Education Professor Presents Original Math Textbook Research

Janice Grow-Maienza, professor of education, organized and spoke in a symposium titled “Developing Procedures with Conceptual Understanding in Asian textbooks” for the research pre-session of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual meeting April 4-6, in Anaheim, Calif.

Grow-Maienza discussed connections made to underlying mathematics principles found in Korean elementary mathematics textbooks with Susan Beal, professor of mathematics at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

Other members of the symposium were Tad Watanabe, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, who spoke on iconic representations in Japanese elementary mathematics texts, and Yeping Li, associate professor of mathematics at the University of New Hampshire, who spoke on how division of fractions is conceptualized in Chinese and Singaporean middle school mathematics texts.

Grow-Maienza and Beal presented a poster titled “Korean Mathematics Texts: A Structural and Substantive Analysis” at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association April 11, in Montreal, Canada. In July 2004, they presented another poster, “Seeing Korean Mathematics through American Eyes,” at the 10th International Congress on Mathematical Education in Copenhagen, Denmark. This poster and an interview with Grow-Maienza have been featured in a Korean Broadcasting System documentary on competitiveness in Korean education to be filmed in Korea this spring.