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Making Progress in U.S. Mathematics Education: Lessons Learned—Past, Present, and Future

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Vital Directions for Mathematics Education Research

Abstract

Critics have deplored the quality of U.S. mathematics education for over 50 years. Schemes to improve it disappoint in their outcomes. At the same time, much more is now known about the challenges of effective mathematics education and about what it takes to tackle them. The U.S. mathematics education community stands at a threshold where it could help the country take substantial steps forward if it deliberately learned from the past, clarified its best ideas, and developed strategies for moving those ideas into the public debate. This chapter characterizes the challenge and argues for action informed by current practice and past reforms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We do not mean to imply that language diversity should be viewed as an impediment to teaching. Indeed, different languages provide additional resources for learning mathematics that often are not used well. For example, in Spanish some mathematical terms are much more comfortably related to the targeted mathematical meaning than are the English terms, yet programs often require that students go through awkward English terminology as they move from Spanish to English to mathematical language. Smarter instruction would make better use of the resources that Spanish-speaking children bring.

  2. 2.

    Other countries that have a common curriculum, and build around it, do not decide on the curriculum by political means, such as is the case in the United States with its politically mandated state curriculum standards. In other countries, governing bodies have professional authority and oversight for determining the common curriculum. Of course, achieving this necessary first step in the United States would require a great deal of discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Michigan, 610 East University, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Mark Hoover Thames & Deborah Loewenberg Ball

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  1. Mark Hoover Thames
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  2. Deborah Loewenberg Ball
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Correspondence to Mark Hoover Thames .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Mathematics Education, Brigham Young University, 167 TMCB, Provo, 84602-6537, Utah, USA

    Keith R Leatham

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Thames, M.H., Ball, D.L. (2013). Making Progress in U.S. Mathematics Education: Lessons Learned—Past, Present, and Future. In: Leatham, K. (eds) Vital Directions for Mathematics Education Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6977-3_2

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