Well, we’ve come to the end of the term and we’ve completed the reading of Boaler’s study of Phoenix Park and Amber Hill. Boaler hopes that her research “has furthered understandings of the relationship between different classroom interactions and the understandings, beliefs, and dispositions students develop” (p. 182). She states that she is not implying that Phoenix Park represented and ‘ideal learning environment’ but if the lessons were improved it would not be moving towards the Amber Hill model.
Phoenix Park teachers had high expectations for all students, allow students to think for themselves, to interpret mathematical situations, choose methods, and solve problems. They were able to use the math they learned outside of the classroom and the activities they did inside the classroom were more meaningful to real life. The activities were not just procedures and rules to learn and follow.
In beginning this course and the reading of the text, I had an understanding that activities in the classroom needed to be meaningful and related to real life. As I read through the text and other articles throughout the term this understanding has been strengthened.
Eisner, as cited by Flinders &Thornton (2009) points out that the activities that youngsters take part in within the classroom promotes the way they think, and if they have no reason to raise questions, the processes that help them learn how to discover intellectual problems are not developed. Students need to make connections between what they study in class to out of class. According to Eisner, there has to be a ‘transfer of learning’. Students need to be able to apply what they have learned and engage in the kind of learning they will need in order to deal with situations outside of the classroom. “There is a difference between what a student can do and what a student will do” (Eisner, p. 331).
Boaler, J. (2002). Experiencing school mathematics: Traditional and reform approaches to
teaching and their impact on student learning(Rev. and expanded ed.). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Flinders, D. J., & Thornton, S. J. (2009). The Curriculum Studies Reader. 3rd edition. New York, New York:
Routledge.
