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The Three C’s of Rural Teachers’ Needs:
Lessons Learned from an Annual Professional Development Workshop Theresa M. Hopkins and Kristin Rearden
In this article, we provide a brief description of a workshop for middle school mathematics and science teachers that we helped to design, followed by a discussion of (a) our subsequent discovery of the specific needs of the rural teachers involved and (b) our response in re-designing the workshop. The article draws implications for designers of other professional development opportunities for rural teachers.
The CEEMS Workshop
In Summer 2001 funds for a middle school mathematics and science teacher workshop were secured by the University of Tennessee’s Center for Enhancing
Education in Mathematics and Science (CEEMS) through a grant from UT-Battelle, the managing corporation of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The workshop developers included two professors from the College of Arts and Sciences (Biology and
Mathematics), and the authors of this paper--a science education professor (Reardon), and a mathematics education doctoral student who now holds a post-doctoral research position (Hopkins).
each of the nine counties surrounding the University, and (b) the focus of the workshop would be on content, with a focus on the Tennessee Curriculum Standards in Biology and Algebra.
The workshop was held for eight consecutive days during the summer at an area middle school with a one-day follow-up meeting later that fall at the University of Tennessee. During the summer sessions, teachers set up and collected data from four laboratory experiments involving seeds and plant life, discussed the science content of the lessons, and applied different mathematical skills. For example, for a lab
investigating effects of salinity on plant growth, mathematical skills were used both in setting up the labs (by creating differing salinity-concentration solutions) and in describing results (by means of tables and graphs). At the fall meeting, the teachers shared how they implemented the material from the workshop in their middle school classes.
We collected information from the workshop about teachers’ education and teaching backgrounds, and found that seventy-five percent of the participants came from schools designated as being located in either rural areas or small towns. At the end of the workshop, we asked the participants to complete an evaluation of the workshop, and informally collected evaluation information from conversations with workshop participants. In this report our personal reflections complement these data.
Recognizing the Needs of Rural Teachers: The Three C’s
Although the teachers’ evaluations of the workshop were positive overall, three themes emerged: the appeal of increased content knowledge, additional classroom
subsequent workshops to target “The Three C’s” of rural teachers’ needs: content knowledge, classroom resources, and collaboration. These needs are consistent with current literature on the needs of rural teachers.
The evaluations completed by the teachers attending the second year of the workshop offering confirmed the positive impact of these changes on the three aforementioned themes--content knowledge, classroom materials, and collaboration opportunities. A description of our changes and the recommendations to others involved in planning professional development opportunities for rural math and science teachers follows.
Content Knowledge
to the necessity of teachers in smaller districts to teach in more than one subject area (The Rural School and Community Trust, 2001).
In the second offering of the CEEMS workshop, we reduced the amount of content by eliminating one of the four laboratory activities, and used the extra time to focus on the pedagogical issues associated with the content. With many middle school math and science teachers working out-of-field, the need for offering college-level content in these subjects is clear. Enhancing the content knowledge of these teachers is a priority. However, this content must be coupled with the translation to the classroom context in order to impact students and it is expedient to ground the new content in whatever state curriculum frameworks may apply. We recommend that other developers include rigorous content and also address its middle school equivalent – in other words, articulate how that upper-level content ties in with the middle school curriculum. Tactics for making this connection include presenting content-based instructional strategies, allowing time for teachers to create lesson plans based on workshop content, and providing resources from organizations such as NSTA or NCTM for future content and pedagogy references.
Classroom Resources
difficulties for rural schools (which is related to the prevalent poverty among the general population, of course). Small populations, declining enrollments, and an eroding tax base result in a steady decline in funding (Reeves, 2003). Additionally, the transportation costs in smaller, rural school districts consume a large portion of the school system’s budget (Reeves, 2003). These stressors on the use of available funds put inevitable pressure on budgets for classroom instructional materials.
Professional development planners should therefore realize that funding for classroom materials is meager in many rural areas. Giving workshops that include equipment such as graphing calculators, triple-beam balances, beakers, and Petri dishes is terrific and arguably engaging for students, but those nice workshop experiences will have no influence on classroom teaching if teachers have no way to duplicate the experiences with their own students. We recommend that funds for basic lab equipment be included during the budget development stage to ensure that teachers can return to their classrooms with at least some of the needed tools.
