The Glade 4.0

Aizle:

I simply think you grossly overestimate the competence level of your average teacher, or even "good" teachers, for the most part.

Bob has a B.S. in Mathematics.

Jane has a B.S. in Math Education.

Who's going to be the better teacher?

_________________

Khross,

Not enough information.

My father went to Yale on a full ride scholarship, where he got his PhD in Mathematics. He commented to me, that his professors at Yale (all them them with core degrees, not education degrees) were some of the worst teachers he had evern had.

Honestly the degree that one has determines very little in one's ability to be a good teacher.

Aizle:

Actually, it's plenty of information if you know what those two degrees entail and have for the last decade or so.

_________________

No, it really isn't. A large percentage of what makes a good teacher is unteachable.

The suggestion that jacking up a student for being disrespectful in a sports setting is some terrible crime is absurd.

It's not that big a deal. Anyone that feels the need to go crying to someone else about that sort of thing is a big fat pussy. Clearly, it pissed me off and I argued with it, but it was never a big deal.

There are not going to be many male teachers left in a few decades, especially at high school and below. Over 80% of those that graduate with education degrees are female, and the men that do graduate disproportionately gravitate away from K-12 schooling, and end up teaching at places like community colleges.

Also, IMHO someone with a BS degree is a better teacher than someone with a Ph. D. A Ph. D. can't relate introductory material to students well. The competence gap is just far too large. It's like when you try to teach your grandmother how to work Windows 7.

Ha! I bought my grandmother a computer, shipped it to her with instructions on how to connect everything, and had previously set up an email account for her with a big icon on the desktop that takes you right to it.

I got a letter typed on a typewriter in the mail thanking me....

I never, ever, received an email from her.

Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!

_________________

The sad thing is that those with a B.S. in * Education get hired because the administration thinks they'll make better teachers (because they have a * Education degree themselves), regardless of the reality of the situation.

Ara, that gave me a nice chuckle, thanks.

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Some kids just need to be spanked.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Hahahaha!

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

See, you're doing that thing where you make assumptions about what's been said and interjecting your own value judgments.

"Better" is a comparative; I said nothing about either teacher being good. As it stands, one person will know the subject they teach; the other will know "how to teach according to accepted pedagogical theories" a subject they don't know ...

_________________

No, actually that's not how it stands.

The mathematics major in theory will know more mathematics, but depending on what level of education they go into, much of the additional learning may be irrelevant to their teaching needs.

So as I said, there isn't enough information to determine who is the better teacher.

You don't say...


Feynman's intro lecture on quantum behavior is one of the greatest things I've ever listened to.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

No, I'm not. I'm answering your question by saying there are too many variables.

Which tastes better, a dish made by a gourmet chef, or one made by a long-time cook with no formal training?

EDIT: Also, I reject your assertion that a mathematics degree provides more knowledge regarding the subject being taught than a mathematics education degree. I was a mathematics major, and I know what courses were required for math ed. Depending on the subject being taught the courses required for Math ed go beyond what is necessary for full understanding of the subject. In other words, both take the same classes. The higher level subjects I took, that they do not have to take, are not particularly useful for most high school and earlier courses. So, they are the same.

You were a math major when? 2000? 2001? What university did you attend?

These things matter, because suffice it to say the majority college graduates in the United States do not attend Tier 1 universities with reputations to uphold, and even those universities are lowering their graduation standards.

That said, Math Ed doesn't take the same courses as a degree in Mathematics, because the degrees are no longer double majors; in fact, the subject to be taught is rarely even a minor (which would require 12-18 hours of upper level courses (300/3000-400/4000 level courses at most universities).

So, you can reject my "premise" all you want, but I spend a lot of time monitoring the various curricula that university systems use for their programs. Education Degrees are a joke.

This isn't the 60s or 70s or early 80s ...

And at least some states recognize it.

Math Education and Science Education degrees are no longer qualifying degrees for teaching Math or Sciences after the 6th Grade in several South Eastern States. They want people with at least a B.S. in their field and an Ed.S. certificate (that's post-degree, non-graduate level). Ideally, they're seeking candidates with Masters Degrees and an Ed.S. plus state certification.

