Round Table Education Panel

Last Wednesday, April 2nd from 3:15 to 4:15 I attended an education panel on math education. In this panel, there were four presenters. Each presenter had ten minutes to discuss their subject, and then in the end they opened it up the floor for questions and answers. There were four different topics being presented, since there were four different presenters.

The first topic was on Ability Grouping. This is the process in which students in the same grade are grouped based on the students ability. What presenter 1 did was she interviewed two teachers, that taught in grades 7 and 8. She then observed 64 students. She had students answer 21 questionnaires and interviewed 2 students. Her findings were that generally teachers and students are satisfied with ability grouping. The students are allowed to learn at their own pace. The next topic was "How do students utilize a lesson on discourse in their student to student interactions in a mathematics classroom?" The presenter did research in an 8th grade mathematics classroom. I was a bit confused at first, because I had never really heard and/or looked into discourse, but she found that students are learning with the help of their peers as well as thru lessons.

The next presenter's presentation was on "How does the implementation affect the way teachers make decisions in their teaching methods?"  The presenter did her research thru 4 teachers, who had been teaching 5, 5.5, 37 and 9 years. She looked into how Math in Focus changed the way those teachers had taught, and found the positive and negative outcomes to Math in Focus. The fourth presenter's presentation was on "How co-teaching affects the teaching practices of college faculty?" This presenter had a qualitative active research study with 6 teachers who partnered up to develop a successful course. I found this interesting. She found that although it is a ton of work, the professors had made it clear that no one had pushed them into co-teaching, and they did it because they wanted too. Some people gave this presenter backlash that she was only focusing on the positives, however, she replied that they did find some negatives in the research however the positives outweighed the negatives by a long shot.

I found the Ability Grouping very interesting. Being competitive by nature, I always wanted to be in the highest leveled class possible. One year, I was placed in the second highest class and I was down on myself. I knew I could learn as fast as the highest class, so I pushed myself. I got to shine in that math class that year and by the next year was in the highest math class! I was shocked that many students agreed with Ability Grouping. I think for people like myself, ability grouping can be both a blessing and a curse. I attached an article that explains more into detail what ability grouping is, that can be here.