National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: Part Four: Implications for Teaching and Teacher Education
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

Part Five—
Epilogue

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

There was a problem loading page 156.

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

Epilogue

The introduction to High School Mathematics at Work begins by asserting that today's world provides rich and compelling examples of mathematical ideas in everyday and workplace settings. In short, workplace-based mathematics can be good mathematics for everyone. The volume goes on to explore opportunities and challenges posed by developments in the world outside of the classroom. Several points deserve mention and special emphasis. Because this document is part of a larger reform movement, some concerns must be addressed about the reform movement in general and also about the scope of the tasks in this volume. Once again, the tasks in this volume are not prescriptions for curriculum but examples that are intended to illuminate possibilities.

Mathematics Education Reform

At the heart of some of the recent concerns about K-12 education reform efforts are issues of subject matter content: scope, depth, and levels of conceptual reasoning and technical proficiency. Concerns have been raised, for example, that some proposed revisions of curricula omit important topics and place insufficient emphasis on technical proficiency to promote understanding. High School Mathematics at Work aims neither to broaden nor restrict the scope of the high

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

school mathematics curriculum. Furthermore, technical proficiency and depth of content coverage are not necessarily reduced by inclusion of workplace and everyday applications of mathematics. To the contrary, such an approach can provide meaning that increases the depth of students' understanding as well as their levels of conceptual reasoning and technical proficiency. Of course, a necessary condition for such an outcome is that students have sufficient opportunity for mathematical closure—extracting and conceptualizing the mathematics underlying the problems.

The Scope of High School Mathematics

By emphasizing connections between mathematics and workplace and everyday contexts, the mathematical content of this volume emphasizes some topics that have particularly striking, valuable, or widespread applications outside the classroom. Despite the broad range of tasks in this volume, statistics, discrete mathematics, and spatial reasoning receive little attention, and yet their relevance for today's world is without question. High School Mathematics at Work flags places in hospitals, banks, homes, and other familiar settings where important mathematical ideas are used. Many of these settings employ techniques which depend upon and lead to aspects of algebraic, geometric, and functional reasoning that have been and will always be recognized as crucial elements of a high school education.

A careful look at algebraic reasoning illustrates this point. Linear programming (a subset of algebra), for example, has many beautiful, important, and time-tested applications. That is why many textbooks already contain problems on this subject. More generally, algebraic reasoning is often addressed in High School Mathematics at Work through spreadsheets (rules for combining the entries of certain cells to produce the quantity that goes into another cell are just algebra in a new form). That some aspects of classical algebra do not appear more explicitly in High School Mathematics at Work should not be taken as a statement about their mathematical or practical value. Students heading to technical careers of any sort should understand how to use and interpret symbols. In fact, for all students, understanding of core algebraic skills and reasoning continues to be a key mathematical prerequisite.

Similar comments could be made about many other mathematical topics not explicitly mentioned in High School Mathematics at Work. Indeed, the Task Force for this volume identified quite a large number of mathematically important and delightful problems that were eventually not recommended for inclusion because their connection to workplace or everyday applications was less apparent than for others. Among the favorites not included were the following: calculating into how many regions n lines drawn at random divide the plane; and using probability calculations to see how the length of a play-off series affects the chances of the weaker team pulling off an upset by winning the series.

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

A Curriculum is More Than Tasks

When one addresses concerns about reform-based materials as well as the fact that not all important high school mathematics is represented here, it is necessary once again to caution that the tasks in High School Mathematics at Work constitute neither a complete curriculum nor even student-ready curricular materials. All readers are welcome to see in these tasks potential for strengthening the mathematics education of all students, but no one should conclude that it is enough to teach these tasks or even a collection of exercises inspired by them. Any tasks need to be embedded in a coherent, well-developed mathematics curriculum that provides the mathematical understanding that a high school graduate should have. In the end, mathematics is ''more than a toolbox," as Hugo Rossi recently put it. The act of abstraction is what makes it so powerful. After completing a series of workplace or everyday problems with students, we must always remember to help them understand that what we call mathematics comes from generalizing and organizing the common features among the solutions into a coherent structure. A quality mathematics curriculum is not crafted out of tasks alone but also depends upon how these tasks are knit together and what kinds of opportunities students are afforded for abstraction and deep conceptual development.

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

There was a problem loading page 160.

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

Appendixes

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×

There was a problem loading page 162.

Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 155
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 156
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 157
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 158
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 159
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 160
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 161
Suggested Citation:"Part Five: Epilogue." National Research Council. 1998. High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5777.
×
Page 162
Next: Appendix A »
High School Mathematics at Work: Essays and Examples for the Education of All Students Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $41.00 Buy Ebook | $32.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Traditionally, vocational mathematics and precollege mathematics have been separate in schools. But the technological world in which today's students will work and live calls for increasing connection between mathematics and its applications. Workplace-based mathematics may be good mathematics for everyone.

High School Mathematics at Work illuminates the interplay between technical and academic mathematics. This collection of thought-provoking essays—by mathematicians, educators, and other experts—is enhanced with illustrative tasks from workplace and everyday contexts that suggest ways to strengthen high school mathematical education.

This important book addresses how to make mathematical education of all students meaningful—how to meet the practical needs of students entering the work force after high school as well as the needs of students going on to postsecondary education.

The short readable essays frame basic issues, provide background, and suggest alternatives to the traditional separation between technical and academic mathematics. They are accompanied by intriguing multipart problems that illustrate how deep mathematics functions in everyday settings—from analysis of ambulance response times to energy utilization, from buying a used car to "rounding off" to simplify problems.

The book addresses the role of standards in mathematics education, discussing issues such as finding common ground between science and mathematics education standards, improving the articulation from school to work, and comparing SAT results across settings.

Experts discuss how to develop curricula so that students learn to solve problems they are likely to encounter in life—while also providing them with approaches to unfamiliar problems. The book also addresses how teachers can help prepare students for postsecondary education.

For teacher education the book explores the changing nature of pedagogy and new approaches to teacher development. What kind of teaching will allow mathematics to be a guide rather than a gatekeeper to many career paths? Essays discuss pedagogical implication in problem-centered teaching, the role of complex mathematical tasks in teacher education, and the idea of making open-ended tasks—and the student work they elicit—central to professional discourse.

High School Mathematics at Work presents thoughtful views from experts. It identifies rich possibilities for teaching mathematics and preparing students for the technological challenges of the future. This book will inform and inspire teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, and others involved in improving mathematics education and the capabilities of tomorrow's work force.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!