Collaboration Opportunities
Our first workshop participants requested more opportunities for collaboration. Fifty-five percent of mathematics and 25 percent of science teachers selected
2003; Mahoney, 2003). This geographic isolation from teaching peers in combination with the presence of only one middle school mathematics and science teacher at a school can easily undermine professional growth. The need for collaborative opportunities seems particularly evident, given the prevalence of out-of-field teaching.
In our second workshop, one teacher summed up the impact of providing more structured time for collaboration: “We are encouraged to collaborate in science and math but rarely given the opportunity to actually plan.” Rural teachers, by virtue of their geographic isolation (e.g., from universities and professional development opportunities) as well as content isolation in their school (THE science or mathematics teacher), need more opportunities, in our view, for collaboration with other teachers in their fields. Professional development planners should be aware of this need and include
opportunities for collaboration and sharing of ideas. Planners cannot assume that teachers will be able to apply workshop content when they return home. Local circumstances may well include serious barriers such as those we have noted. The opportunity to begin planning and integrating during the workshop seems appropriate to us.
Conclusion
Creating quality annual professional development workshops for teachers requires the consideration of a myriad of factors. The differing needs of teachers, based on their specific circumstances, can be pushed to the backburner or even overlooked entirely. While we knew we would be drawing teachers from rural counties surrounding the
context-related needs that had not been considered in planning the initial professional
development. We hope these suggestions, based on our findings, assist other professional developers meet “The Three C’s” of rural teachers’ needs.
References
Ingersoll, R. M. (2001). Deprofessionalizing the teaching profession: The problem of out-of-field teaching. Educational Horizons, 80 (1), 28-31.
Jimerson, L. (2003). Policy brief: The competitive disadvantage: Teacher compensation in rural America. Washington, DC: The Rural School and Community Trust. Retrieved June 10, 2005, from http://www.ruraledu.org/publications.html
Mahoney, C. R. (2003). Mathematics education in rural communities: A mathematician’s view. Paper presented at the ACCLAIM Research Symposium, McArthur, OH, November 3-6, 2002.
Reeves, C. (2003). Implementing the No Child Left Behind Act: Implications for rural school districts. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED475037)
Rural School and Community Trust, The (2001). The puzzle of rural teacher shortages. Rural policy matters: A newsletter of rural school and community action, 3(9). Retrieved May 11, 2005 from http://www.ruraledu.org/rpm/rpm309b.htm Rural School and Community Trust, The (2002a). No Child Left Behind Act increases
Rural School and Community Trust, The (2002b). New study finds number of teachers teaching out-of-field unacceptably high. The rural school funding report, 1(1). Retrieved May 12, 2005 from
http://www.ruraledu.org/issues/finance/news101.htm#outfield
Rural School and Community Trust, The (2005). Why rural matters 2005: The facts about rural education in the 50 states. Retrieved June 10, 2005, from
http://www.ruraledu.org/whyruralmatters/WRM2005-Tennessee.pdf
Usisken, Z. & Dossey, J. (2004). Mathematics education in the United States: A capsule Summary Fact Book. Written for the Tenth International Congress on
Mathematical Education (ICME-10). Reston, VA: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Incorporated.
Winters, J. J. (2003). An examination of eighth and twelfth grade students’ mathematics achievement in relation to school locale, county location, looping status, SES, grade and class size, and access to upper-level mathematics courses in Tennessee. (Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 2003).
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Introduction to Ron Smith’s and Lisa Music’s Articles
variable as lives anywhere—a fact that could surprise people not familiar with the variability of rural places. But there is much in common in these stories, centering on connections to family, neighbors, and always to the land.
Why all the rush to publish these articles? It’s a long story having to do with competing individual and community purposes for education, the ways in which the game of schooling is played, and the struggles that construct what rural people come to view as meaningful. For instance, rural people (e.g., Center faculty and students)
generally don’t learn in school that the rural world is meaningful. You can find that view represented occasionally in independent movies, and great American fiction has often explored related themes. Little of this outlook is conveyed through rural schooling however. (Many exceptions exist, though one suspects these exceptions constitute a minority even of rural schools.)
