Professional Development Response #2: Having Beliefs Worth Believing

Reading Summaries

• Goos_Why_TEachers_Matter_AMT_2006-2
• Beswick_beliefs_of_sec_teachers_AMT_2006

Goos discusses how teachers  beliefs in the nature of mathematics (what it is and why it is important) are reflected in our teaching. These reflections of our beliefs carry powerful messages to students and in turn influence their beliefs about mathematics. Some examples would be believing that mathematics is a language that we are learning to be fluent in, mathematics is a tool to be used in everyday environment, mathematics is a vehicle to develop logical thinking, or mathematics is a method to develop problem solving. The articles go on to talk about different kinds of beliefs (centrality and clustered). In general teachers could be broken down or “clustered” into three categories of beliefs content and clarity, relaxed problem solvers, and content and understanding. Goos also touches on beliefs of students about mathematics and how their understandings are extremely limited to only seeing it as an ability to solve problems rather than understand and apply numeracy to the world.

Reflection

I can see how our actions in a classroom can greatly affect students thinking on mathematics. Outside of the classroom they more than likely don’t perform or experience much exposure to it. This means that the experiences they have in our classes will be the ones that they base their beliefs off of. It seems that now more than ever students are becoming more discouraged and disinterested in mathematics than ever. As teachers we are going to have ensure that we give students positive experiences and maybe students will start to describe math with “McDonalds or Guy Sebastian”. It seems from the data in Beswick’s article that students are picking up the wrong ideas about math. That is they often believe mathematics as the ability to solve a problem. I feel that as teachers we need to do a better job of educating our students on the uses of mathematics and introduce them to how we can apply it. This is where I tie into my support for inquiry learning opposed to small repetitive questions. Students learn about the mathematics in terms of process and application. This makes it much more memorable.

Creed

I believe…

• mathematics is a tool do develop whole people (the mind, the body, the heart)
• mathematics is fun and interesting
• all students are capable of learning and being better at mathematics
• mathematics is a vital skill  in life outside of the classroom
• I can always improve as a mathematics teacher