Building New Knowledge by Thinking: How Administrators Can Learn What They Need to Know About Mathematics Education Reform

By B.S.Nelson

The mathematics education reform movement is built on very different ideas about the nature of learning, teaching, and, indeed, mathematics itself, than the views that have prevailed in American schooling for many years. This has implications for administrative practice, since an enterprise that exists to support rigorous thinking on the part of students requires different administrative supports than one that exists to transmit accepted knowledge from teacher or textbook to student. Understanding new ideas about mathematics, learning, and teaching, and exploring the implications of these ideas for administrative practice, requires conceptual change on the part of many administrators. This paper describes the pedagogical principles that underlie a program designed to provide opportunities for such conceptual change for administrators.

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Published by: Center for the Development of Teaching

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