How do I know what is “Rural”? Ron Smith
I grew up on a farm in central Ohio about 40 minutes outside of Columbus. I believed that working the ground, planting and harvesting crops, baling hay and caring for livestock made me a rural person. I still believe this to be true, but I always thought that for anyone else to be rural they needed to have a life similar to mine. Due in large part to my limited exposure to life outside of my localized community I never considered other forms of existence as being rural.
Attending a small junior college in West Virginia my freshman year provided opportunities to drive around the mountains and witness a lifestyle that was completely foreign to what I had experienced in central Ohio. From my viewpoint, the folks living in the mountains weren't rural. They appeared to me to be “hillbillies” and “backward,” either ignorant or not concerned with their situation in life. Looking back, I did not realize that many citizens, of a much more urban society than where I grew up, had looked at me with the same disdain that I had shown to the rural poor in West Virginia.
that there was no quantitative answer as to the requirements for one to be classified as rural. I just wanted a formula such as 3x + 4y = rural so that I could classify rural folks very easily. The definition, provided by the United States Government, that to be rural one has to live in a community with less than 2500 people would be helpful (Cromartie, 2003), but this definition would not capture the special characteristics of rural that I was seeking. Due to the difficulty in finding a quantitative definition, the search for a qualitative definition took on a new importance.
The qualitative aspects of being rural become rather vague and complex. Betty Rios proposed a qualitative definition for rural (Rios, 1988) which includes a multitude of characteristics that can be used to identify rural, but her definition seems awkward. In order to get a better idea of what it means to be rural, I decided to do my own searching for an answer. My quest began by considering some of the rural individuals whom I have had the pleasure to know.
feel the attachment to the land. This concept of a subsistence farmer is the ideal of rural with which I most relate.
In West Virginia, farming was not as common as it was in Ohio. There were some folks who had stock, but farming was not as easy as it was in Ohio. Strong family ties were evident in that part of West Virginia, however, with many folks appearing to be very attached to their communities. This strong sense of community was similar to my experiences in Ohio, but the lack of cultivating the land made this different to me.
The rural folks in Arkansas, where I now live, experience a couple of different types of settings. There are the rural mountain people living primarily in the Ozark and Ouachita mountain regions. The land is too rough to do very much cultivating, but these folks do raise cattle, chickens, and hogs. Many folks have lived for generations on family farms that have been handed down to children that remain on the farm. These folks live in very small communities that have traditionally had a very strong community
I also have friends whose family are ranchers in Wyoming, and who offered an insight to their experience of rural existence. From their perspective, they have a small ranch, which consists of about 2000 acres. In Ohio, West Virginia, and Arkansas that amount of land would make them a very large landholder or farmer, but my Wyoming friends maintain a relatively small-scale operation by the standards of the west.
I conclude that the size of the farm--the extent of acreage--is not an indicator of the amount of “ruralness” of a farmer or rancher. Despite the seemingly immense landmass of family ranches, the ranchers are very connected to their stock and ranch. I believe that they also recognize the importance of small communities, because the distances between cities in the west are great.
period of time. There are many hunting and fishing guides who fit in this category. Another interesting population to consider would be American Indians, living on reservations, whose experience of life would differ substantially from mine and those I know personally. Are these folks less rural than farmers?
How do we quantify who is rural? I have a less definitive sense of what rural is than when this adventure began. My quest will continue.
Perhaps the best definition that one can find comes from individuals who consider themselves to be rural. I ask them what it is that makes them rural. Their answers
depend on their circumstances. Their answer will be correct, even if it is only correct for them. How do we comprehend the wide array of answers coming from all the rural settings that are present in our society? The comprehension seems almost impossible when international contexts are also considered! Thus, my conclusion is that the definition of rural is a dynamic construct that eludes formal confinement. So possibly I must subscribe to an idea that a person is rural if that individual thinks of herself or himself as rural. In trying to use my findings, I am realizing that the importance of defining rural is of less value than an attempt to identify common characteristics of rural folks. If we can identify these common characteristics, then we will have a better idea of what it means to be rural.
