BACKGROUND

Teaching for understanding, teaching for transfer of information, teaching to prepare an educated citizenry, isn’t that what we all want?  The big question is, how do we do that?  Slogans, new educational practices, old educational practices dressed up, and trends abound: brain-based education, cooperative learning, problem based learning, student-centered teaching, self-directed learning, the whole child approach, and on and on.  Educators are squeezed from both ends, with administrators and state officials on one end mandating objectives and reorganizing paradigms, and  students on the other, clamoring with persistent protests regarding the relevance of  what we are teaching.  “The goals all schools try to achieve are both reflections of the needs of society and the needs of the student” (Curriculum and Evaluation…, p. 3).               

We are living in a fast-paced world in which school as preparation for life takes on new meaning.  As technologies zip by, it is clear to me that equipping children with a setof static facts and procedures (never mind how immense) is poor preparation even for those students who “stick it out” and graduate from high school.  Students’ preparation must involve more, or technological advances may render them ineffective in very short order.  “The impact of this technological shift is no longer an intellectual abstraction.  It has become an economic reality.  Today, the pace of economic change is being accelerated by continued innovation in communications and computer technology” (Curriculum and Evaluation…, p. 3).

“We are in the midst of great educational uncertainty, one probably unparalleled at any past time...conservatives who urge a return to former standards and practices, and radicals who criticize present conditions agree at least on one point:  neither party is satisfied with things the way they are” (Dewey, p. 20)  These sentiments apply today, and they may have applied when articulated in 1931.  So, though our fast-paced society compels us to address education for the new millennium, we share some of the concerns that educators have been grappling with for over 70 years.  “The way we have organized ourselves for education reform has little to do with the ways students learn.” (Parnell₁, p. 10)  Parnell writes, “...recent studies into brain structure reinforce the contextual learning contention that connecting content and context application is not only helpful to learning, but essential.  In addition, studies in the development of intelligence and the different kinds of intelligence underscore the contextual learning emphasis that education be focused on the needs of the learner, not the needs of the teacher or the educational institution”(Parnell₂, p. 25).  

Typically in many mathematics classrooms, concepts (often abstract ones) are “covered” and take up the majority of the teaching and learning time; a small minority of the time is devoted to real problem solving and honest application.  Application problems are primarily treated as incidental illustrations.  I know intimately that a teacher “covering” content may produce little student learning.  Our curriculum design is often very wide, but shallow.  Contextual learning proponents favor going deeper rather than wider (Parnell₂, p. 105)  “Major changes needed in today’s educational system center around processes” (CORD)

As the saying goes, if we always do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get what we’ve always gotten.  What I see in many school districts are huge drop-out rates; a lack of understanding, even with “successful students;” and a great deal of student discontent or disinterest.  Picturing myself as a student, I know I would much prefer to find classroom material connected to life and placed in a context  which has meaning for me.  The NCTM Professional Teachers Standards address the issue of context.

“Teachers also need to understand the importance of context as it relates to students’ interest and experience.  Instruction should incorporate real-world contexts and children’s’ experience, and when possible, should use children’s language, viewpoints and culture.  Children need to learn how mathematics applies to everyday life and how mathematics relates to other curriculum areas as well.”(Professional Standards…, p. 146)     

I believe many good teachers intuitively employ the elements of contextual teaching.  According to Parnell, seven principles for transforming our classrooms to conform to a contextual teaching and learning model are :

Having had the experience of a contextual teaching workshop and exposure to some of the literature about teaching in a contextual setting, I am more aware of the power of contextual teaching and learning issues.

In the contextual teaching workshop which I attended, I was afforded the opportunity to participate in a job shadowing experience.  I was placed with a pharmacist at a large hospital.  The pharmacist showed some of the ways that she used mathematics in her everyday work,like adjusting the concentration of a drug which may be stored in on solution, but prescribed in another.  For me, the most interesting detail arose when the pharmacist  prepared an intravenous solution for an infant patient.  The dosage of some of the drugs in the solution was determined based upon the patient’s body surface area.  I knew that some drug dosages are determined by the patient’s weight.  I was aware that the age of a patient may impact decisions about dosage.  However, I never knew that body surface area was a component used in determining the dosage of certain types of drugs.  My mind began racing regarding the many surface area lessons I had taught in past years, and how this one tidbit of information may transform that lesson for me and for my students.