INCENTIVE PROGRAM FOR STEM TEACHERS

Image created by Alejandro Flores

It is no secret that President Obama consistently supports Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education. A strong STEM workforce will make America competitive internationally. It will lead to economic growth, strong national defense, clean energy usage, disease prevention and longer, healthier lives.

On July 17^th, 2012, the Obama Administration announced the President’s plan to create a national STEM Master Teacher Corps. The program will devote $1 billion to the training of exceptional STEM teachers. It will start out with 50 master STEM teachers in 50 schools across the nation and will expand to 10,000 teachers within four years. These master teachers will be responsible for inspiring and training other teachers in the STEM fields at their locations. They will lead professional development courses and have significant input to the new lesson plans in order to improve science and math teaching. As an incentive for the teachers to stay in the program, the teachers are awarded up to $20,000 annually in addition to their regular salaries. In addition, they will have enough funds for all their teaching needs (e.g., supplies materials, calculators, books, training conferences, etc).

The purpose of the program is to train and retain good STEM teachers. Often, teachers are under-appreciated and underpaid. Those that are overqualified leave for jobs such as engineers or mathematicians within five years of teaching. The master teacher program aims to help schools maintain their most talented teachers and give new teachers goals to work to.

While the program still needs Congress to approve its budget of $1 billion (click here for the progress of the act in Congress), the Department of Education can immediately put $100 million from the Teachers Incentive Fund (TIF) to start the program. The TIF is a performance-based reward system. It rewards teachers who have the largest impact on student learning across all subjects. It is a way that we can encourage teachers to do more than the bare minimum.

As a math major who aspires to become a teacher, I strongly support the Obama’s Master Teacher Corps program. I believe in a reward system that is based on performance. By doing this, teachers will take individual students’ achievement seriously and will try their best to help students succeed. The program will incentivize STEM teaching and raise the bar of STEM education across the nation.

While the potential benefits of the program are high, there are also potential problems that we cannot overlook. One is the possibility of jealousy within the education system as STEM teachers were the only one chosen in the program. Two is the issues associated with the way the success of the program is measured. It is good politic to measure how well the program works by testing students’ performance. But what type of test should we use to measure students’ achievement? When teachers are too focused on the award, will they base their teaching mainly as a way to “counter” these performance tests? Will students, at the end, suffer and learn nothing new?

As always, I would appreciate any comments below. Do you think that the program will work?

  

BLAISE PASCAL - Inventor of the first calculator 

“We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end” - Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal - Image from google.com

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher. Pascal was probably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.  He was known to be first inventor of the mechanical calculator. His other contributions to the mathematics field that we are still using today were the Pascal Theorem and the Pascal’s triangle (Encyclopedia, 2008)

           

Pascal Theorem

Illustration of Pascal Theorem. 

Retrieved from HowStuffWorks.com 

When Pascal was 16 (1940), he was able to prove a basic theorem in projective geometry. This theorem was later named after him. According to the Pascal theorem, "the three points of intersection of the pairs of opposite sides of a hexagon inscribed in a conic plane are collinear"(Encyclopedia, 2008). In other words, if you take any plane intersecting a cone and draw a hexagon inside it, the lines extending from the opposite sides of the hexagon meet in three points lying on the same line.

Pascaline

The Pascaline.
 Picture taken at Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

When Pascal was 18 (1942), he designed the first calculator that was used to perform addition and subtraction. The machine required complicated wheel arrangements and was very difficult to built given the rudimentary techniques available at the time. After fifty prototypes, Pascal was able to produce the first working model - the Pascaline - three years later. Today there are only eight Pascalines known to have survived.

Pascal's triangle

Pascal's triangle.
 Animated GIF retrieved from Wikipedia.com.

Another demonstration of Pascal's genius is the Pascal's triangle. In Pascal’s triangle, each number is the sum of the two directly above it. The triangle represents binomial coefficients in a polynominal equation of the format (x + y)ⁿ.

Pascal's law 

Image retrieved from google.com

In addition to Pascal’s work in the mathematics field, Pascal also made significant contributions to the study of pressure and vacuum in physics. Pascal's law is a the fundamental law in hydrostatic. It states that "a change in the pressure at any point of an enclosed incompressible fluid is conveyed undiminished to every part of the fluid and to the surfaces of its container” (Pascal, n.d.)

Today, we can see the application of Pascal’s law in hydraulic brakes, car lifts, hydraulic jacks, and forklifts (PascalTeam, 2012). Using Pascal's law, we can use very a small force to lift a very heavy object! 

In honor of Pascal’s contributions to the study of pressure, his name is used as a unit of pressure measurement.

Unfortunately, Pascal died at a young age of 39. He devoted the majority of his later life to religion. However, he left a legend behind him. We still use many of his discoveries today. Personally I learned about Pascal 40 years ago in Vietnam. I was taught Pascal's triangle when I was in middle school and Pascal's law when I was in high school. For me, he was one of the greatest minds in science and math. What about you? Who do you think is the greatest mathematicians? 

Reference

Pascal, Blaise. (2008). Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Retrieved from http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830903299.html

Pascal's Law - Pascal's Principle. (2012). Retrieved from http://pascalteam.hu/en_pascal_law.php

Taking Advantage of Technology – Moving Forward

For those of you that are not familiar with my first post, I am a proponent of calculator use. I believe that calculators should be incorporated more into the teaching curriculum so that students are less stressed out about the mechanical task of calculating and can focus more on the mathematical concepts. You can then imagine my surprise when my daughter told me that she could not use a calculator for her SAT subject tests.

