Motivated: Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In - Softcover

Horn, Ilana Seidel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0325089817 ISBN 13: 9780325089812

Publisher: Heinemann, 2017

Synopsis

Do your math students offer one- or two-word responses in class?

Do your carefully planned lessons feel unsuccessful? "I've tried everything," you think. "Shouldn't math be a little more engaging?" Ilana Seidel Horn understands your frustration.

Participating in math class feels socially risky to students. Staying silent often feels safer. In Motivated, Ilana shows why certain teaching strategies create classroom climates where students want to join in.

Five factors of motivational math classrooms

She introduces six different math teachers, in a range of school settings, who found that motivation requires more than an interesting problem. Their experiences highlight five factors that lower the risks and raise the benefits of participation:

• Belongingness comes from students' frequent, pleasant interactions with their peers and teachers.
• Meaningfulness answers the question, "When are we going to use this?"
• Competence helps all students discover their mathematical strengths.
• Accountability inspires students to participate in classroom life.
• Autonomy produces learners with tools for making sense of their work and seeing it through.

These features of motivational math classrooms are explored in-depth. You'll find suggestions for identifying what impedes each factor, along with strategies for weaving them into your instruction. You'll also be introduced to an online community who support each other's efforts to teach this way.

A guidebook for motivating math students

Motivated is a guidebook for teachers unsatisfied with questions met by silence. By examining what works in other classrooms and following the example of been-there teachers, you'll start changing slumped shoulders and blank stares into energetic, engaged learners.

About this title

About the Author

Ilana Seidel Horn is Professor of Mathematics Education at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, where her research and teaching center on ways to make authentic mathematics accessible to students, particularly those who have historically been disenfranchised by our educational system. She is the author of Motivated: Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In and Strength in Numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics. Listen to Ilana talk about motivation and social risk on The Heinemann Podcast Read Ilana's blog: teaching/math/culture Follow her on Twitter: @ilana_horn Photo credit: Alvin Pearman

Review

"Motivated is filled with many resources that get to the heart of effective mathematics teaching. Ilana Horn introduces the reader to a range of inspirational teachers who share important ideas for engaging all learners."
--Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University, co-founder of youcubed.org, and author of Mathematical Mindsets

"Participation in mathematics can be a social risk for many learners. Motivated provides a framework to support high participation in mathematics. Dr. Horn uses cases and examples that make the practices accessible to teachers who want to embed them in their classrooms."
--Robert Q. Berry, III, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia

"In Motivated, Ilana Horn has found the perfect fusion of people and ideas, of practice and theory. In this engrossing book, both people and ideas come to life. She marries mathematics and motivation so that both are enhanced by the other."
--Julianne C. Turner, Professor Emerita, University of Notre Dame; Co-editor, American Educational Research Journal

"Motivated is full of practical suggestions for how to encourage students' participation in the mathematics classroom, but it is more than a how-to book. Instead, it's a 'why so' book it provides the reasons for why those instructional ideas work, thereby giving instructors the tools to think about their own teaching practices."
--Darryl Yong, Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College

Edition details

• Publisher: Heinemann
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0325089817
• ISBN 13: 9780325089812
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136