RME v4n2
FEATURE
Selecting the Clay: Theorizing Place-based Mathematics Education in the Rural Context (Interview with David Gruenewald)
Interviewer: Craig Green
As a craftsman potter can tell you, the makeup of the beginning clay determines the quality of the final product. One of the founding ideas of the ACCLAIM program is to seek out teaching and learning opportunities that contribute to the success of teachers and students in their rural settings. Place-based mathematics education is seen as one of those promising opportunities. The purpose of this article is to continue finding the “beginning clay” of what is place-based mathematics education. To help move
consideration of place-based mathematical instruction from the study of something that seems to be more an idea than a researchable practice, many of those involved with ACCLAIM believe a main ingredient should be a grounding of theory in critical pedagogy of place (CPOP).
education. Gruenewald currently has two books forthcoming from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Place-Conscious Education and Place-Based Education in the Global Age (edited with Gregory Smith.) The interviewer is Craig Green, third year member of ACCLAIM cohort I.
Craig: Where did your interest in “place” come from?
discourse had begun to recognize place, but it hadn’t yet begun to explore the many ways that these other conversations about place challenge the very meaning of education.
Craig: You advocate combining critical pedagogy and place-conscious education, and point out that one is argued more by urban educators and one more by rural educators. Why is that?
then urban African Americans. In other words, issues of race and class are just as palpable in rural places are they are in urban. My guess is that critical pedagogues have tended to neglect place because educators who embrace place have tended to sidestep issues of difference and power. This is why it is so important for place-based education to borrow from other place-conscious traditions, critical geography for example, that do examine issues of power and cultural politics.
Craig: What issues do you have with the traditional critical pedagogy of Freire, Giroux, and McLaren?
David: Chet Bowers, of course, has for a long while been pointing out what he believes to be fundamental and unredeemable flaws with critical pedagogy. These are very
important and insightful critiques that can be found in almost all of Bowers’ voluminous work. Just as I have great respect for this critical work, I have great respect for the critical pedagogy of Freire, Giroux, and McLaren. But like most social theorists, these particular critical pedagogues mainly ignore the land, the total ecological places where others and we live. Unlike Bowers, however, I believe that critical pedagogy can and should be “greened” and redeemed. The best evidence I can point to here is the great work done by critical pedagogues John Huckle and Steven Sterling in Britain, and John Fien and Ian Robottom in Australia. Ed O’Sullivan in Canada is another example. Their writings on sustainability and transformative education demonstrate an integrated
approach to critical pedagogy and ecological conscience. Critical educational
tradition. For me the important question is whether and how we pay attention to the cultural and the ecological dimension of places. This is a problem that I hope to approach in alliance with a diverse representation of other critical educators.
Craig: Why do you prefer "place-conscious education” to "place-based education"?
Craig: What is the main difference between the Social Reconstructivism Movement lead by George Counts and Harold Rugg in the 1930’s and the idea of critical pedagogy of place?
David: The 20th century traditions of reconstructionism, progressivism, and radicalism in education all suggest elements of a place-based approach. Theodore Brameld, one of the leaders of social reconstructivism, was a big supporter of a large part of the learning happening outside of school and in the community. Someone should do a detailed historical analysis of the relationship between these earlier movements and PBE. This would be valuable work. For example, I’d like to know why, despite all the energy behind these movements, schools look pretty much the same as they always have. In other words, these earlier movements have largely failed to transform schooling. I don’t know if PBE can transform schooling as an institution, but I do believe that schooling needs to be rethought, and rethought not just in terms of earlier movements and
Craig: Native American educators advocate a “culture-based” education. How do you see that as distinct from a “place-conscious” education?
David: With respect to some indigenous communities, these may be nearly synonymous terms. Overall, however, I see place as a concretization of the abstract notion of culture common in educational discourse. In my state of Washington, “culturally-responsive teaching” has become another educational slogan, one that is used as a cheer for teaching for higher test scores. The story goes like this: if teachers can use pedagogy appropriate to a student’s home culture, and draw upon a student’s cultural funds of knowledge in the curriculum, then the student will achieve more in traditional school measures. Is this being responsive to culture? To what in culture should we as educators be responsive? Place is a good place to begin looking for answers to this.
wondering, somewhat pessimistically, if this is possible. The Alaska Native Knowledge Network, though, has in the past two decades made great strides in this direction. Their vision of culturally responsive teaching and culturally responsive schools is a positive example of the institutionalization of place-based education in a large and diverse region inhabited by diverse Native peoples. Culturally responsive and place-based educators can learn a lot from indigenous educational traditions worldwide, which have, of course, always been intertwined with place. The purposes of these traditions, however, are so different from the purposes of schooling. I’m reminded of Greg Cajete’s great book, Look to the Mountain. In this “ecology” of indigenous education, Cajete says that education is “for life’s sake.” This just doesn’t mix well with the grammar of schooling, the culture of accountability that dominates schools. In a sense, one of the goals of place-conscious education is how—to use Wes Jackson’s phrase—to become native to a place, for life’s sake. That is, place-based education is for everyone; everyone has the right and the responsibility to know, to belong to, and to live well to the places he or she inhabits.
