series.)

So far this series has described the first three of six characteristics of the policy process I outlined in Part 1. This installment will look at the next two characteristics. Despite their shorter descriptions, both were critical in NCTM's effort to have the Standards see wide adoption.

Making a Draft Widely Available for Review

There was one aspect of the Standards draft review process that had significant policy implications. Instead of just sending drafts to a limited number of outside experts, as is often the norm in such cases, NCTM sent out 10,000 copies of the 1987 draft to more than fifty other groups with interests in mathematics education (McLeod, 2003, p. 779). Every single page of the draft contained room for comments, and the working groups received comments by the thousands. Not only did such wide distribution create anticipation for the final draft, the NCTM garnered the support of sixty organizations whose names were printed in the opening pages of the final draft (NCTM, 1989, pp. vi-viii). Listing as endorsers the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Mathematical Sciences Education Board helped moderate the opinion by some that mathematicians were excluded from the Standards writing process.

In the end, the Standards incorporated the perspectives of many people and organizations, but not without compromise. Building consensus while being provocative is a tricky balance, something to which Michael Apple (1992) applied the term "slogan system," meaning they were

a statement of goals that was specific enough to provide direction to the field, vague enough to be acceptable to most mathematics teachers, and novel enough for its vision to catch the attention of the many different groups having a stake in mathematics education. (McLeod, 2003, p. 783)

Publishing and Promoting

While the public relations campaign undertaken by the NCTM to promote the Standards may not have been notable from Mary Lindquist's perspective as a writer (see the difference between her four characteristics and my six in Part 1), it certainly deserves attention as a matter of policy. Without a massive effort, the immediate and lasting policy influence of both the NCTM and the Standards would have certainly been reduced. By the time of publication in March 1989, the total expense of the Standards project had reached approximately $1,000,000, far exceeding the initial estimate of $258,000 (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 44). Included in the million-dollar total was $200,000 in expenses paid to public relations firms. Without this and continuing effort, the worry was that the Standards would be resigned to "sit on shelves" (Lindquist, 2003, p. 840), where all but a few curious graduate students would ever look at them again.

The public relations efforts had all the signs of a six-figure expense (McLeod et al, 1996, pp. 15-16). First, NCTM leadership, including President Shirley Frye and Tom Romberg, were coached to improve their ability to positively present themselves and to handle tough questions gracefully. They then hosted a press conference in Washington D.C. for about 200 members of the media. NCTM leaders made appearances on the Today Show and other major news programs and Astronaut Sally Ride was brought in to help by lending her endorsement. A video featuring jazz musician Wynton Marsalis describing the Standards was "shown over 6000 times by 121 television stations, reaching an audience in the millions" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 64).

Perhaps most significant was how many copies of the Standards the NCTM had arranged to give away. Unlike the Agenda's relatively short 30 pages, the Standards were 258 pages in length. Still, the NCTM gave away a copy to each one of their 51,000-plus members, as well as anyone and everyone who might have influence but wasn’t an NCTM member. Judith Sowder, Standards Coordinating Committee chair, remembered:

The mailing lists were enormous. The NCTM lobbyist took [the Standards] around personally and handed them to members of Congress. Certainly every dean of sciences, every chair of a mathematics department, every math coordinator, high school principal, and elementary school principal who was on our mailing lists got one. We sent to PTA presidents, school board presidents, and on and on and on. Every mailing list that could possibly be used was used. (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 63)

While the size of this giveaway represented a huge cost to NCTM, it was necessary to ensure widespread adoption. Fortunately for NCTM and their budget, by 1995 more than 258,000 copies of the Standards had been distributed, including the giveaways, and the $25 cost per purchased copy made up for the lost revenue and helped pay for the expenses of the project (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 63).

Now that NCTM had written, published, and promoted the Standards, the last important piece was to make sure they played a part in future efforts. In Part 6, we'll look at how the NCTM focused efforts around the Standards, and I'll wrap up the series with some reflection.

References

Apple, M. W. (1992). Do the standards go far enough? Power, policy, and practice in mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 412-431. doi:10.2307/749562

Lindquist, M. M. (2003). My perspective on the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 819-842). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B. (2003). From consensus to controversy: The story of the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 753-818). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B., Stake, R. E., Schappelle, B. P., Mellissinos, M., & Gierl, M. J. (1996). Setting the standards: NCTM's role in the reform of mathematics education. In S. A. Raizen & E. D. Britton (Eds.), Bold ventures: Case studies of U.S. innovations in mathematics education (pp. 13-132). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1989). Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: Author.

