In fact, I was more interested in discovering whether I could teach this way and whether students would be responsive than I was in comparing these techniques with conventional methods or in trying to prove their superiority. I prefer teaching this way. I get to know the students and I am much more aware of how well they are comprehending the material. It feels much less secure than the lecture method: as a lecturer, I need not get to know the students at all, and consequently need never learn their despair.

By providing opportunities for students to hear and develop their own voices through engagement in authentic mathematical activity within the classroom, I seek to involve them in purposeful, meaningful academic discourse so that they might claim ownership of mathematics for themselves. In so doing, I believe I not only avoid discriminating against students who are currently denied access to mathematics, but I also provide a more meaningful and equal mathematics education for all students.

Pat Rogers lives in Toronto with her daughter Kate. Currently Director of York University's Centre for Support of Teaching, she has a joint appointment in the Faculties of Education and Mathematics. On Teaching and Learning, the journal of the Derek Bok Centre for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

1. Rich, Adrienne, On Lies, secrets, and silence: Selected prose, 1966-1918. New York: Norton,1979.
   
   
2. I wish to fully acknowledge my indebtedness to the faculty and students of the Potsdam Mathematics Department for allowing me to observe them teaching and learning as well as to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the financial support of this study. Parts of this paper have already been published in different forms (Rogers 1988, 1990). My findings are not meant to most against affirmative action hiring procedures. But as most mathematics departments are dominated by male faculty, it is useful to learn of strategies which do not then inhibit the participation of women.
   
   
3. Davidson, N., Agreen, L., and Davis, C. "Small group learning in junior high school mathematics", School Science and Mathematics, 1986,23-30.
   
   
4. Solow, D. How to Read and Do Proof: An Introduction to Mathematics Thought Processes. New York: J. Wiley, 1982.

References

Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J., and Snapp, M. The Jigsaw Classroom, Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1978

Buerk, D. "The voices of women making meaning in mathematics", Journal of Education, 167(3),1985,59-70.

Davidson, N., Agreen, L., and Davis, C. "Small group learning in junior high school mathematics", School Science and Mathematics, 1986, 23-30.

Krupnick, Catherine G. "Women and men in the classroom: Inequality and its remedies", On Teaching and Learning, 1, 1985, 18-25.

Marcroft, Minette " The politics of me classroom: Toward an oppositional pedagogy", New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 44 (Winter), 1990,61-71.

Rogers, P. "Thoughts on power and pedagogy", in Burton, L. (ed) Gender and Mathematics: An International Perspective. London: Cassell, 1990, 38-46.

Rogers, P. "Student-sensitive teaching at the tertiary level: A case study", Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Conference of the International group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2,1988,536-543.