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At their annual conference in April, the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics unveiled their updated mathematics standards, Principles and Standards for School
Mathematics. The publication offers a vision and direction for school mathematics programs. It
delineates six Principles that should guide school programs and 10 Standards that propose content
and process goals.
Many recent news accounts suggest that the updated standards have a new emphasis on basic skills. These characterizations of the standards highlight the fact that many of NCTM’s positions continue to be misunderstood. In a letter to NCTM members, Lee Stiff, NCTM President, states that the organization has "always believed in the importance of basics….Our stronger, bolder vision of basics recognizes that number crunching is not enough, that students must understand the underlying concepts of the mathematics they are taught." In a statement introducing Principles and Standards (available at www.nctm.org), the Council refers to the current controversy about the comparative importance of learning basic skills and understanding concepts. They emphasize that Principles and Standards is insistent about the central role of understanding in learning mathematics. "For example the Learning Principle states: ‘Students must learn mathematics with understanding, actively building new knowledge from experience and prior knowledge.’" The introductory statement goes on to say "the document also strongly supports the need for ‘computational fluency’ for students to have efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods for computing. Without the ability to compute effectively, students’ ability to solve complex and interesting problems is limited." |
To learn what the updated standards are really about, go to standards.nctm.org and view the e-version of
Principles and Standards.
To learn more about how some math educators are defining mathematical fluency, read "Where's the Balance in Math Instruction?" at www.terc.edu/handson/s00/balance.html. The authors, Jan Mokros and Susan Jo Russell, suggest that balance centers on the idea of mathematical fluency and involves the interplay of three factors; efficiency, accuracy, and flexibility. To illustrate the concept, they examine what first and second graders need to learn in order to solve addition and subtraction problems and reason about the numbers in such problems. |