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 4 of 6, Establishing and Supporting Working Groups)

(See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this six-part series.)

NCTM's standards-writing process began in 1986 when the Council proposed the creation of a Commission on Standards, chaired by Tom Romberg, and four working groups: grades K-4, 5-8, 9-12, and evaluation. Each working group was chosen for its expertise and consisted of six people, generally a mix of mathematics teachers, state and district math supervisors, mathematics professors from major university mathematics departments, and mathematics education researchers (Lindquist, 2003, pp. 826-827; McLeod, 2003, pp. 772-773). The working groups were somewhat conservative, as radical suggestions would likely make for a less marketable policy recommendation. John Dossey, then president of NCTM, remarked that each group included

somebody who had been around and had a lot of experience – who could represent not a traditional view, but someone who understood the status quo well, who understood the dangers of change, and who was a worker for change, but who knew that you could not just flip a switch and have it happen. (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 46)

While expertise and diversity are generally key ingredients in a policy-making process, a quality that may have been overlooked was the recruitment of quality writers. While some members of the working groups had written textbooks, "neither writing experience nor the ability to produce polished prose was a criterion for selection, and the writing teams often struggled to produce high-quality text" (McLeod, 2003, p. 774). Writing quality was an unexpected struggle during the almost two-year process of writing the Standards.

Although the working groups were tasked with writing standards focusing on mathematical content, they were also mindful of equity issues – including how the inclusion of equity statements might help or hinder the adoption of the Standards. Christian Hirsch, chair of the 9-12 working group, remarked:

I think a careful look at the Standards would show that, in the case of the high school mathematics curriculum, there were two issues that the Standards politically decided not to take a stand on. One was the issue of tracking, and the other was the issue of whether the mathematics studied each year at the high school should be an integrated or unified curriculum, as opposed to a curriculum that was subject-matter oriented each year: algebra, geometry, advanced algebra. That decision was very conscious, in that we felt that we needed to identify in the Standards what we believed at the time in history to be the most important mathematics that all students should have the opportunity to study. And that in itself was advancing thinking on the curriculum quite a ways, because if one looked at the curriculum of the 1970s and 1980s, there was a marked contrast between the mathematics that was in college prep programs and the mathematics that one found in general math, consumer math, remedial courses. We felt it was most important to get out on the table (and over time gain acceptance for) the notion that all kids should be studying different mathematics, rather than getting the Standards caught up in a heated debate over how that mathematics could be organized and made available to students – that is, through sequences of courses that may or may not be tracked. (McLeod et al., 1996, pp. 56-57)

With the exception of a small grant from the AT&T Foundation for $25,000, NCTM chose to finance the writing of the Standards themselves, despite having recently been in significant financial difficulty. The organization had seen its membership fall from 82,000 in 1968 to 56,000 in 1983¹, and the loss of revenue forced the Board of Directors to consider a proposal to eliminate NCTM's publication program (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 20). Despite the risk of bearing the responsibility for the Standards total estimated cost of $258,000 (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 42) former Executive Director James Gates claimed "the proposal [to fund the Standards] was not submitted to either NSF or the U.S. Department of Education, so that no claims could be made that the federal government had funded the development of curriculum and evaluation standards" (Gates, 2003, p. 742). In addition, the self-funding of the Standards and the decision to not write textbooks, as had been the case during the new math era, afforded the working groups relative independence from textbook publishers. The "corrupting process" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 33) of working with textbook publishers was a shared concern among the working groups, explained by Arthur Coxford in his chapter in A History of School Mathematics:

Publishers tend to be concerned with the 'bottom line,' whereas curriculum developers desire to try new ideas and organizations. Editors for publishers listen carefully to state textbook adoption committees and to teachers in the field. Neither of these groups was demanding radically different curricula in the 1980s. In fact, they often recommended retaining topics (Cramer's rule or computation using logarithms, for example) long after the usefulness, mathematical or in application, of the topic had diminished. Often it seemed such recommendations were based on an individual's opinion rather than the result of a careful analysis of needs. (Coxford, 2003, p. 613)

