Schoenfeld, A. H. (1988). When good teaching leads to bad results: the disasters of "well-taught" mathematics classes. Educational Psychologist 23(2) 145-166.
Which thanks to the wonders of google we can find
here. It looks to me like a must-read paper... but I have to get on with the day job now!
Thank you for this link - the article is extremely interesting.
The odd thing is, 1) I don't like Everyday Math, 2) I can easily agree with this article, and 3) trying to fix the problems exposed in the article seems to lead to EM.
I wonder if it may just come down to the fact that arithmetic and mathematical (logical) thinking are only loosely related- in the same way as reading and history. You can certainly use each in teaching the other, but the learning goals are very different. I absolutely want my kids to experience mathematical discovery, but I'm not convinced that multidigit multiplication is an algorithm I want them to have to figure out on their own.
It seems there may be something profound here. Maybe more thought will bring it to the surface.