Craig: Some writers have elaborated the idea of "the commons," indicating objects or ideas to which everyone has access. Where does place-conscious education intersect "the commons," in your view?
important to place. For example, there is tension between private and public space and the responsibility of citizens and leaders to act for the common good. At many different scales, we can ask questions about the tragedy of the commons and how they might be prevented or ameliorated. One of the more powerful concepts associated with the commons is that of enclosure. Chet Bowers has been writing about this and has a book out or on the way. Enclosure can mean privatization and lack of public access to places, but it can also mean increasing restriction on what one is able to do or think. I don’t think it is a stretch to claim that state-sponsored “government” education in the U.S. acts as an official system of enclosure on what people ought to learn, know, and do. The more scripted the standards and testing movement becomes, the less access teachers and students have to experiences outside the script. It is not that the script is inherently all that bad, but there are major opportunity costs that come with increased regimentation. These of course are rarely counted, quantified, or even acknowledged. Why? Because we have been enclosed by an education that makes it hard to see beyond the familiar fences.
Craig: What have you been reading lately and is there a connection to place?
something about “setting” as a literary device from these books, but a focus on place promises so much more. Even very young children can begin to experience the Freirian act of reading the word and the world, or connecting education to lived experience. Again, this is the power of place. I think it can bring a whole new experiential dimension to early literacy experiences. I’m excited by what others like Mira are doing with the concept.
Craig: What do you think about the social use of mathematics, per se—in the sense of its contributions to technology, business, and the influence of that usage on rural
communities in particular?
David: Talk about changing the subject! When I was in first grade, I was identified as good at math. I liked math and did well all through school and college. It made me feel smart. It even made me feel smarter and thus better than others. This sense of
superiority is the cousin to the sense of inferiority people experience when they do poorly in math or other school subjects. Much has been said about the damage done, especially to girls, from doing poorly in math. But I think the sense of superiority I felt is just as bad. It separated me from others, and it pitted me against my peers in a constant
success in math and science would lead to future success in college and in the technology job market. I was going to be an engineer, make some real money. This for me was the social use of mathematics—it was a vehicle for social promotion in a highly competitive and individualistic climate.
The social uses you suggest—contributions in technology and business—have clearly brought many benefits to people, though such benefits are experienced unevenly and also have related and mainly overlooked costs. As Bowers has written, technology amplifies some aspects of culture and reduces or diminishes others. Perhaps the question for any community—urban or rural—is how to mediate and guide the impact of
technology and business so that it enhances the quality of community life. I have no doubt that math has a role to play in answering that question. But it is a moral and social problem, not a mathematical one.
Craig: ACCLAIM is supportive of the idea of a place-conscious mathematics education in rural schools, but few people have really imagined what that might look like. What do you think is needed to engage in this work?
David: For the last four years I have been teaching PBE to undergraduate and graduate secondary teacher education students in all content areas. Math has been the most difficult school subject for me to get excited about with these students from the
other hand, often imagine themselves teaching pre-calculus and calculus to juniors and seniors. They are often intrigued by the real-world problem solving approach of PBE, but they are also keen on preparing the AP kids. These upper-level classes tend to mirror undergraduate math in skill development and leave little room for experimentation and collaboration with other subjects. As long as the purpose of high school math is to prepare for or mirror the undergraduate math curriculum—and there is a new push to retool high school math for college readiness—the space for place will be limited. And as long as place-based approaches to math happen mainly in low tracks or basic levels, place-based math will probably carry a stigma associated with remediation.
My former colleague and math educator Gary Davis, who is now at Dartmouth, used to talk at me excitedly about mathematical dilemmas that I’d try my best to follow. Now, he was not at all interested in place, but he would frequently ask, why teach math anyway? To which I would respond, why teach anything anyway? These are the kind of conversations we need more of among a diverse group of educators from different
disciplines.
themselves. Of course, he is an elite case, sort of the Michael Jordan of math. He isn’t what Bob Moses has in mind teaching algebra to African American middle school kids. For Moses, math literacy is a social justice issue because it is the gateway to higher education. I’m not going to argue with that, except to point out that on the surface it is essentially the same argument George Bush has repeated in his campaign to leave no child behind.
PBE is happening all over the world, but I don’t think that it has much of a chance scaling up in U.S. public schools, especially in math, until teachers and educational leaders begin to ask fundamental questions about the purposes of education and its relationship to the places where we, and others, live. Currently, the explicit purpose of our education curriculum is to develop a standard set of skills or performances in
fragmented content areas like math. This we are told will benefit individuals and society. But teachers who implement PBE do so because they hold themselves accountable to other standards beyond those scripted in state codes or national professional
organizations. They believe, for example, that children and youth should have direct experiences studying and participating in community life. I guess the question is, do math educators believe this, and, if so, what are they doing about it? What can and is being done to begin these conversations? Maybe our dialogue is a small part of this process.
David: I am aware of few examples of a school-wide embrace of PBE. It can happen, but it takes a dedicated staff of leaders willing and able to rethink schooling and willing and able to engage with their local communities.
Craig: In your writings, you seem skeptical about the movement to align environmental education (EE) curriculum with the standards and testing movement. Do you see
potential problems with rural mathematics educators who attempt to honor the place and honor the mathematics (with attention to rigor)? Are standards and “place” compatible?
