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Current Collaborations, Research and Publications By Craig Howley The Center’s Research Activities The Research Initiative has been quite productive in recent months. The Center continues to receive manuscripts of new empirical (data-based) work and various other papers and contributions. Reports of two major studies have been received, and one (Alan DeYoung’s Social Construction of Rural Mathematics) has already been posted to the website. The manuscript of the other study (Aimee Howley, Melissa Gholson, and Edwina Pendarvis’s How Talented Rural Students Experience School Mathematics) is still under review. However, both authors have submitted the manuscripts to major journals. A number of other manuscripts are on review at journals, and all told, 15 manuscripts are nearing completion or awaiting the review of the co-directors. Some of these manuscripts come from the Second Annual ACCLAIM Research Symposium, held November 2-4 at Ravenwood Castle in McArthur, Ohio. This year’s Symposium brought the ACCLAIM 2002 doctoral cohort—now midway through their coursework—together with invited national experts for discussions about the significance of place for mathematics education, and for small-group discussions of drafts of students’ ideas for studies or mathematics education in rural context. Groups of 3 or 4 students met with two mentors (one mathematics and rural education researcher) in order to bring to the surface the challenges of this sort of research—research that the Center strongly encourages among its doctoral students. Sigrid Wagner, Les Steffe, and Doug Owens (Mathematics Education) and Ted Coladarci, Alan DeYoung, Aimee Howley (Rural Education) provided the much-valued mentoring. The first day of the Symposium was devoted to a keynote by Ron Eglash from Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute, demonstrating his culturally situated mathematics software. Discussion of Ron’s work was followed by the presentations of a panel that included two rural mathematics teachers (high school teacher Jon Lindner of the Vinton County, Ohio, Local Schools, and Martina Schmidt, who teaches middle-school mathematics in Calgary, Alberta). Paul Theobald, of Wayne State College (Wayne, Nebraska) and Karen Mitchell (Marshall University) also contributed remarks. The keynote speech and the panelists’ papers will appear soon in the Center’s Research Clearinghouse. Mike Waters has assumed the position of post-doctoral researcher with the Research Initiative and is participating in several studies in that capacity. Mike’s former responsibilities for technical assistance with the website and other electronic ventures is now in the able hands of Graduate Associate Ali Ikiz. ACCLAIM’s administrative assistant, Lori Spencer, returned from maternity leave just in time to help with the hysteria surrounding the Research Symposium. The team was delighted; welcome back Lori. ACCLAIM organized the Research Symposium of the National Rural Education Association’s annual conference in Kearney, Nebraska, on October 22. The theme of the session—an extended panel—was: Rural Place-Based Mathematics Education and Social Justice. Speakers included Barbara Adams, of the Yup’ik Math Project; LaVerne Davis, of the Beaufort County (South Carolina) Schools; Melissa Gholson, Ohio University; and Vena Long, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The session was well attended and the follow-up discussion quite lively. Place-based education is a uniquely rural innovation in curriculum and instruction. The educational mainstream encounters “place” as troublesome, however, because connection to place is considered culturally unfamiliar (a theoretical problem) and believed to be irrelevant to accountability schemes (a practical problem). Much remains to be explained about place-based education. In particular, place-based education runs the risk of being dismissed as a sentimental misstep, or as an unusually parochial version of vocational education. The missing understanding is the integral concern of place-based education with social justice. A rural concern for social justice would, in fact, be news to many mainstream educators, who are apt to regard rural people as bigots. These challenges are compounded in the case of mathematics education because, of all subjects, mathematics is so often presumed (wrongly presumed according to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and leading mathematics education scholars) to lack connections to students’ everyday lives. Most mathematics teachers (particularly at the secondary level) continue to understand mathematics teaching and learning as preparation for the subsequent level of school mathematics, or about high-level professional positions that supposedly require advanced school mathematics (about which professions most teachers know little or nothing). Worse, the discipline of mathematics is assumed (wrongly, again according to such authorities as the NCTM) to be quite irrelevant to social justice. Organized by the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM), the Rural School and Community Trust, and the Yup’ik Math Project, this session discussed the need for rural mathematics education that instead honors rural places and people with wise concern for their futures and critical concern for their pasts. All three organizations have made commitments to rural education explicitly intended to address social justice. The discussion involved a panel of school practitioners and researchers who are, in diverse ways, representing the concerns of social justice in rural mathematics education. Development of place-based education will fall to a rising generation of rural educators and rural education researchers, and it is important for them to join this discussion. Contact information for participants: Barabara Adams, School of Education,
University of Alaska, Box 756480, Fairbanks, AK 99775-6480 Melissa Gholson, McCracken Hall, Ohio
University, Athens OH 45701 Laverne Davis, St. Helena Elementary
School, St. Helena Island SC 29920 Vena Long, A409 Claxton Complex,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville TN 37996 Craig Howley, McCracken Hall, Ohio
University, Athens OH [Organizer] 45701 |
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