While self-funding did afford the working groups a degree of independence and James Gates' statement is at least partially true, the reality of the situation is that the federal government had very little, if any, money to give for a project like the Standards. In 1982, the Reagan Administration has stripped all K-12 funding for mathematics and science from NSF's budget (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 25). Moreover, the same Reagan Administration that had recently sought to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education in the name of local control was not likely to award large sums of money for the development of a national set of curriculum standards. NCTM had applied for a sizable amount of other private money, but the AT&T grant was the only one awarded. Clearly the organization had no other real options but to pay for the Standards itself and use the independence to its advantage, including spinning the effect of that independence as a policy tool.

In Part 5 of this series, we'll look at how NCTM collected and incorporated feedback about the Standards and the measures they took to promote the published draft.

References

Coxford, A. F. (2003). Mathematics curriculum reform: A personal view. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 599-621). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Gates, J. D. (2003). Perspective on the recent history of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 737-752). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Lindquist, M. M. (2003). My perspective on the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 819-842). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B. (2003). From consensus to controversy: The story of the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 753-818). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B., Stake, R. E., Schappelle, B. P., Mellissinos, M., & Gierl, M. J. (1996). Setting the standards: NCTM's role in the reform of mathematics education. In S. A. Raizen & E. D. Britton (Eds.), Bold ventures: Case studies of U.S. innovations in mathematics education (pp. 13-132). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2013). NCTM at a glance. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/about/content.aspx?id=174

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1. Membership began to rebound in 1984. NCTM's membership grew to 118,000 in 1995 (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 20) and currently stands at 80,000 members (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2013). 

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 3 of 6, Meeting a [Perceived] Need)

(See Part 1 and Part 2 of this six-part series.)

"Exactly where the Agenda's call for action might have led without the appearance of a new crisis is not clear" (Fey & Graeber, 2003, p. 553). If the research and public sentiment regarding mathematics education had looked positive as the country moved into the 1980s, there would have been little need for the NCTM to flex its new policy muscles. But that wasn't the case. Instead, growing concern over the state of math education would give the NCTM a reason to put the Agenda for Action into action.

In the late 1970s, the NSF funded a series of surveys and case studies to determine a baseline of the nation's mathematics performance. The case studies indicated that most classrooms were still exhibiting a traditional view of mathematics and showed little influence of the new math efforts of the 1960s (McLeod, 2003, p. 757). Furthermore, early results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) raised doubts that students were able to perform anything but the most basic mathematical tasks.

Less publicly visible but yet of concern to mathematics educators was the continued trend towards "basic" math textbooks. In particular, the claims of outspoken textbook author John Saxon "became a preoccupation of NCTM leaders" (McLeod, 2003, pp. 760-761). Saxon (1982), in a three-page Phi Delta Kappan article, made boisterous claims about the effectiveness of his textbooks. The article lacked a description of how (or if) the treatment and control groups were randomized, what textbooks were used by the students in the control group, how the assessment used to measure students' learning was constructed, and failed to use any real statistical tests. It did, however, include the address of the publisher and the cost of his textbook, as well as statements like, "A general scanning of the scores suggests that gifted students who used the normal textbooks were severely damaged and that less gifted students who used the normal textbooks were destroyed" (p. 484).

NCTM’s Research Advisory Committee (RAC) fielded concerns over Saxon's claims, some requesting censure of Saxon's texts and others requesting further research regarding the effectiveness of the Saxon texts. John Dossey, NCTM president from 1986-1988, recalled that "RAC members felt that it was inappropriate for professional groups to censure material, especially in the absence of an agreed-upon set of standards" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 31). Concurrently, NCTM's Instructional Issues Advisory Committee (IIAC) was considering the creation of a document that could be used by schools when selecting textbooks. Jim Fey, an IIAC member at the time, said, "There was some concern from several places that textbooks, and therefore curricula, were being driven by non-professional considerations, political log rolling, and so on" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 31). The RAC and IIAC were already considering such a textbook selection document in the spring of 1983 when a much more public educational crisis would demand the attention of the NCTM.

