Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Review Of Towards Equity And Justice In Mathematics Education, Edited By Tonya Gau Bartell, Emily Lardner

Numeracy

Tonya Grau Bartell, editor. 2018.Toward Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing). 341 pp. ISBN 978-3-319-92906-4 (also available as an e-book).

Toward Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education is a welcome addition to ongoing conversations about what mathematics should be taught and how it should be taught at both the college and pre-college level. Although the primary audience for the volume will be math educators and researchers, readers of this journal will discover intersecting interests, concerns, and strategies.

Why I Believe People Need Painting By Numbers, Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Jason Makansi.2016. Painting By Numbers: How to Sharpen Your BS Detector and Smoke Out the Experts (Tucson AZ: Layla Dog Press). 196 pp. ISBN 978-0998425900.

This piece briefly introduces my Painting By Numbers, which aims to take the core messages of the QL/QR community from academic and professional circles to the rest of the citizenry. I describe the book in the context of the critical need for the most basic numeracy tools to help consumers of news, information, and analysis—delivered through traditional and contemporary social media outlets—determine where a reported numerical result lies on the scale from utter nonsense …

Problem-Based Learning In K–8 Mathematics And Science Education: A Literature Review, Joi Merritt, Mi Yeon Lee, Peter Rillero, Barbara M. Kinach

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

This systematic literature review was conducted to explore the effectiveness of problem-based and project-based learning (PBL) implemented with students in early elementary to grade 8 (ages 3–14) in mathematics and science classrooms. Nine studies met the following inclusion criteria: (a) focus on PBL, (b) experimental study, (c) kindergarten to grade 8 level, and (d) focus on mathematics or science content. For these studies, we examined: the definitions of PBL used, the components of PBL explicitly identified as salient to student learning, and the effectiveness of PBL. This review found that although there is no consistent definition of PBL, PBL is …

"Returning To The Root" Of The Problem: Improving The Social Condition Of African Americans Through Science And Mathematics Education, Vanessa R. Pitts Bannister, Julius Davis, Jomo Mutegi, Latasha Thompson, Deborah Lewis

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

The underachievement and underrepresentation of African Americans in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines have been well documented. Efforts to improve the STEM education of African Americans continue to focus on relationships between teaching and learning and factors such as culture, race, power, class, learning preferences, cultural styles and language. Although this body of literature is deemed valuable, it fails to help STEM teacher educators and teachers critically assess other important factors such as pedagogy and curriculum. In this article, the authors argue that both pedagogy and curriculum should be centered on the social condition of African Americans – …

The Role Of Sequence In The Experience Of Mathematical Beauty, Leslie Dietiker

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this article, I analyze the aesthetic dimensions of a sequence of mathematical events found in an unusual first grade lesson in order to demonstrate how sequencing may affect an individual’s experience of mathematical beauty. By approaching aesthetic as a sense or felt quality of an experience in context (Sinclair, 2001, 2011), this analysis explains how sequence can affect the way mathematical objects or actions are experienced by an individual. Thus, rather than questioning whether or in what ways a set of mathematical objects are beautiful or not, this paper addresses under what conditions is the mathematics in play beautiful. …