Windows on Teaching Math: Cases of Middle and Secondary Classrooms

Drawing from her extensive experience of using cases in teacher education and in-service courses, Katherine Merseth offers this practical, hands-on guide to improving the teaching of mathematics. This book, the first to focus on the secondary school classroom (grades 7–12), provides a collection of cases that blend important mathematics content with the real complexities of school and classroom life.

Windows on Teaching Math:

• Responds to the ongoing efforts of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) to enact standards-based practice.
• Provides pre-case discussion exercises that help keep the discussion focused on the mathematics in the case.
• Focuses on topics that are often difficult to teach and challenging for students to learn, such as proportional reasoning, probability, and independence.
• Presents actual student responses that exhibit the misunderstandings and ambiguities of thinking, offering a window into the mathematical reasoning of students.
• Confronts often unaddressed influences on teaching, such as relationships with colleagues, disgruntled parents, tracking, diverse student populations, instances of cheating, and much more.
• Helps facilitators to lead effective discussions with a uniquely designed set of teaching notes that correspond to each case―Windows on Teaching Math: Cases of Middle and Secondary Classrooms: Facilitator’s Guide (sold separately).

Katherine K. Merseth is the Director of Teacher Education and Senior Lecturer at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.