[Octm] Eisenhower National Clearinghouse

[Weinand, Stacey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Becker [mailto:jbecker at siu.edu]
Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 10:53 PM
To: jbecker at siu.edu
Subject: News Release: Eisenhower National Clearinghouse


NEWS RELEASE

Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC)

Contact: Carolyn Hamilton  [chamilton at enc.org  --  (614) 247-7928]

Increasing Math and Science Content Knowledge Is Discussed by Practicing Teachers in the July issue of ENC Focus Magazine

(Columbus, Ohio, July 9, 2002) More than most other teachers, math and science teachers must continually update and expand their content knowledge to keep pace with increased expectations. National standards for student learning, recent discoveries in science, new approaches to teaching, and national and international comparisons of student achievement require these teachers to keep learning more in their fields. In the July issue of the quarterly magazine ENC Focus, classroom teachers and teacher educators describe ways that they learn and grow while they teach.

The content of the magazine is available on ENC Online ( http://www.enc.org/focus/content/).

An interview with one of the nation's best-known advocates for increasing the mathematics expertise of elementary school teachers is a special feature of the issue. Liping Ma tells the Focus interviewer how she became aware of the differences between American and Chinese elementary teachers in their presentation of arithmetic. Chinese teachers bring a far deeper understanding of mathematics concepts to their classrooms, she says. She describes her continuing research into better ways to teach mathematics to the young, but she also reminds classroom teachers that they are their own best teachers when they constantly ask themselves "Why?". A brief description of Ma's initial research accompanies the interview.

In another article, Zalman Usiskin, director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, proposes math and science courses that are aimed specifically at teaching those subjects in K-12 classrooms. Teachers' mathematics and teachers' science are not watered-down content but content aimed at a particular profession, he says.

Joan Kenney of the Harvard Graduate School of Education describes a program that seeks to break down the division between basic mathematics skills and conceptual understanding, and she gives examples of problems for primary, elementary and early middle grades.