The Paradigm Shift in Mathematics Education: Explanations and Implications of Reforming Conceptions of Teaching and Learning

By M. Ellis, R. Berry. The Mathematics Educator, 2015

111 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this article, we argue that the debates about mathematics education that have arisen in the United States over the past decade are the result of a major shift in how we conceptualize mathematical knowledge and mathematics learning. First, we examine past efforts to change mathematics education and argue they are grounded in a common traditional paradigm. Next, we describe the emergence of a new paradigm that has grown out of a coalescence of theories from cognitive psychology, an awareness of the importance of culture to learning, and the belief that all students can and should learn meaningful mathematics. Reforms grounded in the new paradigm have the potential to dramatically alter the way in which students—as well as which students— experience success in school mathematics. We discuss some implications of these reforms related to howmathematics educators might work with teachers of mathematics.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Education, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3125e096e8d81c155e25700e54c06eda995439f3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computer Networks and Communications

1. Rochelle Gutiérrez

In Education

1. Rochelle Gutiérrez
2. M. Ellis
3. Sherick Hughes
4. R. Berry
5. Lawrence M. Clark
6. Julius Davis
7. T. Frank
8. D. Martin

In Safety Research

1. Rochelle Gutiérrez
2. Sherick Hughes
3. R. Berry
4. M. Ellis

Citations in the corpus

• Examining a history of failed reforms and recent stories of success: mathematics education and Black learners of mathematics in the United States (2014, background): “Reforms in mathematics education through the 1970s were developed without questioning the assumptions that guided the systemic separation and stratification of students and, thus, had little impact on providing Black learners greater access to mathematics (Ellis and Berry 2005).”
• The Sociopolitical Turn in Mathematics Education (2013, background): “1See Ellis and Berry (2005) for an argument about how moving from a procedural–formalist paradigm to a cognitive-cultural paradigm has influenced our understanding of reform mathematics—shifting from questions of whether reforms work to what might such reforms entail?”
• Conceptualizing the African American Mathematics Teacher as a Key Figure in the African American Education Historical Narrative (2013, background): “Further, Ellis and Berry (2005) noted that although the leaders of the New Math era desired to produce more mathematicians and espoused access for students as one of their goals, this approach to mathematics “tended to be applied to males of the European extraction” (p. 10) and college-bound…”