Elementary Teachers Boost Math Knowledge

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — University of Arkansas faculty members are helping elementary school teachers deepen their knowledge of math.

Elementary school teachers don’t enjoy the simplicity of specializing in one content area, such as math, in the way that a secondary teacher might. Instead, they must ensure their pupils learn in a wide range of subjects — science, social studies, reading, writing, spelling, English, history and math.

Through a grant from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, the university is partnering with the Decatur, Lincoln and Springdale school districts to offer a workshop to elementary teachers to increase their knowledge of math.

Laura Kent, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, and Allan Cochran, professor of math, teamed up with the help of Linda Jaslow, math instructional specialist at the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative in Farmington, to present the workshop June 18-21 at Lincoln Elementary School. About 30 teachers from the three districts will attend.

The state grant establishes university and public school partnerships to focus on teacher quality from preschool through a four-year college education.

“It’s difficult for elementary teachers to get the same depth of content preparation as secondary teachers because they don’t major in one content area,” Kent explained.

University of Arkansas students majoring in childhood education take 15 hours of math courses in addition to courses in other subject areas they must teach such as science and history. Students planning to teach on a secondary level earn a bachelor’s degree in their content area while taking some courses in the College of Education and Health Professions. The majority of students planning to teach on any level then enter the Master of Arts in Teaching program for yearlong internships at local public schools as well as higher level pedagogical courses.

Kent and Cochran will follow up with the teachers, visiting their classrooms during the next school year and offering additional workshops next summer.

“We’re excited to work with elementary teachers,” Kent said. “It’s great for us in higher education to see what is going on in elementary classrooms.”

Cochran said he’s interested in seeing that children gain an understanding of math processes, rather than just learning algorithms.

“I would like to get rid of the idea that it’s OK to be stupid in math but not in other things,” Cochran said. “There’s a cultural attitude toward math that needs to change.”

Teachers who attend the workshop won’t sit in a classroom looking at algebra texts and working problems.

“It could not be any further from that,” Kent said. “We will build math knowledge through learning what kids do when they work problems. Kids can do a lot of high-level math, but at the elementary level they don’t always have a teacher who knows what to do with the students’ knowledge, how to encourage it so that the child’s interest and skill level continues to grow.”

In addition to content knowledge, the teachers will acquire insight on using their own knowledge about how children learn in a more useful way, Kent said.

The workshop is based in part on a professional development model Kent first learned as a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her major professor there, Tom Carpenter, led a team that developed a professional enrichment program that they named Cognitively Guided Instruction. It increases teachers’ understanding of the knowledge that students bring to the math learning process and how they connect that knowledge with formal concepts and operations.

Kent also has a grant from the Arkansas Department of Education to study the implementation of Cognitively Guided Instruction in Arkansas.

Cochran is also interested in the program.

“It’s a state initiative that I support heartily,” he said. “It has the potential to be very helpful in improving math learning in our schools.”

Cochran taught four times in the Arkansas Math Crusade, an initiative that paired a college professor with a public school teacher to team-teach a course for other public school teachers.

Kent specializes in math instruction in the College of Education and Health Professions. Cochran chairs the math department in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.