References
Cromartie, John (2003, August 21). Measuring Rurality: New Definitions in 2003. Retrieved December 23, 2005, from United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service Web site:
Rios, Betty R. (1988, March). "Rural"--A Concept Beyond Definition? ERIC Digest. . Retrieved December 23, 2005, from EricDigests.org Web site:
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-929/concept.htm
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Growing Up Rural Lisa Music
I am 35 years old, have three children age 7 and under, have a full time teaching position, and I am pursuing a doctorate in mathematics education. I know what you’re thinking…this woman must be insane!’ Sometimes I wonder myself. Let me tell you what has brought me to this seemingly crazy point in my life: pursuit of a doctoral degree.
Growing Up Rural
deep snow, the road traveling down our hill served as a glorious play area where we could ride a sled or inner tube. In the summer, the hills would be covered with wonderful green trees.
Each year my parents would raise a garden. Gardening was both a necessity and a preference. It was an essential part of our way of life. In the spring you could smell the freshly tilled dirt. The tomato plants would be started in a windowsill and then
transplanted when the time was right. There were many items planted in the garden. Among them were tomatoes, green onions, potatoes, green beans, and corn. It was not unusual to pick green onions and eat them right there in the garden and we all dreaded when it was time to string beans to get them ready for canning. It was an adventure to dig for the potatoes and amazing to find how many had grown under the soil. Many would be put in a bin that was built to store them in coolness of the pump-house. The pump-house served the dual purpose of storing food for the winter months and providing shelter for the pump and holding tank that would retrieve water from the well and hold it for our use. This same pump-house and well are still in use today. My family also still raises a garden, except that now it is more of a preference than a necessity.
could purchase the necessities. Every once in a while, my other grandmother would call for either my sister or me to travel with her on her route to deliver the mail. This was a fun adventure for us, to ride around on the rural roads. It wouldn’t be unusual for my grandmother to provide the stamps for people’s letters or to find a gift waiting for her in the mailbox because she had given someone in need a helping hand.
From entering school as a first grade student through my eighth grade year, I attended the same elementary school. It didn’t seem to take very long before you knew the name of every student in your grade as well as the names of their brothers and sisters. Every once in a while a new student would enroll at the school. It was rare that anyone who had attended the school for a couple of years would leave. I attended the same high school that almost my entire eighth grade graduating class also attended. I was able to take the higher-level courses that were offered at the school.
Even the higher-level courses at my rural high school did not provide the information that students at metropolitan high schools were receiving. It was a harsh reality that I had to face, and I believe that this shock to my system had an impact on my decision to become an educator. Even though I had been educated during my high school years by some of the best teachers that one could ask for, the limited resources made it difficult for the scheduling of the most advanced courses.
ACCLAIM
ACCLAIM has influenced the way I think about rural life. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and securing a teaching job at a technical college, I decided that I would work on a master’s degree in mathematics. The closest university that offered a master’s degree in mathematics was a two-and-one-half-hour drive. This pretty much secured my fate that I would not be receiving a master’s degree in
mathematics. I had to choose something else.
As I was finishing my master’s degree (in something else) I was made aware of the ACCLAIM doctoral program. It was an amazing opportunity for someone from a rural area such as mine. With the program that ACCLAIM offered I could actually earn a doctoral degree in mathematics education and not have to move away from my family and my job! I applied to be a member of a doctoral cohort with the hopes that they were looking for a person such as me. I was thrilled when I received the notification that I was accepted to be a member of the ACCLAIM Doctoral Cohort 2.
The first summer as a member of the cohort was an exciting one to say the least. I believe that I could not have been placed among a more wonderful group of people. It was stimulating to be able to attend classes that would serve to expand my knowledge of mathematics and education as well as characteristics of rural areas. The instructors that were chosen to teach our courses worked to increase our knowledge of pedagogy, rural sociology, and mathematics content.
very difficult for me to see what was meant when I was told that I was “strong” for being able to be in the program and take the courses during the summer. My mind would keep going back to the thought that I hoped my children would remember me when I returned home. Five weeks seems more like five years when you are away from your loved ones. I am now preparing to attend the third and last summer session as an ACCLAIM student. After completing two summer sessions I anticipate that I will be better prepared for this one. I don’t imagine that it will be any easier to leave my family for the five weeks, but this time we know what to expect.
