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.

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

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

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 1 of 6, Where Curriculum and Policy Meet)

The Common Core State Standards might be the current story, but to gain a broader perspective of this "standards era" of educational reform we would be wise to look at where the era got its start. Over the next six posts, borrowing generously from the work of Douglas McLeod and others, I'll attempt to tell the story of how the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) created the first widely-recognized set of curriculum standards, and the policy process that developed along the way.

NCTM's publication of the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989) stands as the landmark event that launched our nation's current era of standards-based educational reform1. While the effect of this effort led to a new period of reform in school mathematics, marked by new textbooks and materials and what has come to be known as the "math wars," the process undertaken by NCTM in writing the Standards has been both praised and panned by critics. Diane Ravitch (1995) claimed the Standards "emerged from a successful consensus process that included many classroom teachers and the nation's leading mathematics educators.... [They are] an example for emulation" (p. 57). Roy Romer (1995), then the Governor of Colorado, said the Standards "were arrived at correctly, from the bottom up. They represent the best thinking in the country, collectively" (p. 67).

Critics were far tougher on NCTM and the process for writing standards for school mathematics. Ralph A. Raimi, a prominent figure in the math wars, claimed that whenever he was asked to help write or review math standards, he'd send the following recommendation:

If your standards were composed without the significant participation of mathematicians, let me advise you to go down to your best state university and find a professor of mathematics, at least 40 years old, who is willing to help you. He need not have heard of Piaget and Bruner, and he might very well be of such a personality that you would never trust him in a fifth grade class, but he should be an English-speaking American who himself has gone through our public school system, and he should be a genuine mathematician who has published at least a handful of research articles in the refereed professional journals of pure or applied mathematics. (Not journals of math education; you have such people in your department of education already.) Find out that this mathematician is willing to devote a few days to your project. Give him a copy of the Fordham Foundation report on the state standards to read....Then give him a copy of your own state's draft standards and ask for written commentary. Then use it. (Raimi, 2000, p. 57)

Raimi's suggested process for writing or reviewing mathematics standards might have some admirers, but it does not reflect the process undertaken by most standards-writing groups who wish to have a lasting impact on education practice and policy. Because the NCTM Standards have had an influence lasting now over twenty years, this series of writings will examine the specific process undertaken by NCTM that led to the publication of the Standards in 1989.

The Standards as a Policy Process

A review of the literature describing the NCTM's efforts can be undertaken from multiple perspectives. Teachers of mathematics might be most interested in the content of the Standards themselves, along with the contrasting arguments that influenced the curricular content emphasized and de-emphasized by the Standards. Historians of education might wish to study the development of the Standards as a sequence of events set in the context of greater educational and societal movements. Those who participated in the writing of the Standards bring yet another perspective of the process, such as that of Mary Lindquist, a member of the Grades K-4 working group that wrote the Standards. In Lindquist's chapter of NCTM's A History of School Mathematics (2003), she describes the effort to develop and promote the standards as having "four fundamental characteristics:"

  1. Accepting responsibility for standards.
  2. Establishing and supporting working groups.
  3. Making a draft widely available for review.
  4. Focusing the Council on standards.

Although any review of the NCTM's standards-writing process will probably be more alike than different, to gain a broader, policy-making perspective, this series of posts will be organized into six areas that share much similarity with Mary Lindquist's fundamental characteristics:

  1. Asserting a policy-minded orientation.
  2. Meeting a (perceived) need.
  3. Establishing and supporting working groups.
  4. Making a draft widely available for review.
  5. Publishing and promoting.
  6. Focusing the Council on standards.

The addition of the first two areas acknowledges that efforts to impact policy are: (a) generally conscious efforts undertaken by an organization and (b) most successful when done in response to a perceived crisis. The fifth area, publishing and promoting, describes the sometimes extraordinary effort an organization must take to make their message heard and to make it lasting.

In Part 2, we'll look at how and why NCTM decided to assert itself in the education policy arena.

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.

Raimi, R. A. (2000). Judging state standards for K-12 mathematics education. In S. Stotsky (Ed.), What’s at stake in the K-12 standards wars (pp. 33-58). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Ravitch, D. (1995). National standards in American education (p. 223). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.

Romer, R. (1995). Explaining standards to the public. In D. Ravitch (Ed.), Debating the future of American education: Do we need national standards and assessments? (pp. 66-72). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.

  1. Although NCTM’s Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics is just the first in a set of three publications, with the second two addressing the teaching (NCTM, 1991) and assessment (NCTM, 1995) of mathematics, this first document is the most well-known and is frequently referred to simply as the Standards. ↩
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

RYSK: Dewey's The Child and the Curriculum (1902)

This is the 20th in a series describing "Research You Should Know" (RYSK).