David: In terms of the meaning of words, standard and place are contrary and conflicting terms. Place is about uniqueness and difference. Standard is about sameness and
uniformity. So, on this and other levels I think they are incompatible. Here’s an interesting fact: the Oxford English Dictionary’s first entry for the word standard is “a flag… or other conspicuous object, raised on a pole to indicate the rallying point of an army.” This is interesting to me, because of the historical relationship between
bedfellows. In this context, I think that standards promote education about as well as bombs promote democracy.
The standards are so deeply entrenched in schooling that even questioning them has become taboo. I guess we’re supposed to salute and keep our thoughts to ourselves. Many of my friends tell me that it’s not the standards but the tests that are bad. But these two systems tend to work together. And it’s not a particular standard or test that causes problems. It is the way that the discourse of standards and testing now over-determines what happens in schools and the way that this discourse stands in the way of other possibilities.
Many of my colleagues believe that these acts of curricular alignment are simply pragmatic and strategic necessities given the problem of accountability. I agree. But an irresistible voice calls me away from all that. I believe, as I believe they do, that the power and dominance of standards and testing, sometimes called “rigor,” needs to be seriously questioned, strategically resisted, and ultimately transformed. It may be a simplistic dichotomy, but I think that we can either reinforce the standards and testing movement with our compliance, or problematize and transform it with our resistance. If educators truly believe that their environmental, social justice, or place-based curricula have value, why do we feel the need to justify it in terms of mandated standards that lack a real vocabulary for things like social justice and community well-being?
Probably most of us in education, being institutionalized, suffer from varying degrees of fear and internalized surveillance and oppression, which makes people want to shield and protect themselves from judgment and censure and at the same time seek external validation. But there is another problem here having to do with opportunity costs. The ritual of alignment can also become a huge waste of time—misplaced
emphasis that might be better spent on creative teaching, or on reflecting on the purposes of teaching and how poorly many of these are met though content-area standardization. How much effort is wasted preparing to perform and performing for NCATE [National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education—Ed.], not to mention the test
This does not mean that I don’t find value in some of the existing standards or that I object to quality criteria. I just think that given the conundrum we’re in with NCLB [No Child Left Behind—Ed.] that quality criteria need to be rethought outside the cage the standards keep us locked up in. A great example of this kind of thinking is the Rural School and Community Trust’s Place-based Education Portfolio Rubric. This assessment tool was developed in cooperation with Harvard and ETS—what a great pedigree! Better even are the kinds of outcomes the tool is designed to document and measure. Content-area quality criteria, it seems to me, needs to be contextualized in a larger conversation about educational quality and purpose.
Craig: Critics of place-based mathematics state that the movement is just another fuzzy math movement. They see the “fluff” but no rigor. How might we proceed to avoid this perception?
David: To me the charge of fuzziness or fluff is comically ironic. To accuse PBE of lacking rigor is essentially to avoid the very difficult intellectual challenge of imagining how schools might actually better serve people and the places where they live. This is harder than rocket science, and maybe those critics just aren’t up to the intellectual challenge.
This doesn’t exactly help answer critics, but I think there is truth in it. The
PBE by claiming it increases achievement in traditional skill performances and outcome measures. My preferred strategy is to de-center the discourse of standards, testing, and rigor, and foreground instead the missing conversation about the relationship between places and community life. Maybe we need to pull some set theorists and other
accomplished mathematicians and scientists into this necessarily collaborative venture. I bet they could help with the very difficult educational problems we are facing today.
Craig: Concerning the special concerns of actual land, do you consider place-conscious education as a rural issue only? Could the work of Stephan Nathan Haymes in the urban area be considered just a social justice issue and not a socioecological one?
David: There are quite a number of theorists working in the tradition of critical
geography who embrace place and forget the land. Their attention is focused instead, as in the case of Haymes, on the very concrete problems of the city—racism and all kinds of related social, economic, and political power struggles. Leaders in the environmental justice movement, such as Robert Bullard, claim that ecological sustainability or a land ethic will never happen without social justice. I agree. I also tend to think that social justice is not a possibility until people begin to recognize and rectify the relationship between people and the ecological contexts that make possible any cultural formation.
think of the land with someone’s foot on your neck. Another reason is that urban dwellers can easily forget about the land, or even the air. It just isn’t part of some people’s day. As Paul Shepard wrote in Nature and Madness, the city is a poor example of habitat with its “aberrant flora and fauna.” This is why it is so important to reinsert the land into people’s experience of the city, and it’s happening all over the world. Urban farms, gardens and other ecological restorations are part of numerous revitalization projects in urban spaces, and many times schoolchildren are involved. People are naturally drawn to other living things, and place-conscious educators can help people everywhere remember that we really are part of a more-than-human world.
FEATURE
Meet the Teacher Life Lessons
Belinda Linville
I was that kid. You know, the obnoxious one on the block who was always bossing the other kids around. There were about twenty kids in my little rural
pastimes was playing school. I, of course, was the teacher, and when I gave orders, the kids listened. I was hooked.
I’ve known since I was two that I was going to be a teacher. My mom said my favorite things to do were read and put together puzzles. Pretty soon I developed a knack for numbers due, in part, to my love for “The Price is Right”. My mom said I would stack cans of vegetables and boxes of macaroni on the coffee table and make her guess the prices. I attribute becoming a math teacher to Bob Barker. I would thank him myself, but I haven’t made it to Los Angeles.
