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Here is an interesting critical-thinking take on the ways that math textbooks may 'speak to' their
Today we'll look at a number of textbooks, new and old, and assess them in the terms listed below.
As you begin working as a member of a math department at a secondary school, you will be called upon to help assess textbooks that the department and school is considering purchasing. You will also be asked to make professional judgements on various alternatives to textbooks. How might you assess textbooks and their alternatives? That is what we will address in class today.
Some things to start noticing in terms of textual analysis of math textbooks, old and new. (Each observation should be considered in terms of its potential effect on mathematics teaching and learning, and on the ways students might begin to think about mathematics.) Notice:
• The qualities of the physical object. Is it heavy or light, durable or fragile? How does the paper feel and the ink smell? Does it come with a teacher guide? student workbook? CD (seems a bit old fashioned now)? web links? Will it fit in a student's backpack?
• How much does it cost? What would the investment be for a school to take on a new math textbook?
• What is the writing like? Who does it address, and what does that tell you about its view of society and mathematics learning? Does it include definitions, explanations, examples, counterexamples, word problems, instructions, stories, extensions?
• Who are the authors? What is their expertise? Who put the project together, and why? Try reading the introductory material (which hardly anyone ever reads...)
• Is it easy to navigate? Table of contents, index, glossary, answer key, appendices, diagrams, tables, different kinds of pages colour coded, ...?
• What are the graphics like? Photos, diagrams, graphs, boxed information, use of colour or not,...
• How is it designed? Use of white space, sidebars, font size and style, page layout,...
• Any examples of alternatives to paper textbooks, from publishers, or teachers, or organizations, or ...
Interestingly, even a math textbook is very much a reflection of the time, place and society it comes from! No matter that the mathematical content is slow to change -- the social and educational contexts (and printing technologies) change much quicker.
Are there any classes in high schools that don't use textbooks?
Could you imagine teaching a math class without textbooks? What is the future of the lucrative business of textbook publishing? Do you think we will soon be creating teacher-written, collaborative shared materials online that will replace current (retro) textbooks -- or not??
Here is a blog from a workshop on textbooks at CMESG (the Canadian Math Education Study Group). It has fascinating links to many of the earliest math textbooks in English (from the 16th and 17th centuries) and other varied textbooks. We will use several of these today:
..and Robert Recorde, The Whetstone of Witte (full text)
Hi all! As a follow-up to our exploration of 'flow' , please write a short blog post reflecting on the film we saw in class on Monday: Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi's TED talk on 'flow' and happiness.
In your post, please reflect on what you take away from this talk and the idea of 'flow':
Have you experienced a state of flow through certain experiences? What prompts it? Is it sometimes connected with mathematical experiences?
Is it possible to achieve a state of flow in secondary math classes? Can we, as teachers, help create the conditions for a flow state for our students as they learn math? If so, how -- and if not, why not?
Looking forward to reading your blog posts, and to following up with more on flow states and ideas about The Thinking Classroom!
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, the late Hungarian-American psychologist, has studied a state he calls 'flow', where people are completely engaged and delighted in a process of problem-solving, and our normal sense of time is suspended. Here is a link to his TED talk on this topic from 2004.
From Erica Huang's 442 blog:
