History
and Reform
Bal
Chandra Luitel
Curtin
University of Technology
Part
One: Curricular History
“The
content of the events in the history of curriculum development are
meaningless outside the autobiographical context of individual educators
engaged in the exploration and excavation of the meaning of the events
and the people, both famous/infamous and anonymous, who have been part
of the history.” [Slattery, 1995, p. 50]
Setting
the context
I
believe that my curricular history is a basis for reconceptualising the meaning
of curriculum through the process of biographical and autobiographical inquiry
as explained by Slattery
(1995)
. For me, this process helps understand the meaning of
curriculum within my socio-economic and politico-cultural context, provides with
an opportunity to view my inner landscape of teaching
(Palmer, 1998)
in order to sensitise my understanding of curriculum
process, and gives a basis for constructing the meaning of curriculum through
personal practical knowledge
(Connelly & Clandinin, 1988)
. These perspectives engender me to develop an understanding
of curriculum and curriculum process on the basis of my educational history.
With this notion, I seek to divide this discourse into five subsections:
drilling numbers without number sense, informal versus formal mathematics,
breaking the culture of silence, mathematics: content and pedagogy, and
storytelling in the classroom.
Drilling
numbers without number sense
I
began my primary education at the time when my country was in a political
turmoil. It was the first time in the history of my country that the Nepalese
people were taking part in a referendum by choosing one of the two options –
multiparty democracy or improved non-party [Panchayati] system. In this
background, I had been admitted to one of the primary schools of my village,
which was in a cross-cultural context as elucidated by Harris
(1989)
in Australian context. When I mirror the context of my
primary school and mathematics curriculum under which I studied, I would like to
reflect on a set of questions: what
was the focus of that curriculum? Was that integrated? How did the political
factor hinder the curriculum process? What was the role of culture in framing
the curriculum?
It is widely accepted that mathematics
plays a vital role for developing literate citizenries with the capabilities of
thinking, acting and deciding according to their own context which can help make
their life better
(Steen, 2000)
. This notion was appropriate to my context in which majority
of the students could not continue their education beyond that level. Besides
the identified basic skills, mathematics classes could have to develop a way of
learning and thinking which, at least, could contribute to the betterment of the
school leavers’ life.
For
me, one of the difficulties associated with mathematics learning was the
contradictory nature of formal and informal mathematics. At home, I could see my
father’s mathematics for calculating planetary motions and their influence on
a personal life—although there were no mathematical operators, that
mathematics was working effectively than that of the teachers. The notion of
connection between formal mathematics and children’s informal language
(Lindquist & Clements, 2001)
could help develop the number sense. Furthermore, the use of
stories and mathematical games could help make mathematics interesting. For me,
it was natural to ask my teacher that why our mathematics textbook did not have
any stories while the other subjects included interesting ones. His answer still
echoes me as the voices of those Nepalese teachers who presume that mathematics
does not have any stories.
I
can guess that the teachers’ dissatisfaction over the system, which influenced
the curriculum process, could be a prominent cause of hindrances in implementing
curriculum. Furthermore, the urban-oriented policy was another reason that left
many rural schools without any considerable support. At large, the political
system had created a series of impediment in our learning process.
Most
importantly, the cultural frame of school
(Smolka, 2001)
had a significant role in developing and shaping my
learning. I was learning both aspects: One, mathematics is a matter of bookish
knowledge and two, learning as a matter of copying and memorizing from the
elders particularly from the teachers. Furthermore, the hierarchical cultural
frame had supported the notion of learning mathematics as a process of
memorize-and-recall in which the chance of questioning and arguing was
non-existent. This situation obviously had helped preserve the existing cultural
elitism.
