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Just want to improve your teaching techniques or learn more about math pedagogy? Start here.
A Fresh Start for Collegiate Mathematics: Rethinking the Courses below Calculus (2006), published by the MAA. There is a great review of this book by James Poinsett that includes a suggestion for which articles in the book to read if you don't want to read the whole thing but do want an overview. Here is a summary of the themes:
- Background: Who takes Precalculus, what classes do they take after Precalculus, what has Calculus reform taught us?
- Theme 1: New Visions for Introductory Collegiate Mathematics
- Theme 2: The Transition from High School to College
- Theme 3: The Needs of Other Disciplines
- Theme 4: Student Learning and Research
- Theme 5: Implementation
- Theme 6: Influencing the Mathematics Community
- Ideas and Projects that Work
Assessment Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics (1999), published by the MAA. If you're looking for a collection of mathematics CATS (Classroom Assessment Techniques), this is not it - so don't get your hopes up. However, this is an excellent book to
read to get ideas for achieving more general assessment. Here's a link to the MAA bookstore.
- Part I: Assessing the Major
- Part II: Assessment in the Individual Classroom
- Part III: Departmental Assessment Initiatives
- Part IV: Assessing Teaching
Achieving Quantitative Literacy: An Urgent Challenge for Higher Education (2004), published by the MAA. This is a "call to action" that mathematics instructors pay more attention to the role of mathematics outside of the mathematics classroom.
Do our students really walk away from math classes able to apply their "learned" math with practical work skills? This is a must-read, especially for science educators - it might help
to explain the skills of the students that you see in science classes and how to work closer with a math department to achieve the skills you'd like to see. Here's a link to the MAA bookstore.
How Students (mis)-Understand Math and Science (2000), published by Teachers College Press. A quick and easy read about the "intuitive rules" that students seem to be guided by. The authors do a nice job of showing how students react the same
way in unrelated situations - thus providing evidence of the hard-wired intuitive rules that the brain seems to be guided by. Here's a link to the TCP bookstore.
Beyond Crossroads: Implementing Mathematics Standards in the First Two Years of College (2006), published by AMATYC. If you are trying to figure out what the standards are for mathematics at freshman and sophomore levels, here is your resource.
There is all sorts of great stuff in here, but my favorite feature of this book is that for every "Implementation Standard," there is a little section called "Actions to support this
recommendation" which includes Faculty Actions and Departmental / Institutional Actions. Probably, we should all read this one cover to cover and then begin thinking about what changes we can implement within our own schools to align with these standards. You can get this book FREE in download or print by going
to the Beyond Crossroads site.
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