Panel Discussions Chairmen for the Discussions: DR. MILTON BECKMAN DR. CLARENCE B. LINDQUIST Panel Members: DR. W. L. DUREN, JR. DR. HENRY SYER DR. HENRY VAN ENGEN The method for conducting the panel discussions was for members of the conference to ask questions to be answered by members of the panel. Selected questions and answers follow below: Q. Should certification requirements for teachers be raised? What would be the effect on the supply of teachers? A. This conference is attempting to answer just those questions. We shall have to put into active teaching those who cannot fully meet certification requirements and those who can. Then we shall have to raise standards by means of inservice programs such as those being considered by this Conference. This can be done by (a) raising the teachers' qualifications step-by-step until they meet certification standards, and (b) making salary increases dependent on increased qualifications. This recommendation applies to teachers now in service and to those yet to be employed. Q. Where are training personnel to be found to do the work of guiding teachers through the steps of improvement? A. The resources are mainly in the colleges. A way must be found for increasing the number of persons who can teach college mathematics and can also help in the program of training high school teachers. Probably many of these persons will have to come from the present members of high school faculties. A. To meet the teacher-shortage problem, both at the high school level and at the college level, teachers will have to handle larger numbers of students in all classes, perhaps two or three times as many as at present. A. There are two sources of personnel to meet the increased demands: (1) Retired military persons who can be trained as teachers; (2) mothers of families whose children are grown and who have enough background and educational experience to be upgraded through the school's inservice education facilities. A. Put gifted students through a brief training course and then have them take over a class under supervision. This suggestion would apply in the colleges. Could it also apply in high schools? Q. How can students, parents, and teachers be made to realize that there is a very real emergency? A. To this question there seems to be no satisfactory answer. However, realization of the existence of an emergency may be more widespread than apparent. Q. What use can be made of teaching machines? A. Two psychologists are at present studying the School Mathematics Study Group materials and will select units that can be programed for use with the teaching machines. Such machines seem to be working satisfactorily in certain colleges and high schools. They should help teachers as well as students. Q. What efforts are being made to get more persons to take up teaching as a career? A. This is an important question but its answer is not the concern of the present conference. This conference was called to consider the one problem of inservice education. Q. How can television and tape recordings help solve the problem of inservice improvement? A. Through having master teachers prepare and teach model lessons on TV there will be a gain in subject-matter mastery, and improved teaching methods. Such programs can be recorded and made available for repeated use. Teachers as well as students will profit. Q. Have books lost their place as effective aids to inservice improvement? A. No. A good book is still, and will remain, one of the most effective aids to improvement. Q. Does it always follow that fewer persons go into teaching when certification requirements are increased? A. No. For example, Kansas increased their certification requirements, and found that the number of available teachers actually increased. Q. Is teacher education being done more poorly today than formerly? A. No. Of those who are now being reeducated, an ever increasing number are being taken by industry, so the programs must have been satisfactory. Q. What would be the effect of offering good teachers substantial monetary inducements? A. It would depend on the number of such prizes to be offered. If there were only a few, the general effect would be insignificant. A. If we educate teachers more fully than at present and give no adequate compensation in salary, we shall find that we are educating them right out of their jobs, because industry will take them. Q. Are special inservice education programs the only answer to the problem of teacher improvement? A. No. The problem might be solved better by giving each teacher $75 a month to attend regular oncampus graduate classes. Q. Is the problem of inservice education necessarily one that must be solved at the national level? A. No. It should be solved at the local level. Local systems should not wait for a national solution but should organize their own programs. As a part of the solution of the improvement problem, teachers' salaries should be raised sufficiently to compete with those offered by industry. Q. Are the institutes reaching the persons who are most in need of improvement? A. The institutes often educate teachers who are least in need of such attention. One means of rectifying this situation is to have local teachers instructed by those who have had the benefits of institute attendance. The instructors should be paid for this extra workload. Q. What provisions need to be made for educating teachers to teach the slow learners? A. There should be experimentation with the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics materials in an attempt to make adjustments to the needs and interests of slow learners. The School Mathematics Study Group also is considering the problem seriously. One aspect is that of finding more interesting material for the slow