Daniel J. Brahier
Department of Educational Curriculum & Instruction
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403

OCTOBER 1999

In the "Musings" columns earlier this year, I raised questions about reform in mathematics education and how we will know if our efforts have been successful.  Indeed, it is difficult to measure the progress of a national movement because "success" is defined in a variety of ways, depending on who you talk to.  And, of course, reforming mathematics education requires the changing of attitudes and beliefs about the nature of mathematics and the learner by those who teach it in our public schools.  Research by Goodlad, Cuban, and others has repeatedly shown the complexities of changing the way that teachers view their content area and their role in the classroom.

I recently asked two science educators from my institution to make a presentation to a group of inservice teachers with whom I have been working over the past year.  In their mini-workshop, they showed the tape entitled Private Universe, which looks at how children cling to misconceptions in science, despite direct confrontation of their beliefs by the teacher.  The best the students could do in explaining planetary motion and phases of the moon was to assimilate some of the teacher's terminology into their inaccurate descriptions, but their beliefs never significantly changed.

As I watched the video, I couldn't help but to think about the teachers of mathematics in our public schools.  Like the children in the video, teachers walk into the classroom with a very rigid set of attitudes and beliefs that drive their actions, as the work of Alan Schoenfeld, Deborah Ball, and others has documented.  The only way that I can get teachers to significantly improve their instructional approaches, then, is to alter their belief structures.  And, again, like the children, teachers are masters at using the politically correct words (e.g., manipulative, constructivist, hands-on, technology, cooperative learning) without actually changing their practices.  The TIMSS video analysis showed, for example, how approximately 75% of the eighth grade teachers in the United States who were videotaped believed that their teaching was in accord with recent reform in mathematics, even though their behaviors in the tapes were, for the most part, not even close to what the Standards have recommended.

As a professional organization of mathematics educators committed to helping all children learn mathematics, I believe it is important to examine the ways that we attempt to influence the beliefs of inservice and preservice teachers with whom we work.  It's simply not good enough to "show them how to use pattern blocks" if they don't already see the value in an inquiry-based, hands-on, lesson.  In your work with inservice and preservice teachers, how do you attempt to change the belief structures of those you teach?  Is it realistic to think that we can effectively make those changes in four years of an undergraduate, preservice program?  What about the 20-year veteran who is as traditional as pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving -- is there any hope for changing the attitudes and beliefs of that individual?  We would like to hear from you!  Take a moment to drop an email to Daniel Brahier at brahier@bgnet.bgsu.edu to continue this discussion into the next RCML newsletter.