But the issue is deeper than merely a change in the mental skill-level required in today's jobs. There is a growing body of brain-based research (Alkon, Gage, Gazzaniga, Greenough, Kosslyn, LeDoux, Crick, Rose, Damasio, Calvin, Herbert, Pert, Sacks, Edelman) to support Ronis' claim that parts of today's educational methods are negatively impacting children. Some educators, particularly those who advocate a "return to the basics" or those who over-emphasize current age-specific national standardized tests, end up merely "teaching-the-test." They are forcing their students into the lowest form of human learning with the largest built-in disincentive (rote memorization). Teach-the-test education deprives the student of the real mental challenges and demands for "authentic" mental growth their survival-based brains were built for. Traditional educators are trying to put a square peg in a round hole and then wondering why it doesn't work as well as they would like. Claims of success from this quarter, such as George W. Bush's trumpeting the Texas teach-the-test method, just reaffirms what has been known for a long time. Those who take test-taking classes for the SAT can easily increase their scores 200 points in a matter of weeks or months. But they are no better prepared for college. To potentially have this trick become national policy is truly scary.
Diane Ronis's principal contribution to this growing brain-based discussion is to make much of this new "brain" information readily available to teachers or parents. This is not an overly theoretical, dense, or hard-to-follow book. It simply gives modern knowledge. For example, brain-based research has proven that: 1) children learn in a wide variety of ways (not just linearly verbal); 2) students do best by actively, in their own mental contexts, manipulating the information at hand; 3) children need to connect not only intellectually, but also physically and emotionally with what they study; and 4) the human brain as it evolved thousands of years ago is built for survival not to rapidly digest the disconnected bits of semantic information in today's pedantic classrooms. The brain is built to self discover patterns, connections, and interrelationships with its previous knowledge (more technically to add to its own personal neural networks). It is built to figure things out for itself (to process patterns): such as how to act if a hunted prey is downwind rather than upwind. Ronis's contribution is even more important since it is the only effort (I know of) to apply brain research to non-geometric mathematics. Brain-based research knowledge is deeper in verbal than in mathematical mental processes. After reading this book, many a reader, who struggled with her own math education, may conclude it was not her own personal limitation that was the problem, but the ineptitude of the teaching approach. Those who loved their math education may realize their curriculum was a "mile wide and an inch deep." The somewhat perfunctory operations they learned and were good at and liked did not really expose the deeper essence of any major mathematical concept.
There are some limitations to the book. Always conscious of the need for assessment (both for the teacher and for the student), she proposes an integrated assessment approach with extensive student portfolios as the basis. While this might be ideal, it is extremely work-intensive for the teacher and is not, in my opinion, an economically real possibility. The solution lies, I believe, in designing written tests which rate higher order "process" and "thinking" skills as well as "integrated knowledge," but which can be easily graded. These relatively frequent tests should also take into account the variety of mental strategies we now know different students can use successfully. Some future book should define a more robust middle school and high school mathematics curriculum, which follows the new-found knowledge of how students learn. To recast the entire mathematics curriculum for "authentic" brain-based learning is much harder than to give a few sample lessons. Still this is a great start. I highly recommend "Brain Compatible Mathematics" for anyone, especially teachers, who want mathematics learning problems demystified, or parents whose children aren't responding well to their mathematics education.
Recharge your math instruction with brain-friendly teaching units! Students? brains are wired to make them natural, curious learners. The mathematical world around them offers a vast classroom, filled with shapes, spaces, quantities, and experiences to discover and explore, all leading to the construction of understanding. Teachers can use this natural curiosity to tap the inborn neural mechanisms that motivate students to learn-to make relevance and meaning of their surroundings. Brain-Compatible Mathematics, Second Edition bridges the findings from the realms of brain research and improved mathematics instruction through updated teaching samples, connections to the most recent standards, newest research findings, and integration to other content areas. Each brain is different, and when teachers teach problem-solving skills to help students arrive at their own solution paths, students go beyond mere memorization of facts and algorithms to being an actual participant in the development of mathematical understanding. In an informative and relevant approach, Diane Ronis presents teachers and math leaders with an emphasis on thinking, mathematical representation, and construction of ideas and an abundance of:
By integrating math learning into real-world applications, students can actively practice what they learn, make meaning out of their everyday experiences, and think mathematically for success within today?s information age.
