Chapter 7: Perhaps a matter of imagination - TPCK in mathematics education

I hate math! I mean reeeeaalllly hate it.  Math was a seriously scarring part of my high school experience.  First of all, it doesn’t come easy to me.  The subject doesn’t just make sense like words do.  I could even fake my way through history…no biggie. However, math took extra time, many late nights, and tears for me to actually understand and succeed throughout my classes…and even then the actual comprehension was questionable.

My own personal troubles with the subject aside, I also never had a math teacher who even attempted to make math interesting, intriguing, or engaging.  Not only were the subject and the teaching method boring, but all my math teachers were on auto-pilot for my four years of high school.  They didn’t care that I was struggling and they didn’t even offer much intervention with my problem.  I was made to feel that if I couldn’t keep up with the rest of the “school of fish” then I needed to just find my own way.  My freshman year I went so far as to get a tutor over the summer so I could get my math credit.  I felt stupid and a burden on my math teachers.  To this day those negative feelings about math still haven’t gone away.

This chapter had a few really great quotes pertaining to how TPCK can make math teachers better at their jobs.  On page 159 the text refers to TPCK teachers as “caring teachers who are comfortable with change”.  This is something all teachers should be.  On 161 the text says, “A successful program would most likely need to encourage an ‘imaginative openness’ for classroom experimentation in using technologies for learning mathematical content”.  There is no doubt in my mind that I would have enjoyed and succeeded much more in my own math classes if I had been encouraged to have “imaginative openness” and if my math teachers had even attempted to integrate technology in their teaching (besides calculators and the occasional overhead projector).  The last quote I want to share is from page 162 and it reads: “When a trusted and caring teacher is leading the class discussions, patiently giving alternate explanations for difficult concepts, or simply helping students to periodically ‘mess around with mathematical ideas’,’ then these students will indeed be more willing to push their personal limits in understanding mathematics”.  It’s sooo true…and boy, do I feel cheated.