In this article, Marta Civil discussed the importance of community knowledge when developing math units. I was very pleased to read an article by a teacher-researcher who didn't use confusing jargon. Civil was part of a project called the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project (FKT). Rather than teaching the exact prescribed curriculum in the mathematics classroom, teachers would immerse themselves in the community to discover what was valued. For example, in one particular community there was a lot of construction and hence many of the parents were construction workers. The teachers would sit down with the families in their homes and interview them. From the knowledge that they gained, they would then create a math unit that built on the idea of construction. Right away the students felt more of a connection to their math. Some critics would argue that as soon as the out of school experience is brought in to the school, it loses its appeal. I believe that it is still more effective than not even trying to connect the two.
Being able to connect activities such as construction and gardening (from another study) with all of the curriculum proved to be difficult. It is definitely possible to make some connections, but other prescribed learning outcomes (PLO's) may not have been met. With the new BC curriculum, I believe that this would be much easier to do, now that the PLO's are more suggestions than required.
What Civil found to be extremely effective, was to actually bring in the parents as local experts into the classroom to help teach lessons. For the most part, parents in schools tend to be "in tasks such as monitoring the cafeteria, helping out with bulletin boards, [and] fund-raising efforts" (p.30). While these are all very important tasks and should not be under appreciated, bringing in parents/family as local experts would allow children to witness their teacher collaborating with another adult. Another small, yet important to note point, is that teaching can be a very lonely profession, and being able to work with other adults may help alleviate this.
In conjunction with parent-assisted learning, the children are expected to engage in lots of inquiry, and there should be a general transition from teacher-directed learning to student-centered learning. My question is this. In a community that is greatly diversified, how do you go about choosing what theme to use? If there are say five different themes to choose from, based on initial community-based interviews, by choosing one do you risk reducing the engagement of those students who don't relate to it? Could potentially do more damage than good?
UGH! I posted a long response, submitted, and then it disappeared >:[ Here it goes again.....
ReplyDeleteUpdate: I ALMOST LOST IT AGAIN.
Dave,
I think this idea of parent-assisted learning is an exciting one. It's certainly beneficial to have parents bring their specialized knowledge to the mathematics classroom, but I see other benefits as well. Particularly with the new curriculum in mind, this could be a great opportunity for parents to engage with new ways of doing mathematics. To my knowledge, parents are often confused when faced with their child's homework that requires non-algorithmic mathematics. By having parents join in the classroom, they have the opportunity to learn the mathematics alongside their children, ask questions to the teacher, and possibly gain a newfound respect for alternative ways of doing mathematics.
In response to your question, one way to address multiple themes is to include them all in a lesson. It would be interesting to set the class up like a math fair, where there are a number of tables with various themes. This way, students could choose which theme they find interesting and explore it with the parents and other children. Although all of the themes would be different, it could be possible to have the same PLOs. Once students complete their work in the individual groups, discussion could come to the entire group, where the mathematics is discussed in general, parents and students are able to talk about their own projects, and the various themes can be connected via mathematics.
Lesson learned: copy what you write before you publish.
DeleteI've learned that lesson as well. Similar to pressing "command-s" every 5 seconds when writing a paper ;)
DeleteWhen I read your description of parents in the classroom, I immediately also jumped to Vanessa’s conclusion: would it not be awesome to get some more parents on board with less traditional math education? This really sounds like something we might have studied in last semester’s class :) However, at the post-secondary level I wonder about an analogue and the only thing that springs to mind are having experts from other fields come in (am I wrong? Could we pull a random person off the street in?). But then I worry we are getting a bit far into “look how useful this is” territory…which I’m not opposed to, I just also really long for math to stand on its own. That is really meant as an aside; I do understand not everything fits at every level.
ReplyDeleteAs for your questions about potentially doing damage by choosing: I do think there is some danger, but I think it is worth the risk. Perhaps some students are not as excited about gardening as they are about construction - but would they not be more excited to do gardening over procedural, traditional math? And even if that answer is no, I still think there is room to win over the unconvinced.