I'm still catching up, so here are stories that were popular the week before Christmas. I'm saving other items for the next post, so you'll have to wait!
December 17: In an interview with Carol Dweck in The Atlantic called "Don't Let Praise Become a Consolation Prize," we explore some of the ways growth mindset should and shouldn't be used.
December 18: "How Big is 'Big'?" is another great post from Mark Chubb. It's difficult to develop number sense with large numbers, and in this post Mark explores some activities that can help or hinder the development of big-number sense.
December 22: "The High-School Mathematician's Crutch Is Not Allowed in Most Colleges" appeared in The Atlantic, and struck me as something that might have appeared more at home in 1986 or 1996 than 2016. We have a standard to "use appropriate tools strategically," but this article seems to seek for something closer to all-or-none. In 1986 my teachers were telling me I needed to master arithmetic because I wouldn't always have a calculator with me. My teachers were usually right, but on this point, they were wrong. I do always have a calculator with me — and it makes phone calls!
I'm in catch-up mode again, having been busy with mid-December travel for PARCC followed by the holidays. I was also slowed by some changes to Nuzzel that caused the code I wrote about in October to stop working. It took a while to figure out, but I think things are in working order again. If you're curious about the fix, it's mostly a matter of passing a valid session cookie to Nuzzel so it gives me the logged-in version of the site.
December 10: A March 2014 post by Robert Kaplinsky was most shared on the 10th. In "Why Does Depth of Knowledge Matter?" Robert shows how some changes to the depth of knowledge of some circle area problems resulted in drastic changes in student scores.
Commentary: Ever since I read and wrote about Jack Schneider'schapter about Bloom's Taxonomy in his book From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, my first thought about Bloom's Taxonomy has been, "That's not what Bloom had in mind when he designed it." Therefore, now when I hear about Webb's DOK, I think, "What did Webb have in mind when he designed it?" On my to-do list for 2017 will be to dig into the origins of DOK by reading Webb's original piece, Criteria for Alignment of Expectations and Assessments in Mathematics and Science Education. It's not that I think we're misusing Webb's DOK. I just think we gain by knowing about the origins of ideas, that's all.
December 12: Christopher Danielson appeared in the MiddleWeb blog with "How I Learned to Love Middle School Geometry." I can see where Christopher is coming from here, as I tended to prefer learning/doing geometry as a student, but found algebra preferable to teach.
December 13: When I think of bloggers who got my attention by surfacing in TWiME, Joe Schwartz might be first on my list. He appears again with a post called "Emily," in which he uses the engagement and understanding of one unassuming student, Emily, as a benchmark for his teaching.
December 14: Dan Meyer encourages math education conference organizers to consider traditionally underrepresented speakers. In his post, "The Bureau of Non-White Dude Math Education Keynote Speakers," Dan suggested about forty quality, non-white-male speakers, and asked for more suggestions in the comments.
TODOS is an organization I respect, and their (from "them" or the individual representing them) response took me to the sticky place I think of as, "You're being an ally wrong." Dan's primary platform is as a well-known speaker in math education, and he used that platform in an attempt to promote others. It reminded me a bit of the #CancelColbert fallout, when Colbert used his platform — political satire on TV — to illustrate the absurdity of Washington NFL franchise owner Daniel Snyder's foundation to support American Indians. For me, that turned into "You're being an ally wrong," although the Colbert situation is clearly quite different than Dan's. In the responses to Dan and TODOS, I tried to heed the advice of Bryan Meyer, which was, "Let's listen." In this instance, the conversation fizzled before I felt we got away from the "you're being an ally wrong" place. Maybe my takeaway is that you can't say "Dan used his platform" without claiming that it's "Dan's platform," and using it without claiming it is something privilege itself doesn't allow me or Dan to do. What comes after that? I'm not sure.
Lastly, it does not escape me that I'm a white male discussing this in a post that is highlighting posts made almost entirely by other white males. Not all weeks are like this, but this one was.
Everything Else
I have two more posts to write, so I'll save research, news, and other happenings for the second one, which I hope to have out before it's no longer 2016.
Hello from Chicago! I'm in the greater O'Hare airport area this week working on PARCC rangefinder review for the upcoming 2017 testing window. "Rangefinder review" is that stage in the assessment process where we prepare the student work examples that will be used to train scorers to deal with the range of answer responses they're likely to see on each PARCC exam. For me, the best part of this has to be the variety of student work I'm being exposed to across a series of items.
Math Ed Said
December 2: People were sharing concerns related to a Politico story about Betsy DeVos, who is slated to be the U.S.'s next Secretary of Education.
December 4: Remember, TWiME isn't the only summary of the week's happenings in mathematics education. You can also check out the Ontario math links, such as this well-shared post from last week.
TNTP is taking nominations and applications for their Fishman Prize. The prize honors 100 inspiring public school teachers each year for their ability to create challenging and engaging classrooms for all of their students. Four winners receive $25,000 and six finalists receive $1,000.
Research Notes
The March 2017 issue of The Journal of Mathematical Behavior includes:
Integer comparisons across the grades: Students' justifications and ways of reasoning by Ian Whitacre, Florida State University; Beti Azuz, San Diego State University; Lisa L.C. Lamb, San Diego State University; Jessica Pierson Bishop, Texas State University; Bonnie P. Schappelle, San Diego State University; and Randolph A. Philipp, San Diego State University
The Fall 2016 issue of the Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College is out:
Oh, Canada, you're getting a lot of attention in the math ed news! The recently released PISA results are fueling a lot of nation-sized self-reflection this week.
