New Mexico The New Mexico program consists of a series of 1-day (Saturday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.) workshops to which out-of-State consultants are invited. Teachers must pay their own expenses to attend these conferences. The State department of education also makes available, on a loan basis, experimental materials such as those prepared by the School Mathematics Study Group at Yale, by the University of Maryland for grades 7 and 8, and by the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics. Rhode Island To stimulate interest and to help prepare periodicals in the teaching of mathematics and science, the Rhode Island State Legislature in 1959 established the Rhode Island Mathematics and Science Scholarship Commission and appropriated $30,000 annually for scholarships to be awarded by the Commission. Grants up to $500 annually may be made to eligible applicants. These grants are limited by law to: Juniors and seniors in college who are preparing to teach mathematics and/or science. College graduates who are interested in preparing to teach mathematics and/or science. Teachers in service who want to improve their teaching competence in mathematics and/or science. Grants are made for study during either the regular school year or the summer. In addition to this program, other State scholarship grants for teachers in service are administered by the State department of education, but are not necessarily limited to study in mathematics and science. The annual appropriation for these grants in recent years has been approximately $45,000. They are available for study at the two State-controlled and three privately controlled institutions of higher education within the State. Pennsylvania Under title III of the National Defense Education Act, Pennsylvania is carrying on inservice teacher education in the following manner. With the approval of a State coordinator, population centers under the leadership of a local regional chairman may profit by an inservice education program for mathematics teachers. The regional chairman will first identify a group of at least 40 mathematics teachers desiring a program. Local colleges, universities, and industries are then sur veyed for competent instructors. The content, as well as the length of the program, is determined by the interested teachers under the direction of the regional chairman. He then completes an application form and submits it to the State coordinator. The coordinator studies the application with the assistance of a committee. If the application is not immediately approvable, suggestions are made for strengthening or improving it. A significant feature of the programs is the fact that the entire cost of instructors' salaries is paid by evenly matched State and Federal funds. Local districts must provide a suitable meeting place for the class sessions. Most programs range in length from ten to twenty-two 2-hour sessions. All of them center upon the explanation and development of modern mathematical concepts and experimental programs. Pennsylvania has available for use in its mathematics inservice programs one set of the New York State films titled, "Mathematics for Teachers," and has ordered a second set. However, an instructor need not use these films for his inservice program. In this case the instructor submits to the department for approval an outline of the material he plans to present. No college credit can be earned by teachers through participation in these inservice programs. It is expected that teachers will attend regularly and respond actively to the assignments made by the instructor. At the close of a program the regional chairman is responsible for giving to the State coordinator a statement of attendance at the sessions, an evaluation of the program's merit or success, and an indication of any possible weaknesses. Contributions by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics One of the cooperating groups in the present conference is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, a professional organization with a membership of more than 37,000 elementary and secondary teachers and institutions. Each member of the NCTM receives either or both of the professional journals, The Mathematics Teacher or the Arithmetic Teacher. The former is devoted primarily to problems, practices, and professional articles on the teaching of secondary school mathematics, and the latter serves a similar function for elementary school mathematics. Annually, the NCTM sponsors three or four professional meetings which attract mathematics teachers from all over the United States and many parts of Canada. Although it is difficult to measure the total impact of meetings on the reeducation of teachers, professional meetings such as those conducted by the NCTM do provide inspiration for teachers, spur many of them to additional independent study, and create a desire for additional education on college campuses. Another valuable service of the NCTM is a series of publications. Their yearbooks, especially in recent years, have been directed toward the reeducation of the mathematics teacher. For example, the 23d, 24th, and 25th yearbooks are entitled, respectively, Insights into Modern Mathematics, The Growth of Mathematical Ideas (Grades K-12) and Instruction in Arithmetic. These publications are suitable for both independent and group study. Supplementing the series of yearbooks, the NCTM publishes a number of pamphlets which may be classified as follows: 1. Guide to the National Defense Education Act. Advice on the use and procurement of teaching aids and tests, designs for the mathematics classroom, and the role of the mathematics supervisor. 