Learning is
a process of interaction between a set of inner experiences of the learner and
the environment
(Slattery, 1995)
. The mathematical disposition of a learner
(Schulman, 1996)
could be exposed through the interactive process of learning
which would provide with an opportunity to the learner to deconstruct the
meaning of what he was learning. I have deconstructed the meaning of that
learning, as Bower and Hilgard’s
(1981)
interpretation of learning within the behaviourist paradigm
as a peripheral activity. In conclusion, I drilled and chanted the number names
for many times but the understanding of number sense was yet to achieve.
Informal
versus formal mathematics
The
conclusion of primary education led me to lower secondary education in which an
ongoing confrontation with formal mathematics was apparent. Despite the fact
that I could grasp from the teacher’s problem solving process and apply for
similar problems given in the textbook, incomplete understanding and
non-contextual learning process made me frustrated with mathematics.
One
of the widely accepted conditions for developing understanding of learning is to
contextualise the subject matter. In retrospection, I think that the selection
of viable content
(von Glasersfeld, 1995)
could not degrade the standard (in the sense of subject
maintenance notion) of the curriculum. For instance, the algebraic part could be
integrated with the contextual problem of arithmetic and geometry.
Educationally, such curriculum could answer such questions: Why do we need
formula? Who did invent such formula? Can we solve problems without formula?
The
emphasis of procedural mathematics had engendered teacher-, and
textbook-oriented mathematics in which the teacher imparted the test-oriented
mathematics. Regarding the teaching and learning approach, the teacher never
drew a figure except for the concepts of geometry, followed a strict rule to
express mathematical procedures. The situation leads to ask a number of
questions: What type of curriculum did that situation represent? Was their any
reflection of our culture? Could such classrooms and mathematics curricula
transform our society? Were the students equipped with true mathematical
knowledge-in-action? On the contrary, students of lower secondary (cf. middle
school) level could learn mathematics for understanding by using graphs,
pictures and informal approaches as explained by Gay and Velez
(2001)
.
“We
believed that a number of goals could be accomplished using graphing,
including encouraging students to think visually about functions and
to solve problems using graphs, without algebra as either extra
baggage or a crutch. Because most graphs arise without formulas,
having students construct graphs without formulas would be a natural
approach. No formula was used to create the crime-rate figures …
particular store into this week's average grocery prices.” (p.1)
The
notion of Gay and Velez
(2001)
is apparently clear that their mathematics class was trying
to make students to investigate mathematics from their own perspectives which
make them more liberated from the traditional thinking, investigative towards
the mathematical ideas, and accountable towards his/her task. This situation
depicts a learner-owned classroom in which the transition from informal to
formal mathematics becomes natural. However, our classes were completely
opposite to the notion of the graphing and natural technique of Gay and Velez
(2001). In conclusion, the lower secondary mathematics was in the way of
deviating from informal and original mathematics and accommodating with formal
and teacher- and textbook-oriented mathematics.
Breaking
the culture of silence
It
is believed that during the second millennium B. C. E., when the Indian and
surrounding civilizations had been flourishing, there used to be a series of
questionings and debates regarding the governance of the universe, presumably,
regarding the existence and the form of God which helped create so many ancient
discourses depicting various form of belief from atheism
(Rao, 1990)
to incarnationism. However, the changing social order
created a culture of silence, which has been impeding us for developing
liberated, independent and self-reflective thinking. From the Freirean
perspective, the culture of silence exists in the context of powerful and
powerless members of a society in which the latter are not heard by the former
(Heaney, 1995)
.
In the context of secondary education, I
had witnessed two contrasting forces in constructing a new culture of schooling:
The school was trying to preserve the culture of silence while the students were
in favour of breaking it. In the context of changing political, cultural and
self-constructed values, I started to break the culture of silence when
mathematics teacher could not convince me. Though I was very good at solving the
bookish problems, I was still sceptical about formulas, proofs, statements and
theorems. The continuous debate with the teacher and my ability of solving
mathematical problems helped recognise me as a good student. Furthermore, I had
been asked to explain about the process and to solve new problems. Although my
teacher was not a mathematics teacher by profession, he used to encourage
students to think and work independently. However, his limited understanding of
mathematical knowledge had impeded his teaching as well as our learning process.
