Developmental Mathematics Redesign Thoughts

Donna Jovanovich

One of the most pressing challenges facing community colleges is improving outcomes for students who place into developmental math courses.”

From: Accelerating Remedial Math Education: How Institutional Innovation and State Policy Interact, Jobs for the Future, Biswas, 2008

Reflections

This is an exciting time for us as mathematics faculty, and I am delighted to hear faculty talk about mathematical content. Many have thought that we are teaching too much in our developmental courses, and at times, we have been on the defensive from finger-pointing by colleagues in other disciplines. This is not a new phenomenon. When I first started teaching at J. Sarge (1990), Betty Weissbecker said to me that we have an impossible task—teaching in one semester, what they teach in high school in one year. And I remember a cross discipline meeting that was called (mid 90s) especially for us to hear “there is something wrong with the math curriculum”. Faculty from other disciplines were upset that developmental mathematics was a road block to students making progress in their respective curricula.

Asking what students need to know to be successful in their college work is a very different focus from our orientation of moving from calculus backwards and replicating the high school curriculum. Perhaps one day, it will be moving from statistics backward.J

We also  have heard from many fronts “let’s diagnose where students have difficulties” and help them with those areas instead of giving them the whole curriculum from A to Z. Breaking the curriculum into discrete smaller chunks will facilitate this. We also know that intensive exposure to the mathematics helps students succeed at higher rates.

I look forward to the dialogue and ask for your support as we move forward in trying to meet the needs of our students more effectively. We do not have all the answers and this will be an ongoing conversation. This is the first step: to rethink what should our developmental mathematics students be able to do. The DMRT provided a skeleton for us, it is up to all of us to flesh it out.

Director of Institutional Effectiveness

Virginia's Community Colleges