2. Curriculum and program. Reports of curriculum committees, new developments in secondary school mathematics, the education of the gifted student in mathematics, and the education of the slow learner. 3. "How-to Series." How to use effectively, for mathematics teaching, the bulletin board, field trips, films and filmstrips, and the library; how to develop a teaching guide. 4. Enrichment and miscellaneous. Various topics to enrich high school mathematics teaching: Recreational mathematics, paper folding, the number concept, and geometry. One pamphlet on organizing and conducting a high school mathematics club. The interest of local and State groups in helping their mathematics teachers improve themselves through inservice activities is indicated by a rapid growth in the program of the affiliated groups of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The number of affiliated groups has grown to 75, an increase of about 15 during the last 5 years. A number of new groups are preparing to affiliate with the NCTM. Local and State groups have served their members through three main types of activities: Conferences and workshops, newsletters, and consultant services. Every affiliated group conducts at least one conference per year. In a number of States, such as Illinois, a series of meetings is held in different geographical areas in order to serve better the needs of teachers throughout the entire State. The programs for many of these meetings present discussions of current and pressing problems by prominent mathematics educators. An outstanding example of a vital State conference is the Asilomar Conference sponsored each year by the California Mathematics Council. This meeting is a full-scale convention, with commercial and educational exhibits. Other conferences are of the workshop type, like those held in New England and Michigan. Several affiliated groups have cooperated with colleges in the sponsoring conferences and institutes, as in New Jersey and Florida. Excellent articles on problems in mathematics teaching have appeared in the newsletters and journals published by the affiliated groups. Among the affiliated groups which produce newsletters or journals are these: Association of Mathematics Teachers in New England. Association of Mathematics Teachers in New Jersey. Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State. Florida Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Hillsborough County Mathematics Council, Florida. Indiana Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Kansas Association of Teachers of Mathematics. Nebraska Section of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Texas Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Of special interest is the Workshop Consultant Service inaugurated in 1959 by the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics which administers the service and subsidizes its administrative costs. The plan is one having two consultants for a 1-day workshop, each consultant to present in detail a different facet of the work of present curriculum study projects. The service is available to local school systems for a small fee. A major objective of the workshops is to motivate teachers to engage in independent study. The OCTM hopes that the consultant service can be expanded in future years into other areas of service. This pattern of operation of the OCTM might be adopted for use in other States. Summary of Group Work-Session Deliberations W. EUGENE FERGUSON IN THE PAST, many good secondary mathematics programs, curriculum guides, courses of study, etc., have gathered dust on the shelves and caused very little, if any, change in the mathematical content offered to secondary pupils. They have also had very little effect on the teaching of mathematics at the secondary school level. Today it is different: it seems as though we are playing this game "for keeps" now. The groups that are developing new mathematics programs are, at the same time, striving to see that the people that use their material in its early stages of development have adequate training in the content and effective methods of presenting this mathematics. The University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics has been training teachers in the content and methods of teaching their program since the beginning in 1952. It was not until August 1959 that the the first course was made available to the public through the University of Illinois Press. The second, third, and fourth courses will become available in August 1960, 1961, and 1962, respectively. But the committee still strongly advises some study and training in content and method before using the material. The School Mathematics Study Group kept a rather tight control on the use of their materials grades 7-12 and set up centers for helping selected teachers with the content and methods of teaching this material during the year 1959-60. SMSG also very strongly advises teachers to study carefully the content of these courses before attempting to teach it to students. The University of Maryland Mathematics Project and The Ball State Group have also recognized that they must accept some of the responsibility for mathematical reeducation of the teachers using their programs. The Commission on Mathematics of the College Entrance Examination Board, in its report, recognized full well that any implementation of its program would require the reeducation of many of the mathematics teachers now in the classrooms. It has become clear that some type of inservice education for mathematics teachers is an absolute necessity in all schools if we are to have a mathematics program that will meet the "Challenge of the Sixties." |