Teaching Mathematics in the 21st Century

Chapter 1 

"What a heading!" I thought to myself as I read the title of chapter 1. Reading through the five content standards brought back memories of my years in school. From what I have remembered, my Math Teacher with a textbook on his hand, would always be standing in front of the white board explaining concepts and showing plenty of examples of how questions are being solved, then similar questions would be distributed to be completed. Clearly, the method that my teacher had adopted was very different from what NCTM had discussed in this chapter; where students should acquire and use mathematical knowledge through problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections and representation.

"High-quality mathematics education" is being emphasised in this chapter. This is a goal that all educators in Singapore, which includes me, should work towards to. It is easier said than done, however with determination, I believe it is achievable. To achieve the goal of implementing high-quality math education as a successful Teacher of Mathematics, one should have the characteristics, habits of thought, skills, and dispositions that the author has described in this chapter.

If you were to ask me how different is Pre-school's mathematics teaching now as compared to how I was taught in my years of study, my answer would be 'not much difference, but trying to improve'. From what I have observed, some curriculum are still planned in a way that pre-schoolers learned numbers through rote counting and memorising of number names/words, concepts are taught by 'saying', worksheets that does not encourage thinking, problem solving, reasoning and questioning are frequently used. In short, there are little opportunities for pre-schoolers to be active learners to achieve in-depth learning.

Lastly, here's a quote from the author "it is you, the teacher, who will shape mathematics for the students you teach. Your belief about what it means to know and do mathematics and about how student make sense of mathematics will affect how you approach instruction." We are in control!...to a certain extent...


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