What are the courses like during the year? Our courses in the fall and spring semesters take place online, and we meet online once a week for a synchronous session during which we are able to discuss the course readings and assignments with each other and the instructor. Taking courses online has its advantages and disadvantages. One has to make adjustments; it takes discipline and determination. The biggest advantage for me, considering my location and the distance that I would have to travel to a university, is that I am actually able to enroll in the courses!
The Future
No one can predict the future and I certainly don’t know what the future may hold for my family and me, but I am sure that it will be exciting. My participation as a
Feature
ACCLAIM Research Summary Contributes to Handbook for Online Teaching
The Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) designed a mathematics education doctoral program which is very unique in that it allows students to retain full-time jobs while pursuing a doctoral degree. This structure includes the delivery of coursework online throughout the school year. The importance of providing excellent instruction was uppermost in the minds of the ACCLAIM management team when they commissioned a summary of the extant literature on online teaching in order to provide faculty teaching in the ACCLAIM
program with guidance for conducting online coursework. The goal was to maximize the effectiveness of the ACCLAIM doctoral program.
Robert Mayes, formerly with West Virginia University, volunteered to undertake the task. The result of his endeavor became an occasional paper for the ACCLAIM research initiative and can be accessed at
http://www.acclaim-math.org/docs/occasional_papers/OP_06_Mayes.pdf .
The work already completed by Mayes in collaboration with CLT-West was then revised and refocused more specifically to the online teaching of mathematics. It is slated for inclusion as a chapter in Principles of Effective Online Teaching: A Handbook for Educators Developing E-Learning being published by The Informing Science Press. Watch for it soon at http://ispress.org .
Third ACCLAIM Doctoral Cohort
The Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) is taking applications for its third cohort of students, who earn doctoral degrees in mathematics education. The degree is offered as a joint effort of five research universities (OU, UofL, UK, UTK, WVU) and the program maintains a genuine interest in rural Appalachia.
Brief facts:
• A new cohort (the third in this program) is forming to begin study in summer 2007. At present 30 other students are completing coursework and dissertations. Application deadline is September 15, 2006.
• Students stay in place and keep their jobs. This is almost unheard of in
mathematics education doctoral programs. ACCLAIM’s goal is local capacity— not the development of expertise for export elsewhere.
• This is a rigorous program. It was approved by—and designed with the assistance of—the National Science Foundation. The Foundation continues to be very
supportive.
• Coursework focuses on mathematics education in rural areas and includes courses in mathematics, mathematics education, rural education, and research.
• Mathematics education is a seller’s market. Common roles include: district administrator or supervisor, researcher, evaluator, administrator in non-profit or government agency. Some graduates remain K-12 teachers because that’s what they love most.
Apply online. http://www.acclaim-math.org//application.aspx
The 2007 doctoral cohort coordinator is Terri Hopkins [email protected].
Here’s What’s Happening in Our Neck of the Woods
Capacity Building Initiative Cohort 1 update
Caroline Best, a member of ACCLAIM’s first cohort, became the first ACCLAIM doctoral student to complete the ACCLAIM doctoral program when she finished her dissertation entitled Rural, Community College Student's Perception of Mathematics and successfully defended at 9:00am on Monday, August 7, 2006. The abstract for her dissertation follows:
This qualitative study explores mathematics education from the perspective of community college students who are recent graduates of a rural high school. The research questions relate to the students’ perception of their understanding of rural, their rural high school experience, the factors that contributed to their preparedness or lack of
preparedness for college-level mathematics, and the effect that their rural education had on their preparation for college. Students enrolled in a mathematics course at a suburban community college in East Tennessee were asked to complete a survey after midterm of fall semester 2005. Information about the location of their high school, age, and whether they consider themselves rural were used to screen students for an interview. Students were purposefully selected who graduated from one of eight rural high schools located in counties with an economic status of transitional or at-risk, were between the ages of 18 and 24, and responded to an email sent to set-up a time for an interview. Eighteen students were interviewed fall semester 2005 with follow-up interviews with seven students the following spring semester. Findings include the following: students from at-risk counties equate rural with isolated, country, and poor; students who graduated from rural high schools in transitional counties do not see rural as a major factor in their
education compared to students from at-risk counties; and students from schools in at-risk counties are negative about their high school mathematics experience. Factors stated by these students overwhelmingly fault the teacher’s ability to explain the math, teacher favoritism toward certain students, uncaring attitude of teacher, and the low expectations of teachers and the school administration.
The Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics is in its third year with Cohort 2, comprised of fifteen high school and college instructors from six states. The participants are currently enrolled in the last of three intensive, five-week summer seminars at the University of Louisville. With only three courses left in the program, the students are preparing to disperse to their chosen graduate schools and to begin research in mathematics education and rural sociology. Recently, several members of Cohort 2 participated in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference held in St. Louis, MO. Three of the students, Sharilyn Granade, Debbie Waggoner, and Courtenay Mays presented at the research pre-session of the conference. Their presentation involved research they had conducted on mathematics anxiety of liberal arts mathematics students and beginning calculus.
Additionally Sherry Jones recently published an article in the last issue of Rural Math Educator about her experience in the ACCLAIM program, titled, “ACCLAIM Doctoral Program is Making a Difference.” She has also submitted an article to Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School dealing with mathematical patterns in
Native American artifacts, specifically looking at the mathematical potential in birch bark scrolls and other artifacts.
In February, Michael Ratliff attended the NSF CLT PIs meeting in Washington, DC, and participated in the poster session and was a co-presenter at the
ACCLAIM/AAMTE conference in September of last year. He has also submitted an article to Rural Mathematics Educator.
Update by: Craig Howley
Third ACCLAIM Research Symposium
The Research Symposium is a major event for the Center, and this update is devoted entirely to a report of the third of these, which took place in Ohio over three days from May 18 through May 20, 2006. The symposium featured prominent roles for
ACCLAIM students, especially our second cohort of doctoral students. Three members of the first cohort also participated.
We also brought in ACCLAIM faculty scholars from around the country,
including quite a few who had not taken part in the two previous symposia. Overall, the event seemed to stage a generative mix of new and familiar voices, of rural and urban voices, and of voices articulating varied cultures—and it brought rising and established scholars together as colleagues.
The Structure and the Events
More than 40 scholars met at Cherry Valley Lodge in Newark, Ohio, to hold the symposium titled Mathematics Education: Reform and Resistance in the Life-worlds of Rural Schools and Communities. Participants seem to have found the 2-day event intense, lively, fast-paced, and provocative.
The symposium was divided between three plenary talks on the one hand (by David Gruenewald, Marta Civil, and Sarah Lubienski) and on the other hand by eight small-group conversations (sponsored and led by Alan DeYoung, Craig Howley, Paul Theobald, Noran Moffett, Jim Lewis, Aimee Howley, Ted Coladarci, and Rico Gutstein). ACCLAIM doctoral students cordially and effectively facilitated each of these events, and prepared notes that will be used to inform a proceedings document.
These more formal sessions were punctuated, as well, by six panels. Three panels composed of two doctoral students and a faculty member began the response to the plenary talks. In addition, the symposium convened three topical panels: (1) What Does Resistance to Best Practice Mean? (all panelists were faculty); (2) Students Interrogate Participants (all panelists were students, and the students posed questions to faculty participants); and (3) Students Sum Up (all panelists were students, who reflected on issues, dilemmas, and insights raised).
Students’ Roles
A privileged purpose of the symposium was to help students problematize issues of reform and resistance, as a possible entrée to worthy topics, issues, dilemmas, and research questions—or at least as an insight or template relevant to the way that topics or issues might be problematized. A symposium of this sort offers a broader view of the work of “problematizing”, and from multiple perspectives. They can begin to appreciate the messiness, missteps, and tensions of actually doing research.
Students (Craig Green, Kevin Kenady, and Johnny Belcher) introduced plenary speakers, responded as panelists (Craig Green, Jamie Fugitt, Nickie Smith, Victor Brown, Sharilyn Granade, Paula Schlesinger) to plenary speakers, interrogated faculty as panelists (Jeremy Zelkowski, Courtenay Mayes, Mike Ratliff, Paula
facilitated the small-group conversations (Debbie Waggoner, Lisa Music, Courtenay Mayes, Nickie Smith, Kevin Kenady, Paula Schlesinger, Johnny Belcher, and Jamie Fugitt), and took notes during the conversations (Deb Britt, Ron Smith, Mike Ratliff, Jeremy Zelkowski, Sherry Jones, Jamie Fugitt, Victor Brown, Sharilyn Granade). In addition, Sue Nichols (from the first cohort of Center students took part in
discussions) took photographs, as did Lori Spencer, of the Research Initiative staff. Barbie Buckner (also from the first cohort) took part in all sessions as conversationalist. As previously noted, Craig Green (another first cohort participant) introduced keynote speaker David Gruenewald because Craig had interviewed Gruenewald for the Rural Mathematics Educator.
