Next Step

This book is written on the behalf of mathematics teachers who have been asked to teach more conceptually while simultaneously motivating more students of all ability levels to willingly embrace further upper level mathematics content and courses. This is a BIG ASK! Math teachers are being expected to overhaul their current teaching approach. Can teachers be expected to embrace this crusade alone, isolated in a classroom? Principals are charged with leading the way. They must provide the opportunities and resources necessary for effective teacher collaboration. After reading this book, a principal will comprehend the enormity of task each mathematics teachers faces and learn what must be done to help. School leaders will be able to design a growth plan based on a plethora of collaborative approaches. Mathematics teachers will experience the assistance they have desperately needed.

As a career Mathematics teacher educator, it is wonderful and rare to see the challenges facing school mathematics teachers in the early 21st Century articulated with such clarity, insight and empathy. The significance of this work is heightened because it is anchored in research, is tempered by many years of professional practice in mathematics teaching and education, and is very positive and realistic about what can be achieved in mathematics education for all students. The authors recognize the enormity of the task that mathematics teachers face in their professional lives and the personal effort needed to transform their practice in pursuit of better outcomes for all their students. This insight applies across the globe where reforms are embraced. All agree that change is necessary and there is a remarkable international consensus on the nature of this change, namely, a move to a more realistic, problem-based conceptual approach to school mathematics that facilitates better outcomes for all students regardless of ability. Achieving the necessary transformation of teachers’ own practice and student learning is an enormous task and demands a sustained concerted effort by all stakeholders. The authors identify local leadership as central to the success of such a major enterprise. They tackle the issue by offering a strong argument for teacher support by school leaders such as school principals and department heads focused on providing collaborative learning opportunities for their mathematics teachers, and time to engage in such learning opportunities. Taken together, one could view the book as providing a pathway to success in this most important undertaking in mathematics education. The book should be required reading for mathematics teacher educators, pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers, school principals, department heads of STEM subjects, and education policy makers at local, regional and national levels. Here I think it is appropriate to recast a famous American political maxim: ‘all mathematics education is local (and curriculum change happens a local level)’.

Dr. James Freemyer was a high school mathematics teacher for eight years, a high school principal for seventeen years, chair of a graduate education program for eight years, and currently teaches research statistics and organizational change at Indiana Wesleyan University in a doctoral program in leadership.