Education programs are a joke for a reason. And I still get paid to fail the teachers you guys think are qualified.

_________________

/sigh

1995-1999, VA Tech. Math Ed did take the same basic courses, just not at the high end. And I just checked - they still do. Same exact courses until about halfway through the junior year, well past anything that would be required or helpful to teach high school or lower. My higher level classes would have no value in teaching high school (little value in engineering, either).

So yes, I reject your premise. And I restate my opinion that a large portion of what makes a competent teacher is untaught.

VT's Mathematics curriculum:

http://www.undergradcatalog.registrar.vt.edu/1011/science/math.html#Anchor-Bachelor-63368

You just linked a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics with an Education Focus. Not a Bachelor's of Science in Education with a Mathematics Focus. And, amusingly, the course lists are almost identical because the Education Focus simply prescribes the majority of its electives. Going through VT's catalog, they don't offer Education Degrees before the Graduate Level. That makes them, at least in theory, better than 90% of the Universities out there with regard to this discussion. Also, Tier 1 University and comments about reputation apply.

_________________

So, shitty colleges/universities are shitty. In other news, water is wet.

Except for the fact that it's the "shitty colleges/universities" turning out degree holders for people with the mental capacity of grapefruit.

_________________

I see. Education sub Math instead of Math sub Education.

I have no knowledge of Education sub Math, so .... /shrug

I actually don't have very much problem with universities and programs that require a double major (provided there aren't asymmetric GPA requirements) or a major/minor or major/elective focus program in the subject being taught. But most teaching institutions (VT is a Research Institution) actually have undergraduate degrees in Education with slim subject matter requirements. This annoys me to no end because these are the people who are teaching your children. The students of the program you list can get a job using mathematics in the private sector. It's highly unlikely that an Education Major could do the same these days ...

_________________

I'd be very curious to see a study that gave a breakdown of the degrees of the teachers in our public schools.

I am bolding a few key phrases and sentences so that non-Khross readers don't misconstrue this as an indictment that Khross is full of **** in his criticism of secondary education teachers.

There is a problem with the initial premise of your question. You are assuming that the two individuals are the only ones teaching mathematics, and perhaps more egregious, that mathematics teachers will possess a degree in math education.

For example, here is the secondary education requirement for the University of Missouri - St. Louis:
http://www.umsl.edu/bulletin/ed/sec_ed.html

Here is the link from their Math Department, which has B.S.Ed. emphasis: math listed on the same page:
http://www.umsl.edu/bulletin/as/math.html#under

Here is Washington University School of Arts & Sciences requirements for a major in mathematics, in a nice table side-by-side to compare the secondary education track with the other four tracks for a math major:
http://wumath.wustl.edu/majors-minors/majors/tracks

You will see that the secondary education degree for both schools compares rather favorably to a traditional math degree. In recent years, schools have begun to recognize that a degree in education is inadequate to teach certain subjects and have raised their requirements for awarding degrees for teachers. If only our high school mathematics classes were actually being taught by people who possess such degrees! The problem is they aren't. There aren't many graduates each year who complete that track - not enough to satisfy the demand for mathematics teachers. The problem is that the math focus is an entire degree in and of itself, without the education classes. If you are talented with mathematics, there are other appealing programs that do not require you to deal with the education department.

What actually happens is that secondary education institutions hire people who are not math teachers in order to teach mathematics. This is not unique to mathematics, either. It is the norm throughout the city for a high school physics teacher to have a unified science focus (see the first link), but not the physics endorsement. For example, all science teachers are required to take the following courses:

With the exception of Philosophy of Science, each one of those courses is a high school level course. We have biology and chemistry being taught by people who haven't had any science beyond the class they're teaching. Here is the requirement for the physics endorsement:

These courses also require additional math. The "Contemporary Math" or the College Algebra classes required for the core requirements are insufficient as a background for 3000-level physics courses. Now, you will notice that the biology and chemistry teachers have taken two physics classes. Would you care to guess who is likely to be teaching a high school physics class? If you can get a high school physics teacher who has taken the requirements for the physics endorsement, they are very good. (Good luck finding one). They are better than the secondary education majors who did not complete the physics endorsement by a very wide margin. This shouldn't be a surprise to find that actual physics teachers are more effective than chemistry and biology teachers at teaching physics.

The question is whether these individuals are more proficient at teaching physics than someone possessing a traditional B.S. in physics? The same can be applied to mathematics. Do the education classes make a person with a double-major (because that's essentially what the student is doing) better at teaching than an individual with a single major in mathematics? Not so much. This is exacerbated when talking about Master's degree holders, when you consider that a significant number of graduate students who work as a T.A. to earn their Master's.

The education courses act as a deterrant. Students who are able to clear the bar for the physics endorsement or the mathematics double-major have a lot of options available to them already. The teaching profession has to compete with other fields that the mathematically-inclined students find more exciting, and less of a hassle. We have established that we are willing to let chemistry and biology teachers teach physics in the absence of a qualified physics teacher. The idea is, "Well you've taken a physics class. You can teach." The same logic is applied to mathematics. Well, this teacher took algebra to get a degree, we can use him in this math class.

Well, if you're willing to let someone who's not qualified to teach the course run the classroom, why not work it both ways? Rather than using someone who doesn't meet the math or science requirement run the classroom, why not someone who lacks the education requirement? The reason is because school districts have a surplus of non- math and science teachers. There are English and history teachers floating around in the district who can't be let go because of various state and federal laws. The law says they have to be given a job, so they get the open math and science classes that the district can't find a teacher for.

This is absolutely preposterous. Now, there are PhD holders who can not teach for **** (usually because they've never done it before, or are uncomfortable in front of large groups). It's well worth noting that a very large number of hard science PhD holders aren't teaching. However, the notion that the competence gap is just too large for a PhD to explain fundamental concepts is absurd. One of the hallmarks of a keen understanding of a topic is the ability to explain it to someone who doesn't understand. That is precisely why Einstein is remembered as "The Great Explainer." Richard Feynman is more well known for his lectures on physics than he is for his Nobel Prize.

I have had teachers with PhDs who weren't very good, and I've had others who were excellent. The ones who were excellent were so good precisely because of their depth of knowledge. They had such an intimate knowledge of their chosen field that they could spot the pitfalls in another person's understanding. They understood complicated topics well enough to make them simple. This is an aspect of the sciences that may not carry over into other fields.

It is debatable just to what extent studying Chinese literature actually helps you understand English literature, or how well understanding African history helps you understand Russian history. It is possible that over the course of a degree program for those other fields, they will benefit more from classes which focus on teaching styles and theories behind learning than they would from a broader knowledge of their field. (Which isn't what a lot of those education classes deal with, but we'll set that aside for the moment).

Hard sciences are different. First, you're dealing with problems that have objective answers. Second, they build upon themselves. They revisit the same concepts over and over again, and introduce new methods for solving the same problems. It's like math and science's greatest hits. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I've seen three identical electrically charged particles pushing away from each other. The foundation of mathematics and physical sciences is to take a complicated problem and reduce it to something famiar. An often used analogy is the toolbox. When you have a hammer, all problems look like a nail. When you have both a hammer and a screwdriver, you begin to understand the difference between a nail and a screw.

One of the most difficult things for a teacher to do is answer a question. Unlike your lecture notes, where you have prepared statements, a student asking a question forces you to think on your feet. Here is where you are tested. Are you just regurgitating knowledge accumulated over the years, or do you understand it yourself? Most of the students asking questions have no **** clue what it is they want to ask, and you somehow have to interpret them and provide an answer. When you get stuck, you have a problem. The advanced topics in science and mathematics give you more ways to get yourself out of trouble when you're stuck. It also gives you the means to answer that dreaded, "When am I going to need to know this?" question. That's the other big trick a teacher has to pull - making their students care. High school students don't look at an algebra textbook and see the secrets of the universe laid bare for them. They don't see the foundation for everything that's interesting and worth knowing. They see X, Y, and a bunch of grids that don't make any sense to them, and if all you can tell them is that they'll use it in a later math course, that's all they're ever going to see.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'd say that's fair, especially given my own personal biases against Education Departments.

_________________