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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > June > 08 > Entry
If you know math, is teaching easy?
Much education research shows that the best teachers have deep “content knowledge” — that is, they really know the subject they are teaching.
And last week, Intel’s chairman Craig Barrett told education reporters gathered in New Orleans that 30 percent of all math and science teachers are not specialists in math and science, but are teaching out of their areas of expertise.
Barrett also criticized teacher certification processes as cumbersome, hinting that they prevent professionals with deep content knowledge from trying teaching. A similar argument caused a blogosphere stir last month when Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times said teacher certification rules were keeping the likes of Meryl Streep and Colin Powell from teaching our kids.
But over at the NCLB blog run by the American Federation of Teachers, they had an interesting post this week about the challenge of teaching math. Citing research from the University of Michigan, they note that:
…math teachers were much better than mathematicians at identifying where students went wrong—an important fact to know to help put students back on track.
The study concluded that:
…there is a body of knowledge math teachers need to be effective.
This would seem to present a challenge to the notions that anyone can teach or that content knowledge is all that matters.
But perhaps there’s a middle ground. Even many educators admit that schools of education do not always require enough courses on the practical aspects of teaching. Could this be an argument for alternative certification programs that focus on teaching methods and strategies, provided the teacher candidate has demonstrated mastery of the subject matter?
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Jonathan
June 17, 2006 7:53 PM | Link to this
Darren is spot on. There are way too many people teaching math out there without the requisite content knowledge. It is never okay to know just a bit more than the kids. That being said, there are plenty of people who know their stuff but are completely unable to transmit those skills to kids. I came into teaching as a second career ten years ago, and I hastened and struggled, struggled mightily, to remove myself from the second category. I knew math, but couldn’t teach. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, learning to teach. And in the meantime I have seen plenty of both problems. The engineers don’t scare me too much. They talk a brave game, but when they can’t reach the kids, the kids misbehave and the engineers quit. They usually blame the state of the schools. But the people who barely know math? They are able to hang on in our system for a long, long time. The kids don’t know the teacher’s content is bad. The administrators can’t tell (hell, plenty of them have spotty math skills). Finally, those Michigan professors? They are education professors, with an interest in exposing the weaknesses of the mathematicians and engineers. It is in teacher’s best interests to find middle ground, and avoid arriving at either questionable extreme.By Darren
June 14, 2006 12:48 PM | Link to this
As we’d say in math classes: content knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. I say that as a former army officer, a former manufacturing manager, and a current math teacher.By Scott Elliott
June 12, 2006 9:03 AM | Link to this
Chris, This study was not done by the teacher’s union. It was led by two respected researchers at the University of Michigan (I am familiar with some of their prior work). As you say, however, it’s not surprising that the union highlights this research. Even so, the researchers did not find that teachers are better than scientists and engineers at teaching math. What they found was that there ARE valuable teaching skill sets that teachers should know before they enter the classroom. My guess is that engineers/scientists trained in these techniques would be similarly effective teachers, or perhaps even better because of their deep content knowledge. I also don’t think the study is necessarily an endorsement of the current teacher prep/certification system, as even many teachers acknowledge that schools of ed don’t concentrate much on the kinds of teaching techniques we’re talking about here.By Chris
June 12, 2006 12:25 AM | Link to this
Gee Scott did you really think that a teachers’ union would find anything but that teachers are better than engineers/scientists at teaching math or science?By Fred
June 10, 2006 11:12 AM | Link to this
It’s always been humorous to watch as the people who are working as engineers felt that they could teach math and science better than the teachers in the classroom. Somehow there is a self-righteous attitude on the part of people not in the classroom that they can do a better job. That was tried with IBM people on leaves of absence to teach in Buffalo schools a couple decades ago. How did that work out? How many are still there? As a teacher for 39 years I saw an engineer who had been bumped from a local company in cutbacks ‘teach’ chemistry and physics in an awful manner. Oh, he finally was made to leave because he COULDN’T TEACH!!! I am certified in both areas and lots more. But somehow There’s the public attitude that they can do better because they were in school once or they have a college degree in business, etc. Come on in, get your certfication-just requires a few how-to-teach classes in Ohio, and you show us how it’s done. I retired and left you an opening if you have certification; I have a Masters with thesis from a reputable university and was NOT an education major-I added on the requisite classes after my two degrees and also had 90 quarter hours of courses after I started teaching. So all you know-hows, show us!!!By Oldprof
June 9, 2006 12:44 PM | Link to this
Dave, the surveys I’ve seen show that most new teachers leave the profession for one of two reasons: low pay, or stifling/non-support by a bloated administration. Add to that an estimate that it takes approximately six years for most teachers to start to feel completely competent, and we’ve got the whole picture. Note that most new teachers have completed the B.A. degree and, as in your experience, have to pursue addtional coursework toward the M.Ed. to maintain their licenses (I agree with your assessment of cost/reward).By Mary
June 9, 2006 11:22 AM | Link to this
Of course, I have had both teachers and professors who did not make a class as interesting as I would like. At least the professors were for only 3 months at a time and not all year as were teachers. Some of my engineering professors had such a heavy foreign dialect I could not even understand their English. But if I had a good textbook, I would make the most of it. My daughter and son both claim they did not listen to the teachers or professors anyway but learned from the textbooks. I also agree with some of what old prof had to say about the importance and value of mentoring.By Dave
June 9, 2006 10:09 AM | Link to this
Mary, didn’t you have any profs in engineering school who were poor teachers? And they had students who were highly motivated to begin with! Old Prof, while I agree that the pay scale for teaching is not good, I believe that MOST young teachers leave the profession because they are not successful. And the changes you recommend to the education program would help tremendously. I am an engineer who seriously considered a mid-career change into teaching high school. I spent a year as a substitute teacher (and as a long-term sub). I learned a lot. I saw that most engineers CAN’T teach a class, but my principal and fellow teachers felt I was an exception. I saw that the pay is not good, but that was not a decision-maker for me. The certification process was the deal-breaker. It was expensive, long, took too much time away from the classroom, and did nothing to make me a better teacher. So I came back to engineering.By Oldprof
June 8, 2006 10:27 PM | Link to this
There is a middle ground; there is also a higher path and a lower way. Frankly, people don’t learn much about teaching from coursework in education, no matter what topics are covered. It’s true that there are teaching skills that are important and that go beyond content knowledge, but those skills are only honed in classrooms with students and experienced mentors. As things are arranged now, new teachers are autonomous from day 1. I would rather see only perhaps three or four education courses in college, lots of content courses, new teachers hired as assistants and mentored by experienced faculty for their first three years or so. The nettle in that fabric is that we don’t pay teachers enough for very many of them to ever become experienced; the average time in the teaching profession remains three years.By Mary
June 8, 2006 8:24 PM | Link to this
I think if I, or any other engineer, had the proper textbook in math or science we could just about teach any K-12 student to the lesson plans - baring some hard to spot learning disabilities, extremely bright students past our own abilities, or students who are both extremely bright and disabled. Problems are all the other mickey mouse associated with the school environment, heterogeneous grouping, class size, unenforced discipline, enforced bureacracy (not necessarily standardized tests, or NCLB). I think the text book and curriculum designs should allow students to proceed at their own pace and teachers and administrators should help facilitate learning that way. Apparently, there are some huge problems and philosophical disconnects with textbook quality, curriculum, pacing individual students to an age group and even how to teach math. Will it be Chicago math, Everyday math, Hong Kong math, etc? Mathematicians as a group have raised alarms about the way math is being taught. I was shocked the educational system could even muddy math instruction. But, then I am an engineer and seem to think math is math the way I learned it and applied it.By Ben
June 8, 2006 6:34 PM | Link to this
Douglas County, Colorado, appears to be ahead of the curve on this one: http://www.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=1285