In April the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) published A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. This critical document used Cold War-era language combined with threats of losing our nation's economic competitiveness to assert that it was imperative that schools change to meet the nation's growing needs. A Nation at Risk convinced many that an increase in the amount rigorous coursework required in schools, specifically in mathematics and science, should be a top national priority. While there is substantial evidence suggesting that the nation wasn't any more "at risk" than it ever had been (Berliner & Biddle, 1995), the perception of risk was more important than the truth.

By the end of 1983, two small conferences were held to determine the math education community's response to A Nation at Risk. Only sixty-eight people attended in total, with only six people attending both conferences (McLeod, 2003, p. 767). One of those six people was Tom Romberg, the University of Wisconsin professor who would later be named chairperson of the NCTM Standards Commission. Among the recommendations to come out of those conferences was the organization of a group who could write a set of guidelines specifying qualities of a proper mathematics curriculum (Romberg & Stewart, 1984).

Romberg remembered that "A Nation at Risk served primarily as a spark plug, a starting point for people" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 27). Others downplayed the influence of A Nation at Risk. Mary Lindquist claimed "The Standards came mainly from within mathematics education rather than as a reaction to A Nation at Risk or federal policies" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 37). The deciding measure of A Nation at Risk's impact might be found in the Standards themselves, in the first line of the first paragraph of the Introduction: "These standards are one facet of the mathematics education community's response to the call for reform in the teaching and learning of mathematics" (NCTM, 1989, p. 1). The footnote for that sentence contains the statement "See A Nation at Risk."

NCTM had prepared itself to take a stand on matters of policy and now they had their greatest opportunity. In Part 4 of this series, we'll look at how NCTM organized itself to write the Standards, and the risks they took and avoided in doing so.

References

Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools (p. 414). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Fey, J. T., & Graeber, A. O. (2003). From the New Math to the Agenda for Action. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (Vol. 1, pp. 521-558). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B. (2003). From consensus to controversy: The story of the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 753-818). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B., Stake, R. E., Schappelle, B. P., Mellissinos, M., & Gierl, M. J. (1996). Setting the standards: NCTM‟s role in the reform of mathematics education. In S. A. Raizen & E. D. Britton (Eds.), Bold ventures: Case studies of U.S. innovations in mathematics education (pp. 13-132). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, D.C. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1989). Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: Author.

Romberg, T. A., & Stewart, D. M. (Eds.). (1984). School mathematics: Options for the 1990s. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=ED250196

Saxon, J. (1982). Incremental development: A breakthrough in mathematics. Phi Delta Kappan, 63(7), 482-484. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20386409.

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 2 of 6, Asserting a Policy-Minded Orientation)

From the NCTM's inception in 1920 until the 1960s, the organization "played an important but usually secondary role" (McLeod, Stake, Schappelle, Mellissinos, & Gierl, 1996, p. 18) in mathematics education policy. NCTM's primary role "focused on supporting mathematics teachers through the exchange and promotion of good ideas, not through its influence on educational policy" (McLeod, 2003, p. 759), and many NCTM leaders thought it was best to avoid "positions that might be opposed by some of its members" (McLeod et al., 1996, pp. 18-19). Therefore, during the Sputnik-era calls for reform in the late 1950s and the "new math" era of the 1960s (Fey & Graeber, 2003), organizational leadership from NCTM was insignificant.

Fueled by the battles over the new math and events of the mid-1960s, attitudes at NCTM began to change:

Although the attempt to change school mathematics during the new math era was not very successful, the idea that an activist professional organization could have an impact on society still had some appeal. The change from passive to more active stances was a topic of discussion for many professional organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. Opposition to the war in Vietnam was one source of these discussions. As academics became involved in teach-ins and other protests against the war, there was a natural spread of their concerns into the domain of professional organizations. (McLeod, 2003, p. 758)

NCTM's hands-off policy stance changed in 1966 when the Board of Directors voted to be more willing to assert its position on controversial issues. Reflecting on his thirty-one years (1964-1995) as NCTM Executive Director, James D. Gates (2003) characterized the decision and its effects: "It was a bold step for the Council, to take actions that were more visible in the public sector, leading to the development and distribution of position statements, the publication of guidelines and standards, and testimony before congressional committees" (p. 747).