Life was chugging along as expected; elementary school, then middle school, where I became involved in sports and student council. I remember a career project I did in the sixth grade. My brochure had a big apple on the front. It was all about how to become a teacher. It never occurred to me I might not get to go to college. My parents both worked, my dad at a flour mill and my mom first at Sears and then part-time at the Post Office. We barely scraped by. I had heard of something called scholarships, however, that were given to kids with good grades. I had no other choice; I became a straight-A student. Luckily, that came easily.
Life continued to chug along as expected; through high school I continued to rack up those As while making time for a social life. My boyfriend was from my
you go with me? Check yes or no,” just like the George Strait song. Unfortunately for him, I was in first grade and didn’t know where he was “going,” so he would have to wait several years before we became a couple. It felt like we were on a pre-determined path.
Then, what could never happen to me, happened. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years, my boyfriend, now my husband, and I found ourselves stunned parents of a beautiful and brilliant little boy. My boyfriend was working a construction job, and I began working in the local video store part-time while attending high school during the day. With the help of his parents—where he lived—and from my parents—where I lived with our son—and from my grandparents, our brothers and sisters, and some special aunts, we were able to continue life. A normal life was no longer an option. I no longer participated in sports (I was never very good anyway) but I continued in Student Council, National Honor Society, Art Club, Spanish Club, etc. It still didn’t occur to me that college would be difficult. I continued my goal of trying to earn scholarships by maintaining straight As and taking every advanced course offered. I graduated with a 4.029 while working twenty hours a week. Did I mention I was a mom?
commuter college, Wright State University. My employer at the video store offered to pay one dollar toward tuition for every hour college students worked. There weren’t very many of us, but helping others who need help is a typical gesture in a small town. With this policy, about half of my junior year was paid for, but it wasn’t offered the next year.
My senior year was rough, money-wise, with no scholarships and no way to work more than the thirty hours I was already working. My parents paid for the majority of my tuition thanks, in part, to an inheritance from a kind aunt. Keeping a car reliable enough to get me back and forth every day with an hour and a half round trip proved to be an additional cost. Did I mention I was a mom?
The summer of 1992 was a busy one. I graduated summa cum laude with a 3.98 GPA in June, interviewed at a few schools and celebrated my son’s 7th birthday in July, got married in August, yes, to that same boyfriend who first dropped me a note sixteen years before, and was hired in August to start my first job in a nearby school district, Tri-County North.
I began my graduate work by taking a discovery math course one summer. Building on that, I began a Master’s Degree in middle school math at Wright State University. Here I was introduced to the Connected Math Project, which embodied the discovery math teaching style I was so taken with the summer before. Using lessons from these programs in my classroom, I saw children make connections and genuinely learn mathematical concepts that had proven difficult to conquer before. This discovery thing really worked. Maybe it was a combination of a learning style matching a teaching style, but I found a winning combination. It was typical for proficiency scores to increase an average of 40% from fourth grade to sixth grade. We attributed this success to the Connected Math Program we began the end of fifth grade. During this time I also became active in our local NEA/OEA association, and eventually became co-president. This position caused me to be heavily involved in developing, reviewing, and
implementing district policies.
I absolutely love middle school kids. I know, I know, that makes me really weird in the realm of teachers, but I wouldn’t go anywhere else. Kids this age are a perfect blend of child and adult, and I love to watch them struggle learning about who they are. I like to think I can help guide them through this process with a sincerity and respect they have a hard time finding in other areas of their lives. They know I genuinely care about them, and in return they show me respect, try hard in my class, and learn to like math a little better than they did before.
While teaching at Tri-County North, we bought a house in the country on a lot split from my grandparents’ farm, and our family grew: a girl, Lainey, in 1994, and another son, Seth, in 2000. My brother soon married and built his house next door to ours. Rural folk like to stay close. There is an old adage, “it takes a village to raise a child.” At one time, I’m not kidding, twenty-three members of our extended family lived within a half-mile radius of our home. This is a wonderful situation for raising children. It takes a village, and we are a village.
Brookville is a little bit bigger, with one hundred twenty-five students per grade level, but still a very small town. It has been difficult establishing new friendships that were as strong as the ones at my previous school, but they’re developing while I continue to stay in contact with my friends from Tri-County North. I found that kids are kids and I still love them, though they are beginning to treat me differently as I near the ages of their parents. I continue seeking professional development such as OMAP (Ohio Mathematics Academy Program) and EPIC (Encouraging Proficiency in Content: Mathematics for Middle School Teachers) and am involved in our local association.
Teaching is so much more than standards and testing. Some days, content seems secondary, as it should, to developing caring, responsible citizens. A good teacher learns how to do both at the same time. I will always be a learner, because I can improve my knowledge of content, various teaching methods, and ways to differentiate the
curriculum, all without ignoring the students’ many personal dilemmas and traumas that occur daily in middle school. How are the children expected to learn when their hair just won’t behave?
forge ahead as planned. I left them that day emotional, confident, and thankful that my experiences allowed me to help them. She called me a few weeks later to say they were going to keep the baby, and she thanked me for listening.
As I get older I see the path that was laid before me, and I smile to myself when I read or hear the saying “teachers touch lives.” The twists and turns we experience as humans help us to be not only better teachers, but better people. My experiences very much shape my ability to establish rapport and interact with middle school kids. Our oldest son graduated last year from the same school we grew up in and is pursuing an Industrial Engineering degree. He is very goal-oriented, like his mom. I’m sure he will be very successful.
