Colleagues,

I do hope our guest authors might address the three questions I posed  
yesterday, and here are  three more:

4. One difference, that you point out in the study on page 15,  
between how children and adults learn numeracy is “The inclusion of  
societal contexts in adult-focused frameworks stands in marked   
contrast to the exclusion of such contexts in school-based  
frameworks.”  Are there other differences?

5. I have been looking at some numeracy teaching/teacher training  
videos, for example:

http://mlots.org (“Ratio and Proportion”)
http://www.teachersnetwork.org/media/index.cfm (“Real Math”)

Most of the videos I have found are focused on children; very few are  
focused on adults; but the approaches are similar: getting teachers  
comfortable in the language and use of numeracy thinking, organizing  
classrooms so students are actively engaged in discovery of numeracy  
concepts, and helping learners make those concepts and related skills  
their own. What do you see as the similarities between how children  
and adults ideally should learn numeracy?

6. On pages 16-17 of the study you describe a continuum of  
contextualization and give examples of two very different word  
problem learning activities, the opposite ends of the spectrum. The  
first is a decontextualized opportunity to practice some recently- 
taught skills – an activity that is “realistic”, not “real”. The  
second grows from a real-life context where students do not have  
clues, other that the context of the problem itself, for what  
numeracy is needed. I wonder if you have other examples along the  
continuum that you could share.

David J. Rosen
Special Topics Discussion Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net