While the NCTM struggled to use its new policy-minded powers during the 1970s (Fey & Graeber, 2003), the critical turning point came with the election of Shirley Hill as NCTM President in 1978. Joe Crosswhite, NCTM president from 1984-1986, remarked that, "Prior to Shirley's time, you couldn't interest an NCTM president in having a national presence in Washington – an NCTM presence" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 19). Shirley Hill explained that she

felt a certain frustration that we weren't being listened to seriously enough outside our own circles....I remember attending some meeting of the presidents of like organizations in Washington, DC, in the 1970s and noticing the frequent absence of the president of one of our sister organizations. It turned out that he was being escorted by his staff government relations expert in visits to members of Congress. At that time his organization seemed to be very influential in the establishment of federal programs. I thought that we in NCTM should be doing more of these things. I thought that we and most of our sister organizations were being a little naïve about government relations and public relations at that time. (McLeod et al., 1996, pp. 19-20)

In addition to hiring Richard Long, a former lobbyist for the International Reading Association (McLeod, 2003, p. 760), two documents published by NCTM during this time mark NCTM's emerging policy perspective. The first was actually a republishing of a position paper of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM), a sister organization of the NCTM. The paper, A Position Paper on Basic Mathematical Skills (1977), was notable because instead of refuting the "back to basics" theme of school mathematics in the 1970s, it co-opted the language and redefined the meaning of "basic skills" for NCSM's and NCTM's own purpose (Fey & Graeber, 2003, p. 552; McLeod, 2003, p. 761). With this action, NCTM and NCSM showed that both organizations understood the importance of controlling the vocabulary and discourse in educational policy.

The second document published by the NCTM solidified their stance as a policy influencer. The Agenda for Action (1980) was the product of NCTM's Committee for Mathematics Curriculum for the 1980s, chaired by George Immerzeel of the University of Northern Iowa. While only about thirty pages in length and containing eight somewhat non-specific recommendations, the Agenda was NCTM's most prominent and powerful policy document to date, and "laid the groundwork for a major reform effort that continued through the end of the twentieth century" (Gates, 2003, p. 741). Shirley Hill described the context for the Agenda at her 1980 presidential address:

In the 1960s we learned that curriculum change is not a simple matter of devising, trying out, and proposing new programs. In the 1970s we learned that many pressures, from both inside and particularly outside the institution of the school, determine goals and directions and programs....A major obligation of a professional organization such as ours is to present our best knowledgeable advice on what the goals and objectives of mathematics education ought to be....In my opinion, we are approaching a crisis stage in school mathematics. Policy makers in education are not confronting the deepest problems because the public and its representatives have been diverted by a fixation on test scores....We are still battling an excessive narrowing of the curriculum in the name of "back to basics." (Hill, 1980, pp. 473-476, as cited in McLeod et al., 1996, pp. 24-25)

Furthermore, in the introduction of the 1983 NCTM Yearbook, The Agenda in Action, Shirley Hill described the NCTM's implementation of the Agenda in five categories:

1. Public relations.
2. Political action.
3. Support for local efforts.
4. Collection and dissemination of model programs.
5. Production of guidelines and instructional resources.

Certainly the first two items in the list would have been far less likely to appear even ten years earlier. The words and actions of Shirley Hill clearly demonstrate the policy orientation NCTM had asserted by the early 1980s. But a willingness to affect policy and an opportunity to affect policy are two different things, and that opportunity would come soon enough. In Part 3 of this series, we'll look at the events that set NCTM to work on the Standards.

References

Fey, J. T., & Graeber, A. O. (2003). From the New Math to the Agenda for Action. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (Vol. 1, pp. 521-558). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Gates, J. D. (2003). Perspective on the recent history of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 737-752). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Hill, S. (1983). An agenda for action: Status and impact. In G. Shufelt & J. R. Smart (Eds.), The
agenda in action (pp. 1-7). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B. (2003). From consensus to controversy: The story of the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 753-818). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B., Stake, R. E., Schappelle, B. P., Mellissinos, M., & Gierl, M. J. (1996). Setting the standards: NCTM's role in the reform of mathematics education. In S. A. Raizen & E. D. Britton (Eds.), Bold ventures: Case studies of U.S. innovations in mathematics education (pp. 13-132). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics. (1977). Position paper on basic mathematical skills (p. 4). Minneapolis, MN. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=ED139654

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1980). An Agenda for Action: Recommendations for School Mathematics of the 1980s. Reston, VA. Retrieved from http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=17278