learners. OBVIO Implications of the Conference BVIOUSLY a conference on inservice education of secondary school mathematics teachers has wide implications. Although it is of chief concern to these teachers and their supervisors, it is important also to mathematics teachers at other educational levels and to secondary school teachers of other subjects. It has implications for mathematics education at the preservice level as well as at the inservice level. The concluding session of this conference provided an opportunity for a panel of specialists representing related interest areas to express their reactions to various aspects of the conference. The interest areas and the specialists were the following: The discussion was informal and provided for reactions, both to the conference in general, and to specific ideas developing during the conference. It provided for points of commendation, supplemental sug gestions, caution about difficulties, and suggestions on implementation. The key questions used were the following: 1. Which proposals for advancing the local district reeducation of high school mathematics teachers seem to you to be most promising? 2. Which proposals have the most provocative long-range values? 3. What stumbling blocks do you see that districts and inservice reeducation sponsors should be cautioned about? 4. What elementary-school, and what college-level, articulation factors should be considered? 5. What are the implications for revision of preservice education for mathematics teachers? 6. What are the implications for the inservice reeducation of college mathematics teachers? For teachers in other disciplines? For teacher education generally? Discussion centered on four major concerns: (1) the communication of conference materials and development of better mutual understanding between specialists in mathematics and those in other areas, (2) the comprehensive nature of inservice responsibilities and activities, (3) the importance of effective articulation between levels as well as disciplines, and (4) clarification of objectives. Communication and Mutual Understanding In providing both summary and detailed reports on the conference, teachers in disciplines other than mathematics must be taken into account. New concepts in mathematics are the concern of all people and, hence, of all teachers. The approach must be a human one for some may be sensitive about the recent emphasis and opportunity for mathematics. The central role of mathematics must be set forth. Its development and advance must be paralleled by refinements in other disciplines as well. Mutual efforts among the disciplines are required both in moving forward the frontiers of knowledge and in reeducating teachers in all pertinent areas. The importance of cooperative activity in achieving mutual understanding must not be underestimated. Mathematics, in a sense, is a universal language-among disciplines as well as among peoples. Nevertheless, competence in comprehending and employing it falls far short of its importance. Teachers generally must have a part in planning to study the new concepts in mathematics, if real progress is to be made. This in turn will support the activities of other disciplines as they look to their horizons. Participation rather than specialization is the key to advancing the frontiers of knowledge as required by these times. Comprehensive Nature of Responsibilities and Activities Inservice programs generally are developed comprehensively rather than for separate features. Many classroom activities focusing on pupil experiences cut across disciplinary lines. Field and extension services are being capitalized. Awards programs for teachers are appearing. The public is being increasingly involved, and public interest is high. Increasing attention needs to be given to cooperative inservice programs developed by faculties through interdisciplinary cooperation and making the greatest use of total institutional resources. Indeed, it may well be that wide participation in comprehensive planning of inservice education and professional development is the very means of insuring the specific attention of all faculty members to the urgency and the opportunity. Articulation Of primary importance is articulation between individual high schools and the colleges and universities that accept their graduates. This involves face-to-face contacts and the development of mutual understanding. Professional rapport is to be established only through deliberate and careful cooperative effort. By extension, then, more effective articulation needs to be developed relating the basic work in elementary school to that in both high school and college. Elementary mathematics has been neglected. The problem at this level now exceeds that in the secondary schools. If effective progress is to be made in the secondary schools and colleges, attention must be given to the general problem of mathematics in the elementary school, to the mathematics preparation of general teachers, to the preparation of upper-grade specialists, and to slow learners in arithmetic. Although articulation generally has both horizontal and vertical relationships, in mathematics it is crucial. Clarification of Objectives Attention to articulation brings into focus more specific attention to the objectives. Are computational skills, only, to be sought in the schools, or must rich meanings be established? The implication for more precise and far-reaching goal definition is clear. Richer meanings lead to sharper skills, better research, and more effective applications. As frontiers of knowledge move forward and as patterns of living become increasingly complex, it is on sound and basic meanings that we must rely rather than on simple and ever-changing techniques. 583566-61- 8 |