Schwartz Powerful Ideas in Elementary Mathematics: Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teachers, 1/e ISBN: 0205493750 "This book would be a great tool for helping [today's future elementary teachers] acquire a 'gut level' understanding of mathematics concepts." - Hester Lewellen, Baldwin-Wallace College, OH "The writing in this text is very clear and would easily be understood by the intended audience. The real-world examples put the various math concepts into a context that is easily understood. The vignettes at the beginning of each chapter are interesting and they get the reader to begin thinking about the math concepts that will follow. Each of the chapters seem to build on one another and the author often refers back to activities and concepts from previous chapters which is meaningful to the reader because it lets the reader know that the information they are learning builds their conceptual understanding of other mathematical concepts. " - Melany L. Rish, University of South Carolina, Aiken Organized around five key concepts or "powerful ideas" in mathematics, this text presents elementary mathematics content in a concise and nonthreatening manner for teachers. Designed to sharpen teachers' mathematics pedagogical content knowledge, the friendly writing style and vignettes relate math concepts to "real life" situations so that they may better present the content to their students. The five "powerful ideas" (composition, decomposition, relationships, representation, and context) provide an organizing framework and highlight the interconnections between mathematics topics. In addition, the text thoroughly integrates discussion of the five NCTM process strands. Features: Icons highlighting the NCTM process standards appear throughout the book to indicate where the text relates to each of these. Practice exercises and activities and their explanations reinforce math concepts presented in the text and provide an opportunity for reflection and practice. Concise, conversational chapters and opening vignettes present math contents simply enough for even the most math-anxious pre-service teachers.

The Language of Mathematics: How the Teacher’s Knowledge of Mathematics Affects Instruction introduces the reader to a collection of thoughtful works by authors that represent current thinking about mathematics teacher preparation. The book provides the reader with current and relevant knowledge concerning preparation of mathematics teachers. The complexity of teaching mathematics is undeniable and all too often ignored in the preparation of teachers with substantive mathematical content knowledge and mathematical teaching knowledge. That said, this book has a focus on the substantive knowledge and the relevant pedagogy required for preparing teachings to enter classrooms to teach mathematics in K-12 school settings. Each chapter focuses on the preparation of teachers who will enter classrooms to instruct the next generation of students in mathematics. Chapter One opens the book with a focus on the language and knowledge of mathematics teaching. The authors of Chapters Two-Nine present field-based research that examines the complexities of content and pedagogical knowledge as well as knowledge for teaching. Each chapter offers the reader an examination of mathematics teacher preparation and practice based on formal research that provides the reader with insight into how the research study was conducted as well as providing the findings and conclusions drawn with respect to mathematics teacher preparation and practice. Finally, Chapter 10 presents an epilogue that focuses on the future of mathematics teacher preparation.

This book is inspired by Roger E. Howe's contributions to the international communities of mathematics and mathematics education. Renowned for his research contributions in the fields of representation theory, automorphic forms, harmonic analysis, and invariant theory, Dr. Howe has also fundamentally deepened our understanding of the mathematics taught in the early school grades and has challenged and stimulated mathematicians and mathematics educators to work together to examine this part of the mathematical universe more critically and in imaginative new ways. This volume will help summarize and highlight Howe's contributions to several topic areas in mathematics education, demonstrating the possibility and importance of engaging mathematicians in high-impact research in mathematics education, and showcasing the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration and exchange.

Studies of teachers in the U.S. often document insufficient subject matter knowledge in mathematics. Yet, these studies give few examples of the knowledge teachers need to support teaching, particularly the kind of teaching demanded by recent reforms in mathematics education. Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics describes the nature and development of the knowledge that elementary teachers need to become accomplished mathematics teachers, and suggests why such knowledge seems more common in China than in the United States, despite the fact that Chinese teachers have less formal education than their U.S. counterparts. The anniversary edition of this bestselling volume includes the original studies that compare U.S and Chinese elementary school teachers’ mathematical understanding and offers a powerful framework for grasping the mathematical content necessary to understand and develop the thinking of school children. Highlighting notable changes in the field and the author’s work, this new edition includes an updated preface, introduction, and key journal articles that frame and contextualize this seminal work.

The quality of primary and secondary school mathematics teaching is generally agreed to depend crucially on the subject-related knowledge of the teacher. However, there is increasing recognition that effective teaching calls for distinctive forms of subject-related knowledge and thinking. Thus, established ways of conceptualizing, developing and assessing mathematical knowledge for teaching may be less than adequate. These are important issues for policy and practice because of longstanding difficulties in recruiting teachers who are confident and conventionally well-qualified in mathematics, and because of rising concern that teaching of the subject has not adapted sufficiently. The issues to be examined in Mathematical Knowledge in Teaching are of considerable significance in addressing global aspirations to raise standards of teaching and learning in mathematics by developing more effective approaches to characterizing, assessing and developing mathematical knowledge for teaching.

THE book for elementary education mathematics content courses! Designed to help prospective teachers of elementary school mathematics learn content beyond the rote level, this text stimulates readers to think beyond just getting the problem right and fosters their development into thoughtful, reflective, self-motivated, life-long learners. It stresses the what and why of elementary school mathematics content. Hints are provided about how to teach the content but this is mostly left to courses and texts that are dedicated to that purpose. The text is organized around the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics' Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. The Standards dictate the basic sections of the text. Within each section, appropriate specific topics are developed, intertwined with technology, problem solving, assessment, equity issues, planning, teaching skills, use of manipulatives, sequencing, and much more. In addition, major focal points of the Standards are emphasized throughout: effective teachers of mathematics should be able to motivate all students to learn, should understand the developmental levels of how children learn, should concentrate on what children need to become active participants in the learning environment, and should be engaged in ongoing investigations of new mathematical concepts and teaching strategies. Mathematics Content for Elementary Teachers is based on several fundamental premises: *The focus of mathematics education should be on the process, not the answer. *Elementary teachers should know the mathematics content they are teaching, know more than the content they are teaching, and teach from the overflow of knowledge. *It is important for teachers to be flexible in allowing students to use different procedures--teaching from the "overflow of knowledge" implies knowing how to do a given operation more than one way and being willing to examine many different ways. *Teachers need to learn to carefully cover the topics to be taught, to reflect upon them, and to be able to organize them. To help prospective elementary teachers concentrate on the mathematics content they will be expected to teach and begin to build the foundation for the methods they will use, this text includes only elementary mathematics content and does not address middle school concepts. Pedagogical features: *The text is organized according to NCTM Standards. *An informal writing style speaks directly to readers and is geared to pre-service teachers. *Focus is given to multiple methods of problem solving at four developmental levels. *Questions, exercises, and activities are interspersed throughout each section rather than gathered at the end of each chapter. *Complete solutions for exercises are provided.