Frequent commenter Terry Mills has asked me to ask a third question(s):
1. Do you use mathematics text books at your school?
2. If so, do you follow them fairly rigorously?
3. Do the students have to buy the text books?
4. Have you found a textbook that doesn’t suck?
(OK, yes, one those is mine.)
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1. Do you use mathematics text books at your school?
Yes.
2. If so, do you follow them fairly rigorously?
Varies by teacher. Some teachers rate their board notes above text book explanations. One collects his teaching materials on a Google site.
3. Do the students have to buy the text books?
No
4. Have you found a textbook that doesn’t suck?
Text books are like models; all of them are wrong but some are useful.
The textbooks may be like models, but they’re definitely not like supermodels.
1. Do you use mathematics text books at your school?
Yes. The parents of our students would be up in arms if we didn’t.
2. If so, do you follow them fairly rigorously?
Yes and no. It’s viewed as a starting point. Teachers often supplement textbooks. As long as the content required is covered the teacher has a bit of flexibility to adjust as they see fit.
3. Do the students have to buy the text books?
Yes – a single one that is on the booklist, but we have class sets of other textbooks that we use.
4. Have you found a textbook that doesn’t suck?
Depends on what you mean by ‘suck’. None of them are perfect, but they serve as a starting point.
As a starting point for what? Pulling your hair out?
Yes, my school uses the Cambridge books 7 to 12.
Rigorous is a loaded word… I would say teachers who know better supplement the books with a lot of their own materials. These materials are of mixed quality and can vary from single lesson worksheets to whole of topic booklets.
Yes, students buy the books. A lot buy the digital subscription these days rather than the physical book.
Yes, I have found a few textbooks that don’t suck. They are not the ones students use and they have been out of print since 1970. They are my father’s (and in one case grand father’s) school textbooks. I still read them for ideas quite regularly.
Advanced Algebra by Clement Durell is a particularly nice one. My version is 1957 and I do not know if there have been reprints since.
Thanks, RF. Textbooks that you cannot now assign as textbooks don’t count.
For my students, I follow the NSW Cambridge texts in regards to what to teach. I find the sequencing of whole chapters and actual content is fairly abysmal, but the authors did the hard yards of actually translating the curriculum so that I don’t have to. Other than for the purposes of knowing what needs to be taught, I find Cambridge really good for giving lots of practice for mastery for the core skills since they provide like 20 ‘differentiate this’ questions or 30 ‘factor these polynomials’, which saves me time having to come up with nice numbers that work for practicing the skill. Their problem solving and reasoning questions leave a lot to be desired, so I come up with those myself with help from reputable Internet sources and/or actual good (that is, old) textbooks
To answer the actual questions:
Our head of mathematics (and most of the maths teachers) have essentially banned textbooks. I’ve been in trouble for even suggesting that maybe have a peak at one – even a bad one! – to see how to not run a mathematics lesson. I refuse to offer my support to a maths class as soon as the teacher makes everyone get up to write on the windows. And don’t get me started on the extremely poor quality of the PowerPoints! The ones from our school would make a great POSWW
My DMs are open.
This seems insane to me. Do students use any sort of homework platform or anything for fluency practice? Or are teachers just writing hundreds of questions a week?
Maybe the theory is, if you play a lot you don’t need to exercise.
1. Yes
2. Textbooks are used as a source of exercises for students, so the way we teach our classes needs to match the order in which textbooks present material or the style of questions asked. We do not require teachers to use the textbook explanations / worked examples.
3. Textbooks are booklisted, and in principle are required. VCE students will purchase books. However, many students at younger year levels will not purchase a textbook.
4. I can only echo other commenters: the current textbooks have no shortage of weaknesses, but not using a textbook would be worse than using one.
Yeah basically all of this. Except I wouldn’t let the kids not have one*, even juniors – one less excuse to get out the laptop.
I just don’t think I could come up with the volume of questions required for independent practice. I’d like the chunking and sequencing to be better. I’d like more interleaving. I’d like the problem-solving parts to suck less, but we just don’t have the hours in the week to write it all ourselves.
*Up to and including piracy and abuse of printer credit.
Alex, if you mean that sometimes we need to ensure that kids have a textbook even if they don’t purchase one – yes, I agree. Sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth trying to get a student / parent purchase a book so you have to provide it for them.
1. Do you use mathematics text books at your school?
Yes, Cambridge (unfortunately).
2. If so, do you follow them fairly rigorously?
Mostly yes. We use them to plan out learning sequences, students have set questions to do each day. In year 12 this is supplemented with exam questions. Teachers are free to deviate from the textbook as they see fit. I deviate from much of Cambridge’s explanations and notation.
3. Do the students have to buy the text books?
Yes.
4. Have you found a textbook that doesn’t suck?
No. For VCE mathematics I’m not even sure that’s possible.
Lots of partial credit for your answer to 4 (but not full marks).
Are you suggesting that a curriculum/study design that sucks means the textbook will suck by some property of implication?
Not saying I disagree, just asking for clarification.
It is interesting though how the 1902 trigonometry exam (from your first TNDOT post) didn’t suck. I wonder what the textbook looked like…