My daughter has always been good with sciences and math. When deciding which subject tests to take for the SAT, she wanted to go with mathematics and chemistry. However, when she learned that she could not use calculator during her chemistry test, this changed the equation. She opted to take the physics subject test instead because the numbers were easier to work with.

Chemistry, in particular, deals with very small unit of measurement (mg and ml). And it makes sense that students are allowed to use calculators in the classroom to solve the math problems. For example, students should understand the nuclear chain reaction in nuclear power plants. They should know how to calculate the amount of radioactive materials needed in a nuclear power plant. However, they shouldn’t have to worry about the mechanics of that calculation. That’s what calculators are for!

Our current education system is quite full of contradictions. If students could use calculators in the classroom, why couldn’t they use them in their aptitude test? This makes me wonder:

How well can standardized tests like the SAT predict college success?

NOT THAT WELL!

In a 20-year study of the SAT’s ability to predict college success, William Hiss, the former dean of admissions at Bates College in Maine, found that SAT scores did not correlate with students’ success in college. The study looked at 123,000 students from 33 public and private institutes from 20 states. The results showed that SAT was a poor predictor of college success. Instead, GPA was a much better indicator of student’s performance in college. (For a video interview with Dr. Hiss, click here)

Image retrieved from www.quickmeme.com

SAT is not the only test that restricts students’ use of calculator. The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) also prohibits students from using calculators. Many mathematics teachers continued to disallow calculators during tests. It dawns on me that our education system is still not open to the idea of using technology. I agree that our children need to understand how to do basic math. They need to know that two plus two is four. They need to know how to calculate tips for the waiters. However, our technology is far too advanced nowadays to waste time on manual calculating. Giving students calculators to work through their math problems does not mean that we are crippling them, making them dependent on calculators. It is giving them the time they need to focus on more important tasks at hand. Whether one is able to perform pencil-and-paper calculation is not a measurement of their intelligence. Our nation’s greatest minds – chemists, engineers, physicists, doctors and scientists – all use calculators in their work. Imagine how long it would take NASA scientists to put their astronauts in space if they did not rely on calculators! We would never be able to put our feet on the moon.

Technology is advancing. We are advancing. We need to move forward. 

Let students use calculators in their classroom and in their test!

As always, please leave comments below and let me know what you think. 

If Only Students Found Mathematics as Exciting as Video Games. 

I find math fascinating. If you caught me on a typical Sunday afternoon, you would find me at my desk working over a mathematical postulate.

Sadly, I do not find a lot of students have the same kind of interest in math. I often catch them playing video games or going on their (or their parents’) phones instead. Now my question is: Can we bring technology to the math teaching curriculum so that we can get the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement that students often get with video games and other technology?

How do you think an average American student performs in math?

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2011 indicated that American students continued to do poorly in math compared to other developed countries (Provasnik et al., 2012). Furthermore, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that the nation's 12th graders barely made any progress from 2009 to 2013. Only 26 % of 12th graders were at or above proficient level in math in 2013.

Between 1972 and 2011, while our nation continued to grow, our gross domestic product (GDP) doubled, the average mathematics SAT score of high school seniors and the proportion of college graduates majoring in a mathematically intensive field barely changed (Vigdor, 2013).

Mathematics has major implications in physics, biology, chemistry, engineer, medicine, economics and many other aspects of life. How much construction materials are needed to build a bridge, how high a skyscraper can be built before it would collapse on itself, and how many doses of medication a patient should have each day all require math. We use math in every day activities. The way that U.S. students continues to do poorly in math calls for a revamp in the way that math is taught in the United States.

How can we enhance the teaching curriculum so that students will do better in math?

The answer is to get students to be as addicted to math as they are to video games and technology.

On a post by Puiu (2012), the anticipation of math causes the same region of the brain that stimulates physical pain to be active. Interestingly, while math anxiety can actually cause physical pain, the process of doing math problem does not!

I believe that in order for students to perform better in math, their way of thinking about math should be changed. Specifically, math should be made more fun and realistic through the incorporation of the appropriate calculators at all grade levels, from K-12. Addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and times table should be introduced to students but should NOT be a requirement. Teachers should encourage students to utilize calculators as much as possible and shift their focus away from mundane pencil-and-paper calculations and pure memorization. These changes will significantly reduce students’ anxiety about math.

American students’ continued struggle with math is a problem of concern, and I truly believe that incorporating more calculators in the classroom is one way to solve this problem. A substantial amount of research has already shown that students, who frequently used calculators, scored significantly higher than their peers (Lee, & McDougall, 2010; Martin, 2008; Polly, 2008; Tan, 2012). Why shouldn’t we push this a step further and incorporate even more calculators into the curriculum?

References 

Lee, J. A., & McDougall, D. E. (2010). Secondary school teachers' conceptions and their teaching practices using graphing calculators. International Journal Of Mathematical Education In Science & Technology, 41(7), 857-872.

Martin, A. (2008). Ideas in practice: Graphing calculators in Beginning Algebra. Journal Of Developmental Education, 31(3), 20-37.
Polly, D. (2008). Modeling the influence of calculator use and teacher effects on first grade students' mathematics achievement. Journal Of Computers In Mathematics & Science Teaching, 27(3), 245-263.

Provasnik, S., Kastberg, D., Ferraro, D., Lemanski, N., Roey, S., & Jenkins, F. (2012).
Highlights from TIMSS 2011: Mathematics and science achievement of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students in an international context. National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013009rev

Tan, C. (2012). Effects of the application of graphing calculator on students’ probability achievement. Computers & Education, 58(4), 1117-1126. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.11.023

Vigdor, J. L. (2013). Solving america's math problem. Education Next, 13(1), 42-49.

Please leave your thoughts and comments below. I would love to hear about how you think math should be taught.