Reflection onSkemp




The first point that stopped me was when the author talks about how majority math teachers teach instrumental math instead of relational math. I came from both Chinese and Canadian education system, and I noticed that they both had heavy course load and lots of curriculum content. Teachers only have one class for each topic, so it is hard for teachers to explain the reasons behind all concepts. However, BC’s new curriculum now allow teachers more freedom on what to teach, so that teachers no longer have to cover a certain amount of material and can dig into some topics with their students through inquiry-based learning (which is more time-consuming).
Second, the part stating that teachers choose instrumental math because of other subjects which require some skills. I found this as a really important factor, since students are not like mathematicians who can focus on just math, they need to learn several subjects at the same time. Teachers must prepare them the necessary skills they need to success in other subjects even when they would not be able to understand how certain concepts are derived. I think there is no better way in this case other than teaching instrumental math. Some of the instrumental math will be understood relationally if the students continued learning math.
Another part that made me stop was when the author talks about the two kinds of mis-match. Apparently, in a class of 30 student, teachers are going to have a mix of both students whose goal is instrumental math and whose goal is relational math. Teaching only instrumental math to those students who’d like relational math is damaging to them, but teachers may lose those students who’d like instrumental math if teaching only relational math, as they may find it boring (it may cause the student to be absent in mind during class and/or dislike the teacher and dislike math in more extreme cases). Some students do not understand where a concept came from while their classmates understand, so they may lose confidence in math.

Teaching relational and instrumental math are both important, but how to find a balance between them is hard problem.

Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky25 September 2017 at 10:00

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  2. Susan Gerofsky25 September 2017 at 10:00

    Veryinteresting discussion. Can you imagine integrating instrumental and relational learning? What good is either one on its own?

    ReplyDelete

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