I walk through the hallway of children bouncing with hormones and untamed energy. I pretend not to hear that bad word, I interject “Like, wow, no way!” in a conversation I’m passing, to giggles, grunts, and rolled eyes. I return high-fives and respond to “What’s up, home-dog?” with “Word.” I’m definitely a middle-school teacher. Am I corny? Yeah, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
EDITORIAL
Jamie Fugitt
As students arrive for the first day of algebra, Ms. Rio, the teacher, enthusiastically informs them that during the next few months they will have the opportunity to use algebra to analyze the problems of booming population growth, pollution control in crowded urban areas, traffic control and overcrowded roads, and the shortage of adequate parking in downtown areas of large cities. Does this sound like a wonderful way to capture students’ attention and involve them in real and meaningful mathematics, thus helping them understand the relevance of mathematics to their current and future lives? It may if the students live in St. Louis, Atlanta, Cincinnati, or some other large city. If the students reside in a farming community in Iowa, a fishing village in Alaska, or a mining town in Appalachia, the problems may have little relevance to them. Families of many of these students may live on plots of land consisting of several hundred acres, with the closest neighbor three miles down the road. They may have never experienced circling a parking lot for 20 minutes, hunting for a place to park, or sitting in a traffic jam on a freeway for two hours. The unpleasant stench associated with a week-long strike of sanitation workers may have never reached their noses.
suggested? Should all or at least some of the mathematical problems for rural students arise from rural settings? Should all students experience some mathematics exercises rich in rural contexts?
According to Principles and Standards of School Mathematics, students should have the opportunity to connect mathematics to ideas and concepts outside of
mathematics. “These connections can be to other subject areas and disciplines as well as to students’ daily lives” (65-66). Reshaping School Mathematics asserts, in reference to middle school mathematics, that its “focus should be on mathematics for everyday life …” (44). While it can be argued that all children share common experiences regardless of locale, many experiences of rural children are quite foreign to urban children, and vice versa. For example, many rural children have no experience negotiating a public
transportation system, while many urban children have very little understanding of storage silos for grain or the most efficient way to stack hay bales in a barn. Any of these scenarios could be the setting for rich mathematical investigation, but would most likely be ineffective for students unfamiliar with the context.
If one becomes convinced that at least the children living in rural communities should have the opportunity to experience mathematical investigations arising in rural settings, one then asks if this is currently the case. Are sufficient mathematics exercises, set in a rural context, currently available to teachers and students? An informal
research session indicates that mathematics problems in rural contexts are almost non-existent. As part of the investigation of the middle school and high school mathematics texts, three examiners reviewed more than 3,000 pages of curriculum materials. This resulted in the identification of only one six-page lesson set in a farming context and eight additional problems set in rural contexts. Although the exact number of lessons and problems set in urban contexts is not provided, the article indicates that numerous such items, including several multi-page lessons, are included in the examined texts (Schultz, 2002, p.5). (Further information about this research is reported by Dr. James Schultz in Mathematics Education in Rural Communities in Light of Current Trends in Mathematics Education.)
photographs, rather than the problems, were examined. Many of the photos, such as those of children and classrooms, were “location neutral” in that they could have
occurred in rural, suburban, or urban communities. However, more than 20 photographs in the text were obviously shot in large urban areas. The book contained several
photographs that were obviously not of urban areas. These included photographs of several animals such as lions, tigers, and zebras. Also included were several pictures of outdoor activities, such as snowboarding and skiing. None of the pictures were of farms or other distinctively rural settings, except perhaps the one of galloping horses on page 148.
Because of this lack of availability of mathematics lessons rich in rural contexts students may benefit from supplemental lessons focusing on rural themes. It seems the internet should be a good source for such supplemental lessons. This author conducted web searches using “math lessons in rural context,” “math and farms,” “math and rural,” “math lessons in rural setting.” and similar search terms. The searches located no quality mathematics lessons. Several mathematics lessons specifically set in urban contexts were located with corresponding appropriate web searches. This suggests that easily
accessible rural mathematics lessons are also not available via the Internet.
textbooks are produced in mass and used by many school districts across the nation. If math books with rural contexts were produced and marketed, perhaps the demand would be sufficient to keep the prices competitive if the majority of rural schools purchased the books. If the context of the majority of the math problems is a small mining community in West Virginia, however, the problems will probably have no more relevance or appeal to children from a farming community in Kansas than do the problems related to traffic control in New York City. Because of the diversity of rural communities, producing one math series relevant to all rural communities would be virtually impossible. Thus the market for any such book would be extremely limited, making the necessary price prohibitive for many rural districts.
So is there a way to solve this dilemma and make mathematics more relevant to all children without suffering negative consequences? The solutions are not easy or obvious, but progress can be made through a variety of actions. When contextualizing mathematical exercises, authors should consider experiences that are common to almost all students regardless of locale, such as caring for a pet, owning a car, participating in a sport, or working at a part-time job. When more specific contexts are included in mathematical investigations, as they should be, authors can be careful to include lessons set in large cities such as Dallas, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, while at the same time including lessons occurring on a cattle ranch out west, a wilderness area in Arkansas, and a small manufacturing community in Tennessee. This will allow all students to realize that mathematics is relevant to the communities in which they now reside and that it will be relevant to their futures even if they are living in a very different community.
