Jason Gauthier, Ph.D.

Just got my first Pi Day email for the year. Time to be grumpy cat again! 😾

Reasoning about shape, quantity, change, uncertainty, pattern. . .

Amen to all of this. The brain is not a computer, and as soon as you model it like one, no amount of modification will correct the issue.

How do those pictures not scream "prison" to everyone who looks at them??

Seems like I have seen other buildings that manage transitions this way. . . But where?

Agree with this critique! Another might be pushback against the surety with which advocates speak. There is no acknowledgment of nuance, context, or limit to their chosen research base. There are many things we don't know, and no research offers guarantees, but advocates ignore all of this.

New publication alert!

This is the kind of reasoning that will take kids far in math. We can "formalize" or "cannonize" the final answer later.

This. We continue to place more responsibility on schools to cure the myriad ills that our society inflicts on children. The reality is that good pedagogy can only do so much. Far better would be to show societal charity and compassion. Feed the kids, stuff like that. Schools can take it from there.

It's me!! I'm the second one!

I talk about "integrity" now, like the previous comments. I also advocate for guardrails on changes--clarity on the things that can be changed. I also urge that larger changes are decided upon by the grade level team, not in isolation.

Explicit teaching means concepts are fully explained and procedures are fully demonstrated before students are asked to apply those concepts or procedures. You can ladle as much interaction into this as you like. Progressive approaches, on the other hand, involve asking students to figure out something for themselves. So-called ‘pure’ discovery learning is rare because it is wildly impractical, so there will always be some guidance. The more guidance we add, the more effective the teaching and the closer it becomes to explicit teaching. A proponent of explicit teaching can add in more and more interaction without in any way diluting the fact it is explicit teaching. An advocate of, say, inquiry learning can add more guidance, but the more that is added, the closer it becomes to explicit teaching.

I remain awed by Greg Ashman's sheer commitment to not understanding inquiry-based & constructivist pedagogies. And for all of the caricatures offered of ideas he dislikes, "fully explained" & "fully demonstrated" are load bearing concepts that are themselves soft as butter. 🙄

It's a fantastic book! In particular, I love the premise of organizing schools around collective learning and support for staff.

That is a very dangerous question to ask! Your vehicle may not be large enough to encompass our love of office supplies!

Constructivism recognizes that communication cannot be “faultless”.
To develop shared meanings of ideas and terms, one must engage in inquiry, through posing questions to others and of oneself. #iTeachMath