In the
context of the political role of constraining and supporting our learning
process, I agree with Wood (1988) that curriculum decision is a political
process. In my context, most of the rural students had been deprived of learning
science at secondary level by making science and advanced mathematics as
optional subjects. The hidden notion behind this decision was either to promote
the elitism by providing support to the limited elite school for their science
education programme or to maintain a technical interest by blaming the rural
school that they were not sophisticated for science teaching in terms of
capabilities and resources.
The main achievement of the mathematics
learning of secondary level was to initiate the process of breaking the culture
of silence. However, it could not be broken completely because the school was
only a small part of the culture: The large part of the cultural milieu was
outside the classroom, which used to govern our school.
Mathematics:
Content and pedagogy
After
completing my secondary education, I started Proficiency
Certificate Level in Education majoring mathematics
and geography. At that time, I had felt liberated because we have a pluralistic
political system. However, I was not liberated to choose the subject of my
interest because the economic, social and political reasons were stronger than a
personal interest.
My notion of mathematics curriculum became more mechanical
than it was the previous level. I
was never asked to present something while presentation, discussion and
questioning had become my way of learning during my secondary education. My
creativity, which I used in writing stories and poems, was at a crossroad
because of my focus on more mechanical mathematics. In this context, my image of
mathematics curriculum was not different from Doll’s
(1993)
notion of modernism as linear, mechanical and limited to
develop the creativity.
There was no change in the notion of
mathematics curriculum as subject matter during my Bachelor’s degree course.
However, my Master’s degree course gave some notion of progressive thinking in
shaping the idea of mathematics curriculum. We had been facing so many problems
such as outdated reading materials and curriculum, and teachers inattentiveness
towards our learning. In retrospection, I believe that the policymaker’s
misconceptions of teaching profession as straightforward work and teachers as
semi-skilled workers
(Darling-Hammond & Cobb, 1996)
were responsible for the chaotic teacher education
programme.
By the end
of my Master’s course, I had started to argue with both types of people who
only saw the importance of either content or pedagogical knowledge as an
essential quality of a teacher. I used to say that both content and pedagogy are
equally important for a teacher although I had not developed the idea of
pedagogical content knowledge in the sense of Anderson
(2002)
. My voices and arguments were similar to Wood’s (1988)
interpretation of cultural capital in the direction of creating awareness in
understanding myself as a prospective mathematics teacher educator.
Storytelling
in the mathematics classroom
After
completing my master’s degree, I
started my first career as a teacher trainer for the primary school teachers of
a semi-urban area. The program was different from the existing teacher-training
programs of Nepal in terms of its modality: It was a school-based training
program while the others were university based. Undoubtedly, my role as a
trainer was vital for me because the failure of the program could impede my
future career.
I
developed a set of teacher-training activities putting student-centred notions
into perspective. In addition, an
emphasis was put on the use of locally available low-cost and no-cost teaching
materials in order to ameliorate the traditional chalk and talk approach of
teaching. Constructively, I had developed the image of mathematics curriculum as
a set of experiences that could help the teachers to enhance student learning.
I
had intended to introduce possible student-centred teaching approaches, which
could help teachers promote understanding of mathematics learning. The
storytelling approach was one of the successful approaches of teaching
mathematics at primary level which was almost similar to Butterworth and
Cicero’s
(2001)
ideas. In the meantime, I received a short training of video
recording of classroom activities, which provided me with the opportunity of
recording their classroom activities. Categorically, my aim was to analyse to
what extent the storytelling approach could effectively be used in mathematics
teaching. With this experience, I had devised a set of model lesson plans for
teaching difficult lessons such as variable and constant, area and volume and
classification of triangle by using storytelling approach.
