Changing the Way We Teach Math

"What findings would you most like to implement?"
Strategy	Number of instructors interested in adopting the strategy	Barrier: Time constraints	Barrier: Student resistance	Barrier: Instructor's lack of training or discomfort	Barrier: Rigid curriculum
Use concrete or visual activities	19	10	7	6
Situate problem-solving tasks within familiar contexts	15	3	5		3
Provide opportunities for group work	11	6	6		2
Develop shared power relationship in the classroom	12	2	4	3

Of the 56 participants who answered this question, some of them said they would like to implement more than one finding. As Table 1 shows, four strategies were overwhelmingly chosen by participants:

Develop understanding by providing opportunities to explore mathematical ideas with concrete or visual representations and hands-on activities.
Situate problem-solving tasks within familiar, meaningful, realistic contexts in order to facilitate transfer of learning.
The management of learning should lead to the development and reinforcement of the learner’s control of his/her own learning and the management of learning should strive to build a shared power relationship in the classroom that contributes to self-esteem and self-confidence. (I combined two strategies, both dealing with sharing power/responsibility in classroom management.)
Provide opportunities for group work.

My notes from the discussions at the workshop confirm that these were the concerns most articulated by participants, and they were also echoed in the equations and recipes that the participants produced.

If/when you try to implement these findings what gets in your way?

Very interesting things happened when participants wrote down the barriers they experienced in implementing these strategies. The same two barriers were cited for every strategy—student resistance and time constraints. In three of the four strategies, student resistance was the most frequently cited barrier! The most frequent barriers mentioned are shown in Table 1, above.