THE QUESTION IS SIMPLE: ARE MATH TEACHERS TRADITIONAL?

Paola Sztajn

University of Georgia

psztajn@coe.uga.edu

They are everywhere. They fill up our professional literature, they haunt our memories… They are traditional mathematics teachers. As we approach the new millennium, a “simple” question remains: are most mathematics teachers still typically traditional?

Part of a larger project on teachers’ beliefs, a survey with a random sample of 198 teachers from the southern part of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, explored such a question. A questionnaire with 6 Likert scales represented traditional teachers as those who believe that: knowing math means being able to perform rapid calculation and apply correct procedures; one learns math through memorization and individual work; one teaches math following the textbook and demonstrating examples of assigned tasks (based on Schram & Wilcox, 1988; Schram, Wilcox, Lappan, & Lanier, 1989). The result was that teachers disagreed with the statements presented (independent of their educational background and the level in which they teach).

Are most teachers not traditional? Are we, mathematics educators, presenting a skewed picture of teachers? The presentation will explore different venues for understanding such results.

References

Schram, P. E. & Wilcox, S. K. (1988). Changing preservice teachers’ conceptions of mathematics learning. In M. J. Behr, C. B. Lacampagne, & M. M. Wheeler (Ed.). Proceedings of the 10th annual meeting, PME-NA (pp. 349-355). DeKalb, Il: Northern University.

Schram, P., Wilcox, S., Lappan, G., & Lanier, P. (1989). Changing preservice teachers’ beliefs about mathematics education. In C. A. Maher, G. A. Goldin & R. B. Davis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th annual meeting, PME-NA (Vol. I) (pp. 196-302). New Brunswick, Rutgers.