Unknowingly,
I was in the post-positivism paradigm. I had started to suspect the methods and
theories and even the contents of mathematics that were included in the
curriculum of primary level. However, I could try to justify the importance of
the rigidity of mathematical process by saying it would be very important for
writing in a language of programming. What a mismatch – mathematics
teaching at primary level and the language of programming.
In
conclusion, I have envisaged that the ongoing process of reconceptualization of
meanings and images of curriculum is framed by social, political, cultural,
economic and other overt and covert societal process.
Needless to say, the term curriculum does not embrace one-dimensional
meaning; it is a multifaceted notion, which becomes rich in variety of
experiences
(Connelly & Clandinin, 1988)
.
Part
two: Constraints in action
Setting
the context
The reform
movements of mathematics education of the past four decades
(Pitman, 1989)
reveal the fact that the success of such movements was
largely determined by the four major factors: social, political, economic and
cultural. I have envisaged that our process of curriculum development and
implementation, which does not regard the social, political, cultural and
economic factors, has encumbered our teaching and student learning in many ways.
Furthermore, the theoretical underpinning, adopted for curriculum development
has also impeded student learning. Given the situation, I have intended to
discuss three major sources of impediment such as conflicting political and
cultural context, conflicting ideas and interests, and Tylerian model of
curriculum.
Conflicting
cultural and political contexts
It
is instructive to mention that our
mathematics curricula are not capable of addressing our need, problems and
issues because they are not constructed and reconceptualised according to our
context. I have not seen such a
difference between the way of importing curriculum during 60s
(Fensham, 1988)
and the way of
importing it at present. Furthermore, the situation can also be similar with the
Australian context of importing New Math at the time when it was becoming
unsuccessful in the United States as discussed by Clements, Grimison and
Ellerton
(1989)
. As a matter of fact,
the belief of culture free mathematics
(Clements et al., 1989)
has underpinned the notion of importing mathematics
curriculum from developed world regardless the
consequence of cultural and contextual mismatch of mathematics learning.
Consequently, the change in mathematics curriculum takes place without any
genuine issue of our context. This situation does not liberate us to think from
our own perspective, to construct our notion of mathematics
learning, and to reconceptualise the authentic and context-based assessment
practice and to get involved in curriculum process.
The
political context has also created many obstacles rather than provided with the
opportunity for creating better mathematics teaching and learning situations.
Specifically, implicit ideas of politicians, political parties and governments
have developed a context of aimlessness. Ironically, our democratic system has
empowered politician rather than the common people. The politico-elitism has
ignored the basic problems of education and teaching except for their own
benefit, which can help them in power sharing. I agree to some extent with
Popkewitz and Brennan
(1997)
that the educational resources such as technology, teaching
materials, and financial resources come under the political commitment without
which educational development is difficult.
In
conclusion, I have envisaged that the conflicting cultural and political context
has resulted in two major problems: the mismatch between the underlying
assumption of teaching and cultural context and the lack of political
determination. Regarding the former problem, one can raise a valid question:
Does everything we learn from the developed world impede our teaching?
I do not mean that we should not learn innovative ideas from the
developed world. However, we need to reconceptualise and reconstruct such ideas
and innovations from our own perspective looking at the transferability of such
projects and innovations.
Conflicting
ideas and interests
In
my experience, conflicting ideas and interests occur from parents, teacher
educators and teachers. Most of the parents assume that mathematics should be
taught in order to prepare for tests. Their focus is on how well their children
write in a test rather than how well they understand mathematics. Needless to
say, this parental belief of mathematics learning has developed the notion of
teaching for tests as a prevalent problem in the field of mathematics education.
From this point of view, we have no significantly different mathematics from the
colonial mathematics of Australia in which its focus was to prepare students for
Cambridge and Oxford universities
(Clements et al., 1989)
. Unquestionably, this notion has remained unchanged as a
result of the increasing emphasis of society to specific professions, which help
for upward mobility as a result of improved economic condition
(Gittleman & Joyce, 1995)
.