Additional resources should be allocated to encourage the production of
supplemental units of study that relate mathematics to specific communities. Because of their nature and scope, they could be prepared and produced much less expensively than producing standard mathematics texts. Local businesses and local, state, and national education organizations should provide funding to allow groups of teachers and
Effort needs to be taken so that all students can experience challenging and important mathematics in contexts that are meaningful to them. It is important that these contexts expose students to unfamiliar cultures and places. Equally important for
students are rich mathematical investigations that relate specifically to events and activities in their daily lives. Much work needs to be done to make this a reality for all students.
References:
Center for Occupational Research and Development. (1998). Cord algebra 1part b mathematics in context. Cincinnati, OH: International Thomson Publishing Company.
Connected Math. (1998). Comparing and scaling ratio, proportion, and percent. Orangeburg, NY: Dale Seymour Publications.
Glencoe Mathematics. (2006). Mathematics applications and concepts -- course 2. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill.
Glencoe Mathematics. (2005). Mathscape seeing and thinking mathematically – course 1. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Reston, Virginia: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. PBS TeacherSource. Retrieved on December 13, 2004 from
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm.
Schultz, J. E. Mathematics education in rural communities in light of current trends in mathematics education, ACCLAIM paper. Athens, OH:
https://mead.citl.ohiou.edu/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_94473_1&frame=top.
U.S.Census2000http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&geo_id=01000US
&ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-_caller=geoselect&-_lang=en&-state=dt&-format=&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_P002
Editor’s Note: Jamie Fugitt is a member of the second ACCLAIM cohort. Asked to provide a short bio, she writes:
Since I was a small child I have been fascinated with numbers and the
While teaching at C of O I always had the desire to pursue a doctorate degree, either in mathematics or mathematics education. One summer I decided to try out a program and drove the 400-mile round trip to take classes. It only took one summer for me to realize that because of the distance this program was not an option for me. While at an NCTM meeting in Paducah I saw Dr. Vena Long. She was wearing her ACCLAIM shirt, told me a little about the program, and gave me the address for the ACCLAIM web site. Immediately I knew this was a program for me. The educational component, along with the strong mathematics requirements, and the emphasis on rural issues fit exactly with my career plans. My major concern was my location in the Ozark Mountains rather than the Appalachian Mountains. I applied immediately, a few months too late to be considered for the first cohort, and waited impatiently until the good news arrived.
In addition to pursuing a doctoral degree through ACCLAIM and being employed full-time at C of O, where I serve as Chair of the Division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, I enjoy spending time with my family. My husband Jeff is also a doctoral student and hopes to begin his dissertation in the fall. Our son Johnathan is 20 and will begin his senior year at William Jewell College in Kansa City in the fall. Elizabeth, our daughter, is 18 and just graduated from Branson High School. She will begin her college career this fall at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO.
Bob Mayes
The ACCLAIM Capacity Building Initiative (CBI) focused on the doctoral program in 2004-2005. The highly successful Leadership Academies became a casualty of budget cuts, but ACCLAIM retained growth in its CBI with a second doctoral cohort joining the first. The result was a year that saw the ACCLAIM doctoral students reach 30 strong. In addition, ten graduate students in mathematics or mathematics education at five partner universities pursued degrees with support from ACCLAIM.
Cohort 1 reached a major milestone with the completion of the 20 ACCLAIM courses, including 21 hours of mathematics, 18 hours of mathematics education, 9 hours of rural sociology, and 12 hours of research methods. The summer of 2005 will be the first in three years that they have not been engaged in an intense, five-week ACCLAIM summer program. This summer will find them taking comprehensive exams and preparing for dissertation courses. Twelve of the original 14 have reached the
dissertation stage, a great accomplishment. We hope to have all 12 complete the doctoral degree in the next two to three years. The demand for the graduates of this program in the Appalachian region is so strong that even at the ABD stage they are being hired by universities.
Methods. The beauty of the ACCLAIM program is that they will take these courses from three different institutions, but apply them towards a common degree for which they can receive credit from any one of five universities. The summer program has an additional benefit, which is truly one of the strengths of the ACCLAIM program: the struggle to complete it forges individuals into a cohort. The cohort supports and sustains the students within it through not only the summer, but the four distance-education courses they must complete through the fall and spring of the coming year. The students in the ACCLAIM doctoral program are working full time jobs in K-12 teaching, college teaching, or school administration, yet the success rates remain extraordinarily high due to the cohort model – 86% retention in cohort 1 after three years and 94% retention in cohort 2 after one year.
The impact of these 30 doctoral students on mathematics education in rural Appalachia is already being felt. We believe it will be immeasurable over the next 20 years as they assume and grow in leadership roles throughout the region. And the lineage will not end with the first and second cohort, for there are already plans to recruit a third cohort in the fall of 2005, who will begin a similar journey in the summer of 2007. The five universities in the CBI are resolved to sustain the program beyond the end of NSF funding in 2007. In this sense, the universities engaged in the ACCLAIM Doctoral Program have also become a cohort.
