Successful change in high school mathematics requires transforming how mathematics is taught and facing our own individual and collective roles in changing a system that does not currently serve all students well. We recognize how challenging it is to change teaching practice and therefore will describe specific strategies and techniques that can make significant differences in student learning and disposition.
To identify and exemplify the pedagogical changes necessary, we draw from the eight mathematics teaching practices as defined and described in NCTM’s Principles to Actions (2014) to help us craft a vision of mathematics classrooms.
In addition, the ways in which students participate in mathematics and express their mathematical identities determine their level of agency. Mathematical agency is about participating in mathematics in ways that are meaningful, both personally and socially (Berry 2016). Equitable mathematics teaching practices support identity and agency by creating structures for having students’ mathematical ideas considered during instruction, supporting students in viewing themselves as having ownership of mathematical meaning, and coordinating enterprises across contexts to strengthen this ownership (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, and Martin 2013; Oppland-Cordell and Martin 2015).
To address the need to focus on agency and identity, NCTM’s Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics (2018, 32–34) provides a crosswalk between the eight mathematics teaching practices in Principles to Actions (outlined above) and equitable teaching practices.
Establish mathematics goals to focus learning.
Implement tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving.
Establish learning progressions that build students’ mathematical understanding, increase their confidence, and support their mathematical identities as doers of mathematics.
Establish classroom norms for participation that position each and every student as a competent mathematics thinker.
Establish classroom environments that promote learning mathematics as just, equitable, and inclusive.
High school mathematics departments need to collaboratively discuss, work on implementing, exemplify, and share approaches to these practices via collegial classroom visits and video analyses of one another’s teaching. In other words, as curriculum changes are implemented, converting all these words into tangible classroom practice is a nonnegotiable component of invigorating high school mathematics.
High school math is failing many students. Out-of-date and stale curricula are not only dull, but perpetuate inequity by limiting opportunities and failing to prepare a majority of students for life in the 21st century.
Invigorating High School Math is a clarion call for meaningful transformation. In this book, Steven Leinwand and Eric Milou address the most critical challenges facing high school mathematics and provide practical guidance for meeting them.
Eric Milou is Professor of Mathematics at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ and co-author of Daily Routines to Jump Start Math Class and EnVision Math A|G|A. Eric served as President of the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New Jersey and on the Board of Directors of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics..