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Creating the Best Classroom Climate

 

StudentsThere are many steps educators can take right now -- and many resources at your disposal -- to make the learning experience interesting and enduring:

   

Ideas

  • Encourage group work; girls often prefer working as a team and will do better work and understand the material more deeply
    • Promote constructive controversy; students disagreeing yields powerful learning
    • Choose good tasks; find sources of materials that are appropriate for group work (e.g. Get It Together)
      • Let students be teachers; there is a real confidence boost from helping peers
    • Ensure individual accountability; choose an appropriate assessment method for each student
    • Occasionally, let students evaluate each other's work
  • Maintain a two-way dialog of collaboration between student and teacher (not just among peers); have a discussion instead of a lecture
    • Don't ask for a yes/no right/wrong answer, but instead at least sometimes try "What do you think?"
    • Not "weeding out", but checking whether she has the tools to succeed.
    • Use open-ended questions, give open-ended projects
      • Think of the girls in your class as designers and inventors, not only rule-followers
    • Understand more about your students attitudes toward math with open-ended questions like "List all the words or phrases you can think of that describe mathematics", "What does doing mathematics feel like for you?", or "If math was a food, what food would it be?"
      • Use that knowledge to help change the culture; eliminate the "I was never very good at mathematics" stereotype
    • Listen to your students and let the knowledge you gain inform your teaching
      • Student input into assessment
    • Investigative labs (teacher models expert problem-solving alongside students)
    • Think out loud and model the discovery process
    • Be human; own your mistakes and learn with the students
  • Use a long wait time when asking questions; for example, count to five before acknowledging any responses
  • Personalize your interactions; address students by name regularly
  • Encourage and expect all to participate; be sure to call on every student
  • Make eye contact, and be aware of nonverbal cues
  • Let students select activities and topics that interest them
  • Relate to personal experience 
    • Expand your language; for example, say "folks" rather than "guys", avoid generic "he"
    • Balance your vocabulary; not just "tackle" but "interact", not just "master" but "integrate"
    • Remember that mathematics and science are languages, which students need to speak, not only hear
  • Set high expectations for all, with ample praise and gentle constructive criticism
  • Recognize multiple learning styles by varying your classroom techniques
    • More field trips and hands-on activities
    • Exploration, rather than pre-digested conclusions. (Discussion, not only lecture)
    • Not just competition, but also cooperation
    • Not only doing, but also watching and talking
    • Not only theory, but also applications
      • Mathematical modeling (COMAP, for example) as a resource
    • Not only computation, but also classification, analysis, and representation
    • Support more writing, and get more into attitudes with reaction papers
    • Humanistic mathematics; metaphor (model vs reality), ambiguity, aesthetics, mystery, structure, and catharsis (passing from intuition to proof) should all be valued in mathematics as they are in poetry
  • Explain that stereotypes limit the imagination
    • Getting (or giving yourself) permission to be deeply involved in technology despite its lack of "femininity"
      • The machine can be useful in context but not in and of itself
  • Mathematics is a human activity (Harold Jacobs, Mathematics: A Human Endeavor)
    • Math links to all the humanities (art, music, literature, poetry, quilting)
    • Sources: Math Equals, and Women, Numbers, and Dreams, by Teri Perl.
    • Symmetries in nature and art
       

Resources

 

References

  • Bernice Resnick Sandler, "The Chilly Climate"
  • Judith Jacobs, "Women's Learning Styles"
  • Leslie Hiles Paoletti, "Research and Recommendations of Professional Organizations"
  • Joan Countryman, "Is Gender an Issue in Math Class?"
  • Dorothy Buerk, "Women's Metaphors for Math"
  • Cornelia Brunner and Margaret Honey, "Gender and Technology: Exploring the question of technological imagination"
  • Carolyn Hopp, "Instruction with Cooperative Small Groups"
  • Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition
  • Nell Noddings, "Theoretical and Practical Concerns About Small groups in Mathematics"
  • Claudia Henrion, "Placing Mathematics in a Cultural and Historical Context"
  • Jan Serie, "Techniques for Teaching Science"
  • Get it Together
  • Math Equals
  • Women, Numbers, and Dreams
  • Mathematics, A Human Endeavor