In my last RYSK post, I joined some other math teachers in discussing Richard Skemp's Relational Understanding and Instrumental Understanding (1976). Skemp's is a classic article that wrestles with a duality; in Skemp's case, the distinction between math for procedural skill versus a deeper mathematical understanding. For this meeting we turned the clock back further to Dewey's The Child and the Curriculum (1902), another classic article struggling with a duality in learning.

As D. C. Phillips (1998) noted in his review of The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey had a particular passion for dualisms, addressing more than three dozen of them in Democracy and Education (1916) alone. As Skemp and many others have shown, dualisms can be a starting point towards building a more nuanced understanding, as "neither is the world divided into a series of polar opposites, nor is it one" (Phillips, 1998, p. 404). Somewhere in between the opposites and the same lies the understanding many of us seek.

The Child and the Curriculum presents a particular dualism that very much persists to this day: should education be rooted in content, or in the needs and wants of the child? In Dewey's time, the push for a content focus was seen in the report by The Committee of Ten, not totally unlike how we currently push for content with documents like the Common Core State Standards. Dewey, like Skemp, also uses the metaphor of the map, using it to describe the logical versus psychological ordering of subject matter. Again, we still struggle with this duality today; last November Jere Confrey remarked at a conference, "There are some parts of the common core standards that I would express as mathematicians’ thought experiments," meaning we often guess how mathematical understanding is developed based on the structure of the mathematics instead of research on how children actually learn. These, of course, are not opposites, but they aren't the same, either.

Most of our discussion used Dewey as a prompt for thinking how Dewey's words more than a century ago frame modern challenges in education. (Reading Dewey seems particularly good for this kind of activity.) I was joined by +Nik Doran, +Bryan Meyer, +Nat Banting, and +Chris Robinson was feeding us ideas in the chat as we went along.



I plan to have more of these discussions, and hope we can get into some literature that really addresses research in math education versus some of these more theoretical or philosophical pieces. If you have suggestions for articles to read, please add them and vote them up or down in Google Moderator!

References

Phillips, D. C. (1998). John Dewey’s The Child and the Curriculum: A century later. The Elementary School Journal, 98(5), 403–414.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

NCTM Denver 2013: Final Thoughts

Despite my flurry of blog posts during and immediately following this year's NCTM Annual Meeting, I fell short of recapping the last of the sessions I attended or summarizing some of my thoughts about the week. After my last post two months ago I needed to refocus on finishing a very busy semester — in less than two weeks I managed to give a presentation, write six papers, and tackle a digital pile of backlogged grading. Following that I just wanted to enjoy some calm and quiet, and I've done just that. Now on to the recapping:

Meyer's Tools and Technology for Modern Math Teaching


Annual Meeting - Saturday, April 20, 11:00 am

Dan Meyer - Stanford University and mrmeyer.com

I was one of many who turned out for Dan Meyer's session, which focused on why teachers should be using technology to capture, share, and resolve perplexity. What's perplexity? Dan described it as "not confusion" but a "wanting to know, thinking you're able to know." Dan is careful to differentiate perplexity from engagement, as we've all been engaged in something that was simply tedious or boring.

"I'm about THIS big."
This kind of perplexity describes a particular state of mind, one with more promise than the traditional definitions that describe perplexity as full of uncertainty and difficulty. However, when Dan speaks of "capturing" and "sharing" complexity, he's not so much describing a state of mind as he's describing the kinds of phenomena that provoke the asking of mathematical questions accompanied by an eagerness to mathematize. I'm hoping as Dan and others go forward we develop some sort of theoretical basis for these phenomena, or at very least, a useful classification system that can aid in task design. For example, I see the phenomena of scale frequently in Dan's work, provoking questions like "How much might the big blue bear weigh if it were a real, live bear?"

For capturing perplexity, Dan showed various tools for finding and saving things from the web and the world. These tools included an RSS reader for following blogs and news sites, a tool for downloading and saving YouTube videos, a note-taking application, a tool for capturing audio memos, and the camera on your phone. The particular tools here don't matter as much as knowing why to use them — they key is finding the tools that work well for you.

For sharing perplexity, Dan included technology like a computer with speakers and a projector, a document camera for showing student work, slideshow software, editors for photos and video, and a personal blog to "share the best stuff you do publicly."

For resolving perplexity, Dan made some connections to the Common Core State Standards. Standards aren't technology like computers and smartphones, but the CCSSM — particularly the Standards of Mathematical Practice — can be seen as tools for mathematical task design. There's a lot in the world that could be mathematized, but having a set of standards can help make sure it's done with the right content and practices in mind.