Craig Howley
Rural Education Dissertation of Year Contest Award Winner
Dr. Terri Hopkins has received an award in the Rural Education Dissertation of the Year competition. Dr. Hopkins supervises the ACCLAIM doctoral internship and assists the Center’s PI, Dr. Vena Long (who chaired Dr. Hopkins’s dissertation
committee). The dissertation, Gender Issues in Mathematics Education in Tennessee: Does Rural Locale Matter? elicited the following praise:
Unpretentious, straightforward, efficiently presented and appropriately restrained, this study dares to say what can be said from the data, and not more. Its seminal conclusions are necessarily blunt: time to stop worrying so much about how girls are doing in math and start noticing that boys are losing ground; time to stop repeating the rumor that rural schools are deficient and start recognizing that they do a better job teaching math to poor kids, especially in Appalachia... It adds appreciably but modestly to our fund of
knowledge and enlarges the perimeter of the unknown.
The annual competition is sponsored by the Rural Education Special Interest Group (RE-SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Dr. Hopkins’s dissertation received the second-place award.
Human & Social Capital
We wish Jim a fabulously happy retirement and will sorely miss his contributions to the conversations about the welfare of the Center’s students and projects. The recent news about the fate of the Centers for Teaching and Learning, contingent on a reduction in the NSF budget, means, of course, that all of the Center’s staff must begin to think differently about the future.
Dr. Bonnie Beach, mathematics educator and Associate Dean at the College of Education, has agreed to serve as co-director of the Research Initiative. Bonnie, like many of the Center faculty, comes from a rural place and has taught in rural schools. She has served previously on the advisory panel of the Capacity Building Initiative and has authored an Occasional Paper for the Center.
Our doctoral students are becoming increasingly involved in the Center’s
empirical research. Two students from each cohort have been involved in data gathering activities for ongoing studies, several others have written articles for the Rural
Mathematics Educator, and still others have been helping to conceptualize the Center’s third Research Symposium. The faculty is gratified to welcome these rising colleagues to the challenging work of scholarly inquiry and critique (otherwise known as “research”).
New Publications
Does Place Influence Mathematics Achievement Outcomes? A Study of the Standing of Appalachian Ohio School Districts (Working Paper No. 24).
C. Howley, A. Howley, & T. Hopkins, February 2005.
The analysis theorizes the influence of 10 independent variables on three dependent measures (mathematics pass rates, mathematics achievement efficiency, and number of accountability indicators passed). All else equal, the results suggest that Appalachian locale and rural locale exert significant influences on the dependent variables, and that, most particularly, (a) the charge of deficiency is inapt and (b) Appalachian districts are more efficient in the production of mathematics achievement than other districts. In short, Appalachian districts do more with less in cultivating the mathematics learning of their students. One of several surprising results is that the proportion of expenditures devoted to instruction (i.e., teacher salaries), particularly among lower-spending districts, exerts a positive influence on achievement.
Recommendations include the need for (a) a value-added accountability model in Ohio and (b) resource levels adequate to sustain smaller schools and districts and to fund competitive teacher salaries in rural and Appalachian districts.
Representing Rural Context in Doctoral-Level Mathematics Education Courses: A Guide for Mathematics Education Professors (Occasional Paper No. 12).
P. Theobald, February 2005.
http://www.acclaim-math.org/docs/occasional_papers/OP_12_Theobald.pdf
This paper, the product of a task force led by the author, is designed to serve as a kind of primer for professors interested in thinking through ways to build a rural
vision and mission of ACCLAIM. The idea for the task force surfaced at one of the regular meetings of the Center’s management team, where substantive concerns receive concerted attention.
A Rural Community’s Perceptions of the Importance of Math And Math Education in Appalachia (ACCLAIM Monograph No. 1).
D. Lucas and Team Folknography, February 2005.
http://www.acclaim-math.org/docs/monographs/Monograph_01_Lucas.pdf
The study engaged the qualitative research method known as folknography and targeted the community of Padua (a pseudonym), in a state in the Appalachian south. The study was conducted in late March 2004 by undergraduate students previously enrolled in a related course taught by the principal investigator. This report was developed from data analyzed after the completion of the field work. The student researchers collected nearly 650 surveys and conducted nearly 250 interviews with informants in three age groups (youth, adults, seniors). This monograph includes selected interview reports, survey results, and a summary of findings.
Ten Precepts About the Circumstance of Rural Education Illustrated with Connections to Mathematics Education (Occasional Paper No. 11).
C. Howley, November 2004
This paper is a slightly revised version of a formal lecture given to Center doctoral students during a rural education class in summer 2004. The precepts jointly characterize the significance of the rural circumstance as understood by the author.
Website Statistics
The Center website is receiving approximately 40,000 hits per month. For the two-week period beginning May 1, the ten most frequently requested items from the Research Clearinghouse were:
1. Tom Lyson’s article about the implications for rural community sustainability of having (vs. not having) a school. [from the archives of the Journal of Research in Rural Education, which the Center hosts]
2. Various issues of the Rural Mathematics Educator.
3. Dave Lucas and Team Folknography’s monograph (see above). 4. The Center’s Theoretical Framework.
5. Working Paper No. 15 (Bickel & Howley) 6. Working Paper No. 8 (Glascock)
7. Working Paper No. 19 (Bickel & Cadle)
8. The Rural School and Community Trust’s “Why Rural Matters” article [from the JRRE archives]
9. Working Paper No 13 (Nelson, Simonsen, & Swanson) 10. Working Paper No. 5 (Arnold)
Clearinghouse are finding a wide audience. Half the audience enters directly through the ACCLAIM main portal, but the other half typically finds the Center via Google—from Germany, Australia, Canada, Italy, Britain, the Philippines, Venezuela, Argentina, and the Netherlands—as well as from the United States.
