I found this article on the CBC website and found it rather relevant to my recent parent emails that started off my school year.
I am a strong believer in the new approaches to math, mostly because of my own personal learning style and how ineffective the traditional math teaching was for me when I was in elementary school. I was forced to memorize algorithms that didn't mean much for me, and as someone who struggles to memorize concepts I do not understand, the result was a very weak math student. I strongly believe that had someone found that balance between rote learning (the kumon style of math) and the new wave of math teaching (manipulatives and inquiry) not only would I have done better in math class, I would have also enjoyed it.
Admitting that I am a strong believer in the 'new' way of teaching math, I do have my hesitations with student learning. I have taken the 'new' math courses, done extensive reading and research, engaged in the math lessons myself and find myself sitting on the floor helping students on a daily basis and because of this I believe that I am doing a thorough and lasting job in teaching mathematics to my students. However, for the teacher who does not put in the work of truly learning how to teach in the new way and completely abandons the old way of teaching, I fear for the math future of these students.
This article touches on something that I find comes up in my classroom quite often. I have students in my classroom who come from the Montessori program, who have strictly used manipulatives throughout their math career. These students struggle when asked to write down questions, use a textbook, answer questions on a test, etc. As mentioned in the article, "Frontier's education research fellow Michael Zwaagstra said discovery-based instructional techniques are not of much use when students move on to college or university programs." I see this in grade 4, but thankfully at this time teachers can step in a help. However if this problem arises in university it is quite possibly too late to help the kids relearn math in both a rote and creative way.
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