The teacher educators hold the belief of
teaching as a planned, sequenced and predictive phenomenon, which seems to be
true in a broader context. However, teaching in a classroom context is an
unpredictable, complex, non-linear and non-sequenced task (Doll, 1993). In
retrospection, I think that the belief of teacher educators and the context of
teacher education program are very far from the context of Nepalese schools.
Needless to say, the source of this problem lies in adopting the wrong paradigm
for explaining the phenomenon of teaching. It is very hard to enhance creativity
and mathematical thinking within closed, sequenced and Platonist mathematics
(Taylor & Campbell-Williams, 1992)
. Instead, it can be achieved through, complex,
non-sequenced, contextual and open mathematics curriculum
(Doll, 1993; Slattery, 1995)
.
In my
experience, teachers are also the source of conflicting ideas and interests. It
is obvious that the majority of teachers’ frustration has been impeding the
student learning in mathematics. There are many causes of frustration including
the change of curricular contents, economic reasons, and limited opportunity for
their self-development. Specifically, the ineffectiveness of government-funded
trainings and education programme at universities has also contributed to the
development of negative attitudes of teachers towards teaching.
Tylerian
model of curriculum
One
of the practical problems that impedes my teaching is associated with the model
of curriculum. Our curriculum development process is completely based on the
Tyler rational model, which deals with the curriculum development as a process
of answering certain procedural question
(Posner, 1988)
. Furthermore, it embraces the notion of curriculum
development as a technical and rational process following four steps such as
determining purposes, selection of learning experiences, selection of
instructional strategies and evaluation of instructional process
(Posner, 1988; Slattery, 1995)
.
One of the weaknesses of this model is not
to take account of the subjectivity in learning experiences. Basically, the
learning experiences, which are included in the curriculum, do not represent
students’ learning experiences; they portray the experiences of subject
experts, professors and the people who have been involved in curriculum
development process. Similarly, the
model regards assessment as an add-on approach rather than embedded approach
within the instructional process.
In
conclusion, the major problem of teaching that I have to chafe against comes
from the contemporary society and people’s ideas. This also restrains the
notion of good teaching in many ways. For instance, the notion of teaching for
tests forces me to adopt the metaphor of curriculum as subject matter.
Seamlessly, such curriculum regards teaching as imparting and learning as
receiving. Similarly, the teacher
educators, emphasize closed, technical and linear learning model which really a
dilemma in developing creativity because creativity is possible in instable,
ongoing, ever-changing constructive model of curriculum
(Doll, 1993; Slattery, 1995, 2000)
. Similarly, such model of curriculum does not provide the
teachers with the opportunity for developing a pedagogical thoughtfulness.
Part
three: Plan for Teacher Education
Setting
the scene
In this
section, I will portray my educational values and ideals through a mathematics
teacher education programme for my country’s teacher education institute. I
have envisaged that the programme would develop such teacher learners who can
liberate their students from the traditional notion of mathematics in order to
promote creative thinking. Furthermore, they would be capable of integrating
ethnomathematical concepts in their own curriculum exploring from the community
where they would have to teach and would contribute to the development of an
equitable mathematics education programme promoting context-, and
student-centred learning. With this notion, I will discuss three major features
of my teacher education programme including reconstruction of mathematics
curriculum, integration of culture, mathematics and learning, and
reconceptualization theory and practice.
Reconstructing
the meaning of the mathematics curriculum
Slattery
(2000)
citing Pinar’s notion of curriculum, emphasizes that the
construction of the meaning of curriculum cannot be framed in writing
objectives, and devising classroom
activities and assessment strategies. It indicates that the meaning of
curriculum can be inquired through the person who has experienced, dealt with,
and framed/reframed curriculum according to his/her context. Put simply, the
value of the term curriculum lies in understanding it in context (Pinar, citied
in Slattery, 2000) rather than receiving it from theoretical notions. I have
envisaged that understanding the meaning of curriculum would be explored through
the means of personal inquiry, interpersonal sharing, context-based construction
and inter-subjective narratives.
