When the facilitator of a family math group adopts an exploratory and holistic approach to math, what changes occur in parents’ attitudes to math and to helping their children with math learning? What are the effects of an egalitarian facilitation style on parents’ attitudes to participation in family math activities? I asked these questions in the context of a project that brought together parents (and people acting in loco parentis) in small groups to try out a set of math activities I had designed for adults and kids to do together, to give me feed-back on the activities, and to help me revise a manual designed for parents who wanted to have fun with math with their kids.
I have taught Literacy/ABE for nearly 20 years at the Cowichan Campus of Vancouver Island University (VIU), formerly Malaspina University-College. (The name changed in 2008, during the course of this project.) During that time, I taught English, usually at the basic literacy level, occasionally taking a section at a higher level for variety and to keep abreast of the department’s offerings, and I taught math, again mainly at the basic numeracy level, occasionally at the introductory algebra level, for the same reasons. I spent one year as co-chair of the department. In the course of my teaching and administrative duties, I met many students and their families, and frequently taught both parents and their adult children, although not usually in the same class.
Since I am an adult educator, and do not generally work with parents as parents, am not involved with family literacy and am not myself a parent, how did I get interested in this project? The idea grew out of my work with adults who were learning basic math skills with whole numbers, decimals, fractions and per cents. Many students, who are placed in my classes as a result of an assessment, are surprised to find themselves in such a basic class and sometimes resist working on those skills again. They have in fact tried to learn them many times before, have done many workbooks and taken and sometimes passed many tests. They do not want to do fractions again. They may think that they already know how to do them, and that their placement at a low level is arbitrary and punitive, or they may agree that they have trouble with the skills, but approach the study of the material with a lack of confidence and little joie de vivre.
I notice that their understanding of the concepts is weak, and they are generally bent only on trying to memorize shortcuts and rote procedures, rather than understanding what they are doing. They are also often reluctant to use manipulatives, drawings or other visual aids to understanding, rejecting them as childish or unnecessary. I wanted to show them that math is everywhere, not just in the worksheets. I wondered if they would be willing to slow down, and play with math, if they did it with their kids. And since many adult students come back to ABE/Literacy classes so that they can help their kids with schoolwork, and by example encourage their kids to stay in school, I thought that learning how to teach their kids might be a motivating factor to keep them working on math.