Online Standards Review System Extended Until Feb. 17
As CDE continues to develop its plan to guide the upcoming standards review and revision process, the department is actively seeking feedback on the Colorado Academic Standards from all interested parties. In November, CDE launched an online standards review system which enables all Coloradoans to provide specific feedback on each and every expectation within all 10 content areas of the Colorado Academic Standards. To provide sufficient time for meaningful feedback, the department has extended the timeline to provide feedback to Friday, February 17, 2017.
The results of the feedback received through the online system will inform the department's planning for the upcoming review and revision of the standards, required by Senate Bill 08-212, known as Colorado's Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K). The law requires a review and revision of the Colorado Academic Standards on or before July 1, 2018 and every six years thereafter.
In early 2017, CDE will provide comprehensive information about the timeline and phases of the standards review and revision process as well as information about how to become involved.
PARCC has released a new set of items for grades 3-8. These are items that have been used on operational test multiple times and were slated for retirement, and the set of items approximates the content coverage of a typical test. High school items should be released in early 2017.
Thanks for everyone's patience as I cut TWiME short for the weeks ending November 18 and November 25. This week I'm caught up again with all the latest research and happenings in math ed.
November 26: Continuing the post-(U.S)-holiday weekend, five folks were sharing this fun linguistics piece from the NY Times originally published in 2013: "How Y'all, Youse and You Guys Talk." For the record, my answers (which I answered with the words I used where I grew up) indicated I was most similar to speakers in Des Moines, IA; Madision, WI; and Rockford, IL, which is pretty much exactly the area I'm originally from.
November 27: I'd seen balance puzzles like this on paper, but thanks to some friendly sharers on Twitter I now know that EDC has "SolveMe Mobiles" online.
I kept the last two TWiME posts (11/18 and 11/25) short in order to catch up following some busy traveling and holiday weeks, but in that time I attended Innov8 and took a lot of photos of the action there. In short, I was impressed with the conference and the mix of regular sessions, team time, and opportunities for small group conversations with experts in the Innovation Lounge.
The most recent big conference event was last weekend's conference of the California Mathematics Council — South. #CMCmath tends to be a large and impactful event, so be on the lookout for conference recaps, video of the opening keynote, and visit the CMC-South conference pages for information and resources.
Note the changes in NCTM's Wednesday night chats this month: There will be a #TCMchat on December 14th around the article "Relational Thinking: What's the Difference?" by Ian Whitacre, Robert C. Schoen, Zachary Champagne, and Andrea Goddard. If you missed them, the most recent #MTchat is Storified here and the #MTMSchat is Storified here.
Did you know it's Computer Science Education Week? What are you going to code/build/connect/engineer? What about your students?
Research Notes
Ready for March 2017? Elsevier's way of publishing new papers on a rolling basis means we're already seeing articles slated for the March 2017 issue of The Journal of Mathematical Behavior:
Preservice teachers' pictorial strategies for a multistep multiplicative fraction problem by Jae M. Baek, Illinois State University; Megan H. Wickstrom, Montana State University; Jennifer M. Tobias, Illinois State University; Amanda L. Miller, Illinois State University; Elif Safak, Florida Gulf Coast University; Nicole Wessman-Enzinger, George Fox University; and J. Vince Kirwan, Kennesaw State University
I looked for articles and was generally disappointed. If you read anything, I suggest getting caught up with the results of the latest TIMSS test. This EdWeek article covers the highlights. You can take a deeper look with this NCES report or this webinar:
Math Ed in Colorado
Mathematics Design Collaborative
Last week I joined math teachers and leaders for a meeting of the Mathematics Design Collaborative, a CEI-led effort that includes teachers from Thompson School District, Jeffco Public Schools, and Montezuma-Cortez. The collaborative serves to support high-quality formative assessment and classroom discourse, using tools like the Shell Center's formative assessment lessons and Achieve the Core's coaching tool. If you'd like to know more or be put in touch with the right people at CEI, let me know.
Colorado Math Leaders
The next CML meeting will be Wednesday, December 14 from 9:00-12:00 in Harrison School District 2, Colorado Springs.
CDE Launches Online Standards Feedback System
The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) is currently developing its plan to guide the upcoming standards review and revision process and is actively seeking the input of all interested parties to inform its planning process. In addition to the general standards perception survey that was open in October and November, CDE has launched an online standards review system. Unlike the perception survey, the online standards review system will enable all Coloradoans to provide specific feedback on each and every expectation within all 10 content areas of the Colorado Academic Standards. The online system will accept feedback from Wednesday, Nov. 9 through Friday, Dec. 30. The online standards feedback system can be found at http://www.cde.state.co.us/standardsandinstruction/casreview.
The results of the survey and feedback received through the online system will inform the department's planning for the upcoming review and revision of the standards, required by Senate Bill 08-212, known as Colorado's Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K). The law requires a review and revision of the Colorado Academic Standards on or before July 1, 2018, and every six years thereafter.
In early 2017, CDE will provide comprehensive information about the timeline and phases of the standards review and revision process as well as information about how to become involved. This will begin robust public engagement throughout the state and through social media. If you would like to receive regular updates on the standards review and revision process, you can sign up here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/standardsupdate.
I'm again keeping this TWiME short as I catch up from conference travel and the Thanksgiving holiday. Thankfully, I remembered to grab all the most-shared posts before that data slipped away from me!
Comment: Seeing Dan and Christopher's name on this article gave me the sudden thought, "It's like they're the George Immerzeel and Earl Ockenga of the 2010s." This will only amuse you if (a) you are really knowledgeable about late-70s calculator research or (b) you went to the University of Northern Iowa, as I did, and either knew or knew of these people. Shared by: Bethany Sansing-Helton, Taylor Belcher, Dan Meyer, Lorraine Males, NCTM - MT
