Wrestling with Change: The Dilemmas of Teaching Real Mathematics
by Lew Romagnano
Category: Education

In Wrestling with Change, Lew Romagnano details his and a colleague's experiences transforming two ninth grade general mathematics classrooms into problem-centered environments. Practicing mathematics teachers will recognize elements of their own work in the story told here. Prospective teachers and teacher educators will find themselves in real mathematics classrooms via detailed vignettes of classroom events and the planning that led to them. Researchers of teaching will discover arguments built from a carefully constructed conceptual framework and rigorous qualitative research methods. Moreover, readers will find a different interpretation of the work of teachers who are wrestling with change. They will find evidence that some of the difficulties that Romagnano and his colleague encountered were not simply problems that could be solved by diligent work. They were, in fact, dilemmas for which these teachers found no clear solutions, only equally-flawed alternative courses of action. To accomplish the goal of teaching real mathematics, they had to manage the dilemmas of change.