Ball article discussion

THE SUBJECT MATTER PREPARATION OF TEACHERS

By Deborah Loewenberg Ball and G. Williamson McDiarmid

1) How did your K-12 education influence your subject knowledge?

In my pre-college years, I really had a strong foundation in arithmetic, pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry.  Therefore, I have enjoyed math and retained a lot of the concepts and skills.  I just wish I had a better teacher who was able to explain the how and why aspect when I got into more of the abstract part of mathematics (i.e. pre-calculus and calculus).  For instance, I don’t really have a deep understanding on the trig identities or how to get the graph of a derivative by looking at the graph of the original function.

2) How did your college education influence your subject knowledge?

During my college years at UC Davis, my major was math with an emphasis on teaching in the secondary level.  I was a student intern at Davis Senior High School where I observed and tutored an Algebra class.  The students were working on finding slope and writing the equation of a line, which was good for me because I got to review these concepts.  I also got to see how they understood FOIL where they used Algeblocks to see the idea visually.  They had to use the Algeblocks to form a complete rectangle because the two binomials given to them were the dimensions that made up the rectangle.  In short, FOIL is like finding the area of a rectangle.   

I also took abstract math (Advanced Calculus and Euclidean Geometry).  Like high school, I wish I had professors who could explain the how and why part better.   

3) How has your “outside of school” experiences influenced your subject knowledge?

Even when I’m not in school, I use math every day in the real world.  You need good number sense and strong arithmetic skills to balance your checkbook or figure out the discount price when a store is having a 20% off sale.  It’s also useful for comparing scenarios.  When I go to the bowling alley, they give me the option to pay $5 to rent a lane for an hour or pay $3 for each game played.  This makes me ponder which one is the better deal.

Questions:

a)      I was struck at this remark on pg. 17 under the College Curriculum discussion.  “As a result, we understand far too little about what prospective teachers learn from their college study of specific areas.”  How can we fix this so that the researchers can understand better?  Would it be better to assign one researcher to each subject matter (the researcher would be a master of that area) to investigate what these prospective teachers are learning? 


b)   I noticed that math was used more often as an example to illustrate subject matter knowledge than the other subjects.  Were the authors of this research report math teachers/professors?