On the basis
of above-mentioned notion of curriculum, the teacher learners would start to
excavate the meaning of curriculum from their own educational history. They
would identify the different types of mathematics curriculum, which framed their
understanding of teaching and learning mathematics. In my perspective, this
process would embed the notion of relational knowing in the context of
education, culture, politics and other factors which influence their ideas
(Gallego, Hollingsworth, & Whitenack, 2001)
. They would explore the notion of curriculum from the
context of learning, teaching, school system, students, parents and so forth. I
would not provide them with a linear model of learning but assign a complex task
with multiple questions in which they have to rehearse as if they were in the
real context. For me, the linear and sequential model of learning does not help
them construct the notion of curriculum simply because curriculum is not as
linear as we think. However, it
does not mean that curriculum is a complex and unattainable idea; it is
attainable through a contextual inquiry, which reflects how a person has
developed his idea of curriculum while coming across through available resources
and constraints.
The second
step of reconstructing the meaning of curriculum would be a series of discussion
activities in which the teacher learners would critically examine their fellow
teacher learners’ meaning of curriculum. This activity would help them develop
the meaning of curriculum in wider perspective. Influenced by Doll’s
(1993)
idea, I would emphasize the teacher learners to be critical
in all aspects including, context, concept and text in developing the meaning of
curriculum because their inquiry
could lead to a one way critique as a linear notion of curriculum. Undoubtedly,
the discussion would be capable of developing a set of meanings and images of
mathematics curriculum.
Patrick
Slattery elucidates in one of his recent articles (e. g. Slattery, 2000) that
there is no direct implementation of postmodern content in the school
curriculum. However, it is a way of developing multiple perspectives in relation
to the curriculum process. With
this vision, I would encourage the teacher learners to visit schools and
communities to survey the ideas of teachers, parents and students regarding the
meaning of curriculum. Furthermore, they would interview other stakeholders such
as District Education Officer, School Supervisors and subject experts of the
Curriculum Development Centre.
In the
fourth step, the teacher learners would discuss the different depiction of
curriculum on the basis of their survey. There would be a variety of meanings
and images of curriculum depicting from the curriculum as textbook to curriculum
as chaos and complexity. The teacher learners would compare these views in
relation to the meaning of curriculum portrayed by theoretical image.
Synthesizing the sundry images of curriculum, each teacher learner would develop
a mathematics curriculum outline for a grade of his/her preference.
With this
feature of my teacher education programme, the teacher learners would develop an
image of curriculum that acknowledges students’ subjective knowledge, which
they would adopt in their teaching context. My indication is in the direction of
developing a mathematical conscientization acknowledging students subjective
understanding. In addition, the concept of conscientization comes from the
Freirean Pedagogy
(Heaney, 1995)
, which I would construct it as a continuous process of
developing awareness of what the learner are thinking of , learning about and
acting in mathematics in their own context.
Integrating
culture, mathematics and learning
My
programme would develop a model of mathematics learning that takes into account
of culture, mathematical contents, and learning process. The teacher learner
would be put in such a situation that they would explore mathematical concepts
embedded in various ethnic cultures of Nepal. The sources of such mathematical
concepts would be the ancient manuscripts, ethnic specific theological texts,
fables and other cultural artefacts. Furthermore, they would inquire how
mathematical concepts evolved in a growing child and would draw a sketch of
possible teaching and learning strategies appropriate to the Nepalese schools
and children.
