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In a message dated 7/27/2002 3:24:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
ecsamhill@... writes:


> Pam -- do you have an understanding of what the impetus was for the
> reforms in math curriculums? How much research, in reastic settings,
> supported the newer approach to math? (I'm guessing that the NCASM
> wrote volumes about this, I'm just looking for something brief and
> superficial.)
>

I think the impetus was that kids weren't learning under the old traditional
methods.
The NCTM standards involve much high expectations of conceptual understanding
and skill development in many more areas than had been previously expected in
schools. And it was based on research that had shown that children don't
learn best by being "taught" or by rote drill - but learn best by
constructing their own understanding through investigation and invention and
collaboration and so on.

There is a ton of research - Constance Kamii is one of the leading
researchers in this area - look under "constructivist mathematics." A lot of
research is probably published in: Journal for Research in Mathematics
Education which is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
research journal.

Try this article - it is in pdf and takes a while to load, longer than you
probably wanted, but is readable and very informative about research and the
NCTM standards.

http://my.nctm.org/eresources/view_media.asp?article_id=68

--pam

National Home Education Network
http://www.NHEN.org
Changing the Way the World Sees Homeschooling!




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