Re: Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices

Banty wrote:
[snip]
> I haven't read the article, but I suspect it's not invoking real world
examples
> that have hobbled math education.  Rather, it's the reliance on
expressing math
> oin *verbal* terms in the kind of examples that elementary schools have
favored
> lately (see many threads in misc.kids about that).

There seems to be a fuller press release here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/osu-ced042108.php

It says that teaching *college* students with abstract examples enabled
them to grasp the underlying maths more easily then when they learnt a
system using concrete examples.

The NYT article also discussed some experiments with 11yo children 
(which aren't in the press release).

I don't think that you can necessatily extrapolate further to children 
of the age to be using ths Everyday maths, which seems to be 
Kindergarten to Grade 6.

-- 
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three