The
cultural aspect of mathematics is widely known as ethnomathematics in which
mathematics is viewed from cultural, local and shared perspective. According to
Brinkworth
(1995)
the canonical mathematics curriculum has put the
Euro-centric mathematics into perspective which directly or indirectly ignores
the ethno perspective of mathematical concepts. Among many ideas of Brinkworth
(1995)
, I would take into account of the notion of mathematics that
is studied within the cultural settings acknowledging spontaneous, natural,
informal, indigenous, folk, implicit, non-standard, hidden, frozen, commonsense,
colloquial, street and everyday mathematics
(D' Ambrosio, cited in Brinkworth, 1995)
which would help foster the understanding of mathematical
concepts within the cultural milieu. Undoubtedly, this activity would also help
promote different cultures that have treasured our spiritual and emotional
practice.
I
would help the teacher learners conceptualise mathematics a significant
achievement of human civilisation. They would not view the mathematical contents
and concepts as an unchangeable truth. Instead, the teacher learners would
conceptualise them as evolving conceptions according to the physical, social and
emotional development of a child. The teacher learner would be facilitated to
explore the mathematical concepts of children by using various techniques
including interview, reflexive journals, observation and so forth. Above all,
the process would help develop a sound pedagogical content knowledge
(Anderson, 2002)
and pedagogical thoughtfulness in the teacher learners.
Reconceptualising
theory from practice
We have been experiencing a gap between theory and practice in the
context of teacher education. One of the reasons, I believe, is to make teacher
education programme irrelevant from the context of schools. Furthermore, the
teacher education programmes have been guided by a static, linear and objective
model of teaching and learning as if they are suggesting a right prescription
for solving many complex, non-linear, non-sequential and context-based problem
of school education. I would follow a continuous and ever-changing model of
teacher education curriculum in order to contribute to the development of
context-based alternative models of teaching, learning and other aspects of
mathematics education.
I have
envisaged that, at least, one demonstration school is essential for this
purpose. In such school, the teacher learners would practice their ideals of
teaching and assess the transferability of such practice into their schools. I
agree with Kemmis’ idea
(1989)
that the gap between theory and practice in teacher
education can only be fulfilled by using an ongoing reconceptualization process
of theory from practice. It is widely known that the failure of the New Math
programme and other projects, a new approach of school reform has been
introduced which focus on an ongoing reconceptualization of theory from practice
(Pitman, 1989)
.
I
would encourage the teacher learners to develop context-based models of teaching
by using student experiences, storytelling, local materials, cultural resources
and available technological aids. Furthermore, they would carry out a set of
case studies of students of different background. Such studies would contribute
to the development of context-based theory of student learning. The teacher
learners would assess the impact of the street mathematics to school mathematics
and its consequences in developing understanding in mathematics learning. The
use of mathematics in the context of agriculture-based communities of Nepal
would be their area for research. The importance of street mathematics in
teaching has been justified from two perspectives: ethnomathematics education
and educational psychology
(de Abreu, 2002)
. Similarly, the issue of classroom as an emerging system of
learning context
(Middleton, Sawada, Judson, Bloom, & Turley, 2002) has become very
prominent issue in the field of teacher education. Needless to say, these two
underlying notions would help the teacher learners to develop different aspects
of learning as well as teaching and learning.
In conclusion, my focus would be on preparing a basis for an
“equitable, coherent and powerful”
(National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000 pp. 10,
287, 345)
school mathematics programme
is one of the important issues to make mathematics for all. Except
physical and economic resources, human resource is one of the problems related
to successful equitable mathematics. I would plan to involve the teacher
educators to develop a model of such school mathematics, which can be a basis
for suggesting our government to develop an equitable school mathematics
programme.
I have envisaged that the role of teacher educators would be
as mentors who would continually support the teacher learners in developing
their ideas in various aspects of mathematics education. I would promote a
collaborative and democratic learning environment, which would promote healthy
competition between the persons. Furthermore, the personal development of the
teacher educators and the teacher learners would be the prime aim of the
institute through which the institute would sustain. The teacher educator would
value the voice of the teacher learners by which the teacher learners would
learn the way of acknowledging their students’ voices.
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