Here is a review of Leping Ma's book "Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics."
http://libertylyceum.org/articles/mathteaching.shtmlI believe this book ought to be required reading for any new homeschooling parent who will be helping his or her children learn math. If you read this book, it will profoundly affect the math materials you'll want to choose for your children, as well as your ability to help them learn. I'll explain why I think this book is so important, and then discuss some materials that will help you follow up on its recommendations.
Thank you for posting this! I will look for the book.
I read it a few years ago but think I will pick it up again!
Yup! It's an excellent book... I have some quibbles with her research methods, but it's still an excellent book for explaining the basis of elementary math.
KAR1200, I"m curious about your quibbles. Do you mind expounding upon that?
Whoops -- thought I'd replied... I swear I think I'm typing a bunch of replies and then hitting the wrong button or something (that or just losing my mind... also possible!)
It's a very little thing, and doesn't take away from the math at all, but I wasn't really convinced that she had completely fair samples for her study. She says that the American teachers were considered "above average", but with no detail about what that means. Twelve of them were first year teachers, and three more had five years' experience or less (I'm looking this up on Amazon... can't find my copy... lol) And the US sample was significantly smaller than the Chinese sample... So basically I would have liked to hear more about how they were selected, because it wasn't entirely clear that they were really comparable. My gut feeling is that the best teachers of many many nationalities are probably on fairly equal footing, although for perhaps extremely different reasons. I'd love to hear about those reasons (and I think she does a great job explaining what is right about the Chinese system), but I don't think any one country has a monopoly on it.
And I should say... my background is in applied anthropology... so I spent five years of college/grad school up to my eyeballs in detailed discussions of interview-based research methods -- I'm probably way more picky than is necessary! LOL
Or just a good, in-the-know person to have as a resource!
LOL! As I was just mentioning to my --dentist-- this morning, picky isn't always bad!
(And hey, at least you don't have to sit still for three hours while I complain about study samples... LOL)
I guess that depends upon how slowly we read! LMAO!