Reaching All Students With Mathematics (1993) is an entire book of illustrative cases. Many of the chapters tell a story about how an exemplery project, course, or school has attempted to teach high-quality mathematics to students who have traditionally been underrepresented in the mathematics community.
In Part 1: A Global View, Claudia Zaslavsky discusses strategies for integrating students' culture into the mathematics classroom. She describes her secondary school experiences in a school district just outside of New York City, along with several other applications for multicultural mathematics.
Part 2: Changing What Students Learn describes programs that implement changes in the mathematics curriculum. These programs include the Mathematics and Science Microcomputer Project, a summer program conducted by the higher education Syracuse Hill Educational Consortium, in partnership with six middle schools of the Syracuse City School District; the University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP), a statewide program that provides alternative mathematical experiences for highly gifted students beginning in grades 6-8; and the Algebra Transition Project of inner-city algrebra 1 classes intended for all students, a joint project of the Philadelphia Schools Collaborative and the Philadelphia School District. Part 2 devotes a chapter to each of these programs and to 30-year-old national program called Project SEED. Project SEED serves all students, especially elementary school students in the at-risk sector, in Berkeley, Oakland, Dallas, Philadelphia, Detroit, and other cities. It uses a curriculum based on high mathematics and instructional strategies that include Socratic questioning techniques to improve students' critical thinking skills and self-esteem.
The chapters in Part 3: Changing How Teachers Teach include approaches to changing teachers' instructional behavior from traditional practice to new modes of teaching and learning. The features of language that teachers need to be aware of, as well as strategies for improving classroom discourse, are described in a chapter on the communicative approach to teaching mathematics. It provides examples of communicative teaching at an international high school in Queens, New York, along with a description of helpful instructional resources. Another chapter in this section describes Project TEAMS (Training for Equitable Attributes in Mathematics and Science) from the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education, Indiana University. This project has developed an eclectic model - designed to be adaptable to local conditions - that combines three sex equity programs: INTERSECT, an award-winning teacher interaction program; EQUALS, a nationally recognized mathematics program; and COMETS, an outstanding science program. SAVI-SELPH, a supplementary science enrichment component for physically handicapped students, completes Project TEAMS' model for females who are minority and/or physically handicapped.
Part 4: Changing How Students Learn describes two factors related to reaching all students - using student-constructed problems and working with heterogeneous groups - and provides numerous examples from classrooms. In the last chapter of the book, Christopher Healy describes his own attempt to create an environment that fosters student support for one another and students' responsibility for their own learning in a diverse high school classroom - the basis of the highly learner-centered Build-A-Book Geometry class.
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