The Million Dollar Math Question

How do we get quality math instruction in our schools?  This is the million dollar question.  One of the biggest reasons why I have took a tangent in my teaching career was to answer this question.  It is not to say that my doctoral research question is exactly this one, but it certainly relates.  I was just thinking about this tonight.  First of all, not many students pursue an undergraduate degree majoring or minoring in mathematics.  Of those graduates, only some of them choose to pursue a career in teaching.  To get into the Faculty of Education requires volunteer work, satisfaction of several prerequisite courses, and a relatively high GPA in one or two subject specialties.  Those accepted into teacher training programs in the field of mathematics are quite exceptional.  They survived four years of undergraduate studies in mathematics and thrived on how they were taught mathematics.  Honestly, they truly get it.  Here’s the switch… How will these teacher inductees address the learning needs of students who do not thrive on direct instruction or the drill-and-kill approach to math education?  Many students will not ‘get it’ as well as these math teacher inductees.  There is a disconnect.  My research addresses the professional learning of teachers who do not have a formal background in mathematics and assigned to teach mathematics.  There is another disconnect.  Both of situations relate to content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.  Maybe the million dollar question is: How can we teach mathematics so that our students believe that they can do the math confidently and competently?  In the end, learning mathematics should be personally relevant, comprehensible, and engaging.  Guess what?  This is true for all subject areas.