Occasional Paper, once all the papers developed by plenary speakers have been edited and all notes have been synthesized.
The Proceedings Illustrated in Brief
The substantive good and the bad news are perhaps the same: Both the failure of resistance and the success of reform are momentary. Both are our responsibility, and so are the moments of success and failure. In short, we ought to be less certain about reform and resistance than we usually seem to be, and this is where research comes into play.
Rural people understand resistance in their everyday worlds, however. The secret about keeping animals in a field, for instance, has less to do with fences than most people think and more to do with the nourishment inside the fence. Animals like to be fed well. When they are not fed well, they resist. Fences won’t hold them.
Students are the same. Far too often, they are confined to huge feed lots where there’s no food or rotten food…and an awful stench of excrement. They and their
Other sessions, by contrast, dealt more with the system-world than with the life-world. Farmers worry about the system-world too. They sit down at their computers and stare at the bottom line. It doesn’t look too good. Do the math. World-class cheap food in America. Big and expensive machines that guzzle fossil fuel. Farmers hear from business and government alike that resistance is futile. This is the system-world of farming. Not a pretty picture.
It should sound familiar to mathematics educators in rural schools. Schools are this way, too, and also the systems within the educational system-world that govern what we make and don’t make of mathematics in schools: what “school mathematics” is, who it is for, what it does, and, yes, some say, who owns it.
vantage. So did Aimee Howley, in her conversation, titled Resistance to Grades as a Technology of Surveillance, but in a kind of bottom-up look from the classroom.
Still other sessions dealt with something rather different from life-word and system-world—call it the aesthetic dimension or the spiritual enterprise or the life of the mind. Take your pick. Interestingly, the farmer, too, knows a great deal about this dimension of life. There is no good reason for doing the hard and dicey work of farming except the love of it. Farming is contrary to all common sense—or rather it’s contrary to the conventional wisdom that masquerades as common sense. There are brilliant farmer-writers who explain all these matters and at least one of them should get the Nobel Prize soon (and probably won’t): The ascendant practical thread in American mainstream culture dismisses this outlook as romanticism, as if America were a hotbed of classicism, which it’s not. No, it’s a lot worse than that. Valuing this dimension to life, therefore, is a kind of resistance in itself.
Math and research are intellectual or even spiritual matters. This is why our students like math. We have actual evaluation data to substantiate that claim quite solidly. A thoughtful love of what one does is always a big help, no matter how practical the mission. And intellectual pursuits are arguably best done for the thoughtful love of the work.
It’s true that one might call this sense of critique the Nancy Reagan school of intellectual inquiry: Just say no. Resistance is more than saying no, of course. It’s elaborating issues and developing evidence one way or the other. The “one way or the other” is where objectivity comes in.
What, in any case, can such resistance be founded on? Sarah in her talk, Reflections from a Working-class Scholar who Resists and Embraces Scholarship in Mathematics Education considered many of these issues from the experience of her own career, partly the resistance of the academy to working-class scholars—and partly the sort of resistance that the project of research represents. Jim Lewis’s session (Whose reform is it anyway? Finding common cause with Joe Sixpack) belonged to this category as well, and so did mine (Mathematics as Elite Knowledge) and Ted Coladarci’s (Conceptualizing the Dissertation with Rural and Research – and Graduation – in Mind). Working also from this vantage is Noran Moffett (What is Research that Resists the Educational Status Quo?).
Planning to Plan The Fourth ACCLAIM Research Symposium
A number of participants—students and faculty—suggested that if the Center is able to offer a fourth symposium, it would profitably focus on the experience of the dissertation, both substantively and experientially. Sarah Lubienski’s plenary talk and Ted Coladarci’s offered examples of both substantive and experiential accounts of the dissertation process, for instance.
ACCLAIM Research Symposium. Proposals are in preparation; fingers crossed; stay tuned.