You can access Dan's shared resources for the session at nctm13.mrmeyer.com.

Hart and Hart's Viral Math Videos: A Hart-to-Hart Conversation


Annual Meeting - Saturday, April 20, 12:30 pm

Vi Hart - Khan Academy
George Hart - georgehart.com

I think Christopher Danielson said most of what I was thinking during this somewhat odd father-daughter session. It's difficult to describe the vibe that was in the room, with the presenters casually and sometimes clumsily taking turns describing then showing their videos. Near the end Vi grabbed a guitar for a rather brave musical performance that filled me with some kind of vicarious embarrassment, as if Fiona Apple had gone on stage thinking she was singing for lovelorn teens when in fact it was just those teens' math teachers. Then again, I feel embarrassed for others quite easily.

George Hart and Vi Hart

Perhaps I shouldn't be too critical. Some of the videos were pretty cool and who among us hasn't had at least one "Hey guys, check out this thing on YouTube" kind of moment?

Reflection


Having a big conference in your backyard is very nice, although I spent far more time on the bus or waiting at bus stations than I would have ever imagined. I take conferences seriously and believe in attending as many sessions as possible. Just as I never skipped a class in college -- and felt guilty about missing anything even when it was absolutely necessary — I'm not one to turn a conference visit into my personal vacation. So my NCTM experience turned into an 80+ hour grind investment not only in my own education, but as a proxy for the many who couldn't attend.

I tried to seek out a balance of sessions that were personally beneficial, high quality, and of wide interest. In a conference of this size there is plenty to choose from, but the downside of that is that session proposals are almost comically short and descriptions in the conference program don't provide much detail. The sessions are also of varying length and they overlap, which I think adds to the variety of sessions a person can attend. This year a new 30-minute session called a "burst" was introduced into the schedule, but I didn't attend one. My colleague +Ryan Grover attended a burst session, but was disappointed that many bursts happened at the same time. That made it difficult to schedule several in a row, and attending a 30-minute burst meant not attending a longer session offered at the same time unless you didn't mind sneaking in halfway through. I don't know what kind of feedback the program committee has gotten, but I hope they find a better approach for the bursts, perhaps something modeled like the paper sessions at the research conference. There, three authors briefly introduce their papers, and then session attendees have the option of sitting at a roundtable for 20 minutes with their choice of two of the authors. Perhaps in the future the bursts could be grouped in a similar way.

It's tricky to consistently find good sessions, and session titles like iPad Games for the Flipped Classroom seem far more likely to attract a standing-room only crowd than something based solidly in both research and practice. Then again, I attended some sessions because the presenter was well-established in the field of mathematics education, and frankly, that didn't always translate into a session that was engaging or helpful to me.



Some people used Twitter to try to improve their chances of finding the best the conference had to offer:







Shaunda McQueeney addressed a particular pet peeve of mine: Those who would rather spend time in the exhibit hall instead of attending sessions:



Over the past year or so I've become more and more aware and annoyed by how Twitter's limitations constrains our ability to communicate complex ideas or have fluent conversations. Unfortunately, the Twitter use at this conference didn't do much to change my mind. As I've written about elsewhere, Twitter is very good at covering events with short summaries of something that is happening or just happened, such as:



But when we try to use Twitter to share and engage in ideas, it's harder to scratch the surface. For example, this Tweet was far and above the most retweeted of any of my Tweets during the conference:



To me, the above statement doesn't really mean much of anything. By itself, I can't imagine it having an impact on a teacher's practice at all, and even if it did have an impact, there's nothing in the Tweet that describes how this is done. This is a platitude and little else, and I knew it when I tweeted it. I have a theory that these things are retweet bait, and I was testing out the theory. Many of the most retweeted Tweets appear as platitudes to me. That doesn't make them all bad, and it's a phenomena certainly not limited to Twitter, but there's a tempting superficiality there that I'd like to think people are aware of. That's why I'm thankful for efforts like MathRecap that at least offer an opportunity to sink some conceptual roots into solid ground.





I certainly could have tweeted Leinwand's talk — he may have been the most tweetable speaker at the conference — but I thought that recording his talk and taking notes would be the better approach in the long run. Conferences reach a limited audience for a limited amount of time. Twitter widens the audience, but is minimally helpful to the person wanting to revisit the event a day, week, or month later. Blogging helps remove limitations of both geographic and temporal limitations, and including audio and video is even better.

I've submitted a proposal to present next year, but I'm concerned about conference and travel expenses. As much as I enjoy conferences, it's difficult on a grad student salary to justify spending hundreds of dollars to present to 25 people, when I could reach many more staying home and assembling the presentation for the web for nothing. I'll wait to see if my proposal is accepted first and then decide from there.
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)