Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This article from Dr. Dave Moursund out of the University of Oregon has fabulous ideas about
the connections between learning theories and the teaching of mathematics in the classroom. He
quotes from Richard Elmore article about the prevailing theory of learning and teaching math is
not a developmental problem but one of aptitude. This indicates, not everyone can learn math.
However, Moursund states some great points about the constructivist learning theory and that
this learning theory is "particularly applicable in mathematics education". It also gets into the
ideas of nurture and nature which explains a lot about achievement gaps in mathematics. This
article did not actually contain the information about situated learning and other learning theories
as the title indicated, but did contain links to them. The article also mentions ICT, Information
and Communications Technology, and contains a link about the connections with teaching math.
These links will be helpful when writing my final paper.
Woodward, J. (2004). Mathematics education in the united states: Past to present. Journal of
Learning Disabilities, 37(1), 16-31. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/194228235?accountid=9649
This article gives a great historical perspective of how teaching mathematics has changed over
the years. As stated by the author, the article discusses three main themes in math education
beginning from the 1950's. It talks about the broad sociopolitical forces involved, trends in
mathematical research and theories of learning and instruction. It starts by discussing massive
federal funding in the 1950's and 1960's as a response to compete globally. It also includes the
"new math" era which faltered. This article also includes discussion about students with learning
disabilities and the developing ideas about how to assist those students. The article does connect
the learning theories with the various eras and trends for the United States over the past 60 years,
so that should be helpful to my learning theories paper theme.