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The opinions expressed on this blog are the views of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Mathematical Society.
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Recent Posts
- Pedagogical implications of Mathematics as the art of giving the same name to different things
- Flip Your Class: Social Distancing Edition
- A Geometric Approach to Functions
- Active Learning and the Transformation of a Graduate Student Instructor
- The things in proofs are weird: a thought on student difficulties
Category Archives: Mathematics Education Research
The things in proofs are weird: a thought on student difficulties
By Ben Blum-Smith, Contributing Editor “The difficulty… is to manage to think in a completely astonished and disconcerted way about things you thought you had always understood.” ― Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 207 Proof is the central … Continue reading
Online learning in the time of Coronavirus: Tips for students and the instructors who support them
Abbe Herzig, AMS Director of Education In the midst of the upheaval due to the Coronavirus, students and faculty are transitioning to new virtual classrooms. Many of us haven’t chosen to learn or teach, but here we are, making the … Continue reading
Surprise! Transitioning to online teaching
By Abbe Herzig, AMS Director of Education Many of us are experiencing stress as schools, colleges and universities move instruction out of the classroom. Fortunately, even if distance learning is new to you, it isn’t new, and there is a … Continue reading
The Future of Enrichment: Math Contests or Math Circles?
by Doug O’Roark Executive Director, Math Circles of Chicago The New York Times recently published an article entitled “The Right Answer? 8,186,699,633,530,061 (An Abacus Makes It Look Almost Easy)”. Its lead photograph features over 100 children seated at desks, facing … Continue reading
Is there a switch for “making sense” ?
By Elena Galaktionova Elena Galaktionova sent us this article shortly before she passed away earlier this year. Foreword by Cornelius Pillen Elena Galaktionova received her first introduction to mathematics from her favorite middle school teacher in Minsk, Belarus, her hometown. … Continue reading
Some thoughts about epsilon and delta
By Ben Blum-Smith, Contributing Editor The calculus has a very special place in the 20th century’s traditional course of mathematical study. It is a sort of fulcrum: both the summit toward which the whole secondary curriculum strives, and the fundamental … Continue reading
Posted in Faculty Experiences, Mathematics Education Research, Student Experiences
Tagged calculus, continuity, definitions, delta, difficulty, epsilon, limit, proof, real analysis
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Everyone Can Learn Mathematics to High Levels: The Evidence from Neuroscience that Should Change our Teaching
By Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education, Stanford University, and co-founder of youcubed.org (This is the first of two of our most popular Blog posts that we repeat for the month of July. ) 2018 was an important year for … Continue reading
Two More Teaching Vignettes
For this month’s blog post, I offer two more vignettes from my classroom experience. My intention, as in the last column, is to communicate what I think of as the essence of teaching, which is the emotional—not just intellectual—bond between … Continue reading
Two Teaching Vignettes
As the Spring term ends, I thought I’d share with readers two vignettes from my teaching career. The intention is for us to remember how much of teaching is the emotional connection between student and teacher. For me, this is … Continue reading
Helping Students Gain Control in Developmental and First-Year College Mathematics Courses
By A. Gwinn Royal, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana Currently, I am focusing on mitigating “learned helplessness” with respect to the study of mathematics. According to an article on the APA website (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/10/helplessness.aspx), newer research on learned helplessness suggests … Continue reading