Ongoing Sponsored Research
Study of rural principals’ engagement of reform. The study of rural principal’s engagement of mathematics education reform has completed its gathering of data, and analysis has begun. The study report is expected this fall. Several Center doctoral students, drawn from both cohorts, served as research assistants.
Mathematics, meanings, and identity in a rural high school. Rick Anderson, at Portland State University, collected data this fall in a rural high school in Oregon. The writing is in progress.
effort. The study is a collaboration between the Center and the Ohio Department of Education.
Mathematics Curriculum Struggle in Suburbanizing Rural Communities. This study has been proposed and a governing document is under consideration.
Peer-Reviewed Journals Accept Center Papers
For the Center’s recent National Advisory Board, which met in Cincinnati May 12-13, staff made an accounting of Center works that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals thus far. Nine products have appeared in revised forms in the Journal of Research in Rural Education, the Journal of Appalachian Studies, Educational Forum, Journal of Education Finance, and Education Policy Analysis Archives. At present, one article is in press and two others are in review.
Conference Planning
The Center is planning two conferences, which will probably take place in 2006. One is an event for Center scholars and the other is a national conference, probably invitational, about practical matters implicated by the Center’s work.
The ACCLAIM Research Symposium III is a Center-only event focusing on a substantive theme of interest to Center scholars and doctoral students. The involvement of the doctoral students is a major feature of the Symposium. The theme has been chosen: Mathematics for the common good in rural places: The nexus of homeplace, marketplace, and the teleology of reform in mathematics education. The theme will engage social justice issues in mathematics from the perspective of the interface between schooling and society, particularly exploring the distinction between homeplace and marketplace. That distinction helps to problematize the concept of “community,” which figures so prominently in the Center’s theoretical framework.
Teacher Development Initiative Update Karen Mitchell
Nominations for the members for the first Board of Directors of the Appalachian Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AAMTE) are currently being solicited. The organization's Nomination and Election committee will incorporate these
nominations into a slate of candidates to be placed on a ballet. Voting will be completed by paper ballet in time for the Board to be announced at the September 23-24, 2005 faculty conference.
The theme for this September 23-24 Mathematics Teacher Preparation in Appalachia conference is field experiences. It will be held at the Holiday Inn North in Lexington, KY. Online conference registration forms will be available by the end of June.
ANNOUNCEMENT Postdoctoral Position in Mathematics Education
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE
Overview: This is a three-year, non tenure-track position. The candidate will work as a part of a team of scholars working on the research initiative of the Math in the Middle Institute Partnership, a five-year, NSF-funded Math Science Partnership grant to offer and study professional development in mathematics education to middle level teachers. Preference will be given to applicants within three years of having received the Ph.D. who show strong research promise.
Starting date is August 2005.
Responsibilities: Teaching responsibilities will include courses in mathematics education and in teacher education. The ideal candidate will be able to establish a strong research program related to the Math in the Middle grant.
Compensation: An AY salary of $45,000 is anticipated. Additional travel support and some summer salary are provided. UNL makes available life, health, and long-term disability insurance programs as well as family coverage at reasonable group rates to the employee. TIAA/CREF and/or Fidelity Investment Fund are offered as retirement plans.
To Apply: Applicants should send a letter of application, vitae, transcripts, statements addressing their research and teaching, and three letters of references, at least one of which should address teaching, to:
Postdoctoral Search
Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education 251 Avery Hall
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln NE 68588-0134
Contact:
Phone: 402-472-9304 Fax: 204-472-9311
Email: [email protected]
For more information see the Math in the Middle web site at http://www.unl.edu/scimath/
Other Details: The University of Nebraska is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action and equal opportunity. We assure reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act; contact Brenda West at (402) 472-9304 for assistance.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
JOB TITLE: Term Assistant Professor Math Education DEPT: School of Education
PCN: 920891 (2 Positions)
GRADE: Salary $42,000.00 or Depending on Experience
STATUS: 9 months Term Funded, Full-Time, Exempt with the possibility of renewal depending upon funds
Review date: April 15, 2005 CLOSE: June 30, 2005
downloaded from our web site at http://www.uaf.edu/uafhr/Employment/Faculty.html or picked up at UAF Human Resources, 3295 College Road, Room 108, Fairbanks, Alaska, 99775-7860 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Person(s) hired by the University of Alaska Fairbanks must comply with the provisions of the Federal Immigration Reporting and Control Act of 1986 and must possess a valid Social Security card. All Nonresident Aliens must provide proof of eligibility to work. The University of Alaska Fairbanks is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and educational institution. Your application for employment with the University of Alaska is subject to public disclosure under the Alaska Public Records Act. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Applicants needing reasonable
accommodation to participate in the application and screening process should contact the Assistant Director at 474-6259.
UPCOMING EVENTS
IV International Rural Network Conference
June 19-24, 2005
This conference is an international gathering of rural practitioners, policy makers, and researchers addressing place-based innovations in health, education, competitiveness and cultural sustainability. For more information: http://irn.rupriconvene.org/
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
The next issue of the Rural Mathematics Educator, Volume 4, Number 3 will be available in October, 2005. It will include a bibliography of works referenced in the feature
interview of place-conscious education that appears in this issue.
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 Jim Schultz at [email protected] for more information.
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).
