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Essential Qualities of Math Teaching Remain Unknown
By Sean Cavanagh0---Education Week---Research does not show conclusively which professional credentials demonstrate whether math teachers are effective in the classroom, the report found. It does not show what college math content and coursework are most essential for teachers.
It is one of most widely accepted axioms in math education: Good teachers matter.But what are the qualities of an effective mathematics teacher? The answer, as a recent federal report suggests, remains frustratingly elusive.
As a result, while the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, released last month, offers numerous conclusions about math curriculum, cognition, and instruction, many of its recommendations about improving teaching are more tentative and amount to a call for more research.
“It is, in some ways, where the action has to come next,” said Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the member of the panel who chaired its working group on teacher issues.
“We should put a lot of careful effort over the next decade into this issue so that we can be in a much different place 10 years from now.”
The uncertainty about mathteaching skills emerges at a time when policymakers at all levels see a need to boost students’ math and science achievement as a key to sustaining the nation’s future economic health and producing a skilled workforce.