Few U.S. Middle School Math Teachers Are Well Prepared to Teach Math
The U.S. Continues to Fall Behind Other Nations in Math Education
Researchers at Michigan State University performed this comparison. American middle school math teachers are not well equipped to teach math to students today. The fact that students today are falling behind other countries risks putting America behind those other countries in many areas that need high math skills, including research and development.
Astoundingly, researchers discovered that future teachers perform the worst in algebra. Algebra compromises the very basics for middle school math education throughout the U.S.
As the world economy continues to evolve into a global economy, the ability for a country to be successful is highly contingent on it's workers being trained and educated. The U.S. was compared to Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan.
While most teachers in America can obtain their teaching license with as little as four years of college education, this is not the case around the globe. In other countries, teacher preparation ranges from as little as four years, to as many as seven years, before they are allowed to instruct students.
"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally," said William Schmidt, MSU Distinguished Professor of counseling, educational psychology and special education.
Schmidt continued, "It is important for us as a nation to understand that teacher preparation programs are critical, not only for future teachers, but also for the children they will be teaching."
The study also determined that:
-Teachers in South Korea and Taiwan are usually educated about more advanced math concepts. Indeed, nearly 80 percent have received training in more advanced math topics.
-Only about half, 50 percent, of the teachers in Mexico and the U.S. receive training in advanced math.
-Teachers in the U.S. perform best when tested in their knowledge of statistics. This is the one area of math where U.S. teachers are near the average for all teachers, internationally.
-Teacher education in the U.S. is segmented into three primary categories: elementary, secondary, and middle school education
-Researchers determined that elementary teachers are more focused on teaching skills, and less in math. Secondary teachers are more focused on math skills than teaching skills. Middle school teachers receive the worst training of both of these.
The complete study done by Michigan State University, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21), is available online. To read the full study, click HERE.
Source:
http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3283/content.htm
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9 Comments
Post a CommentKhaki - excellent comments. I wish more math teachers were schooled in math and not other subjects.
Khaki is on the right track -- these days teacher education means learning how to teach rather than your subject. Better to recruit top math students and apprentice them for a year with an outstanding teacher than to encourage the bare minimum in a teacher ed program. Furthermore, teachers need to be paid more b/c that will attract an overall higher standard and weed out some of the people who teach b/c it's the highest paying job they're qualified for.
Woops - sorry - here's the rest of my post - didn't mean to go long...
This is not the fault of the young teachers. They graduate from high school at 18, go off to college to be taught this mess - and are teaching by age 22... believing everything they were taught in college about how to teach.... And armed with nothing about their subject matter. This country will pay dearly for this foolishness in the future - more dearly than it is paying now.
LaGrange (a famous mathematician) said: You do not understand your own material unless you can explain it to the first person who passes you on the street and have them completely understand the concept about which you are speaking.
View from an old math teacher - check the college catalogs in your area for the past 20 years. What you will find is that teachers are consistently being required to take fewer "real" math classes, opting instead for classes that wouldn't even be accepted toward a degree for a "real" mathematician - and more "philosophy of" teaching type classes. What we old folks used to call "krappe classes" - you know the kind - don't even have to show up to make an A. One day, I looked in one of those books and discovered that I (horrors) had been teaching "wrong" for 30 years. How was I supposed to know that I could only "teach" 5 girls in the front of the class? Or that red-haired children can't learn? Nor can, evidently, the children of the minority religion or ethnicity in the area... and we shouldn't even be thinking about trying to teach fat or skinny kids. Where was I when they "discovered" that??? In front of the class, foolishly believing I could teach them all, I guess.
This is not th
The problem with math classes today is that teachers worry too much about making sure the book is completed as opposed to students absorbing the material.
This is sad!
It isnt very encouraging to a child when they know that they are smarter than their teacher. Teacher's should want to advance their education throughout their careers. Great article.
Some how this doesn't surprise me at all.
My middle schooler has excellent math teachers but our county math curriculum is a disaster.