AAMTE (formerly teacher development initiative) Update by: Edna Schack (AAMTE president)
The vision of the AAMTE Board is to create a thriving, self-sustaining association that promotes and supports the improvement of mathematics teacher education in the central Appalachian region with a focus on the importance of place. While building the “behind the scenes” infrastructure for a successful organization, the board and volunteers are also working on the plans for a fall conference October 26-28 at Morehead State University in Morehead, KY. More information will be forthcoming, but mark your calendars now.
AAMTE is a regional organization including areas of six states: Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Do you coach mathematics teachers? Do you work as a mathematics specialist in your school or district? Do you supervise student teachers or interns? If you are involved in the education of teachers who will or do teach mathematics at any grade level, we invite you to join our
organization. The purpose and goals of this organization can be found at
Director stated so well in a previous edition of the RME, “No organization can hope to realize its full potential without the involvement of its membership.” Thank you to all members who responded to this call and who will be assisting with various committees:
Dr. Holly Anthony Technology Committee
Ann Bartosh Membership, Recruitment, and Publicity Dr. Willis Johnson Technology Committee
Christie Perry Conference Committee Marilyn Rogers Conference Committee Dr. Robert Thomas Communication and Place
Dr. Barbara Walters Membership, Recruitment, and Publicity
There are five committees [link to committee descriptions] that you can join. If you are interested in becoming more involved in AAMTE, please send your committee
preferences to Rhonda Creech, AAMTE Board Member in an email to
([email protected]) with a subject heading of “AAMTE committee volunteer.”
Resource Review
forum, and resources/weblinks that address issues related to math anxiety, math attitudes, the building of math confidence, and overall best practices in the teaching of
mathematics. The URL for Mathitudes is http://www.coe.fau.edu/mathitudes .
Announcements
In March, 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics released the new locale code system, which locates schools by distance from urbanized clusters (census-defined clusters of the smallest census units, blocks, that meet density standards). This system is available for use immediately and it will eventually replace the current 8-code scheme (Geverdt & Phan, 2006). The assignment, in short, improves the validity of the assignment system. The change is a substantial improvement over the previous locale assignment scheme, because it makes assignments on the basis of the latitude and longitude of the school rather than by the zip code address of the school.
Publication Opportunities
Would we be interested in your work? The answer is yes if the words “rural” and
“mathematics” appear often in your manuscript. We welcome distinctive and non-trendy scholarship. Empirical work (quantitative or qualitative) is a priority, but we will
consider theoretical pieces, historical research or biography, and very well argued
commentary as well. Contact Craig Howley at [email protected] or George Johanson at [email protected] for more information.
Disclaimer
The Rural Mathematics Educator is produced at Ohio University and published electronically by the Research Initiative of the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM).
The Research Initiative is housed in McCracken Hall, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701-2979.
Office: 740-593-9869 Fax: 740-593-0477
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://acclaim.coe.ohiou.edu
(Louisville), the University of Tennessee (Knoxville), and West Virginia University (Morgantown).
“This material is based upon the work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0119679. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”
Upcoming Events
Tennessee Mathematics Teachers’ Association Conference Mathematics Teachers of Tennessee - Northwest
September 22-23, 2006
The theme of the conference is Integrating Real Instructional Strategies. The conference will be held in Martin, Tennessee on. Registration forms can be found at http://www.utm.edu/departments/cens/math/meeting/forms/RegistrationForm.doc .
AAMTE
Appalachian Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators Morehead, KY
The primary audience for this conference includes those individuals committed to improving mathematics education in Appalachia. Because AAMTE is a regional
organization with a membership that represents the range of stakeholders who are involved with mathematics education in Appalachia the theme for this conference is Looking for the Commonalities. The conference will address significant issues that cross state borders, that effect more than one group of stakeholders, or that need regional attention to obtain a resolution. For information contact Karen Mitchell at
NCTM Regional Conference and Exposition Chicago, Illinois
September 20-22, 2006
The theme for this conference is Winds of Change and it will be hosted by the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics. More information can be obtained at http://www.nctm.org/meetings/chicago/ .
NCTM Regional Conference and Exposition Phoenix Arizona
October 5-7, 2006
Mathematics. More information can be obtained at http://www.nctm.org/meetings/phoenix/ .
What to Look for
