Tom Carpenter, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
describes the importance of linking classroom material to the kinds of knowledge
that students learn outside of school. Excerpted from the video series Schools
That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #2, Children as Problem
Solvers (NCREL, 1991).
"There's a lot of evidence now, that children come to school with the kinds of informal knowledge, they develop ways of solving problems outside of school, and what we've traditionally done is to teach mathematics in school as though it were separate from the kinds of knowledge that kids learned out on the streets. But what we have now is we have a pretty good map of the kinds of knowledge students have and how basic concepts develop over time."