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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
Thursday, June 8, 2006
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?
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