Jenn Barnes

EDUC 752001

Professor Madden

10/3/18

Teaching Philosophy

When I think of my teaching values and stance in general, I think of teaching as a way to

help develop independent learners who are able to think critically about the world around them

and already have capabilities and strengths from which to draw on. And though that isn’t always

the case in schools and school districts, and even though I at times fail to adhere to this

ideal through my own practice, I always come back to this idea as the goal to aspire to. This is

the underlying belief with which I try to approach all subjects, including mathematics. I’ve

struggled with exactly how to do this within the math discipline, but by fleshing out exactly what

I believe and value through this paper I hope to have a starting point from which to develop an

appropriate practice.

When I was learning math in elementary school, I was bombarded with drill after drill

and memorization techniques that were tedious and stressful. I disliked math because it felt like a

subject that you were either good at or bad at; no in-between. Once I had branded myself as “not

a math person”, I was never able to approach math positively or effectively. Due to this

experience I want to instill more of a growth mindset with my students--help them understand

that they always have the potential to improve in something, that their intelligence and abilities

are not “fixed”. This is why I am drawn to Dynamic-Problem Driven as an appealing

conceptualization of studying and teaching mathematics. Positioning math in terms of asking

questions and coming to find answers through pursuing those questions feels like a better, more
empowering approach to math than simply being told to memorize facts, figures, and formulas.

In a Dynamic Problem Driven approach, students can focus more on the process of problem

solving instead of fixating on whether they remember the correct rule or formula, and I believe

this could alleviate some of the stress and frustration that can be associated with today’s math.

That being said, I realize that in my practice I tend to use a much more “Bag of Tools”

approach to math--focusing on memorization, drills, and practice. In my current pre-practicum

classroom for instance, students’ weekly homework contains multiple pages of addition and

subtraction drills--around 40 number sentences that make students practice different ways of

adding to 10, 20, 30 etc. I do think that in some respects “Bag of Tools” strategies can be useful

for students; certain things may be helpful to memorize and practice repeatedly (multiplication

tables maybe), so I’m not opposed to using Bag of Tools as an approach. I just hope that in the

future I can make dynamic problem driven strategies more of a focus in my math classroom, and

not rely solely on tedious Bag of Tools methods.

When it comes to the psychological approach to math I believe in a cognitivist

perspective--specifically Vygotsky’s social-cultural theory. People are shaped by their

experiences and perspectives and this knowledge effects how we approach our world including

math. As teachers we need to build off what our students already know and understand so that

they can connect concepts of mathematics to their world and their lives. I also like this approach

because it positions the teacher as a facilitator and collaborator with students. It gives students

agency and recognizes their capabilities to work at understanding and learning new concepts,

while allowing the teacher to be a support and resource for that student’s progress. In my past

experiences we have done a lot of scaffolding, which Vygotsky points out as an important aspect

of student learning and the Zone of Proximal Development. In my current position, we see where
each child is in the learning process, and provide the appropriate support needed for them to

reach their next step.

Teaching for Social Justice is very important to me and is the reason I chose to study at

Boston College. One of the biggest things I struggled with was how to incorporate teaching

social justice into teaching mathematics--I had never experienced such a thing when I was a

student, so it was difficult for me to even begin to envision it. After reviewing various stances, I

would aspire for a Sociopolitical stance in terms of justice. We live in a society wrought with

issues of racism, sexism, ableism and many other injustices that our students are going to have to

face. We should be teaching for social justice--that is, we should acknowledge and begin to

address existing systems of inequality and help our students develop the tools they need to go out

into this world and begin to affect change. Teaching math from a sociopolitical stance would

enable students to use concepts of mathematics to understand and bring to light issues of

injustice in our society. They can apply these understandings to their own lives and lived

experiences, and also to begin to think about ways of addressing these issues and work towards a

more just society.

I believe that teaching mathematics means teaching in context, being aware of and

addressing sociopolitical climate, addressing students’ individual needs and building on their

strengths and experiences, and not limiting students in terms of perceived ability. I realize

however that it can be difficult to approach teaching math in this way--there a lot of

obstacles such as curriculum, school policies, standardized testing and other measures that make

this difficult to enact. I also realize that even though I value and aspire to these methods and

approaches, in reality I have not practiced them and have taken approaches that I do not find as

beneficial. However I hope that I can take what I’ve learned and begin to work towards all of the
pedagogies discussed in this paper so that I can teach mathematics in a way that is meaningful

and authentic to my students.