Oct 16 Synopsis
We started out class with Jackie and Claudia leading a discussion about the Noddings articles. The Noddings emphasized entering a caring relationship with students. Many things were discussed, such as the difference between caring and a caring relationship. (According to Noddings, while a person can care without the caring being reciprocated, a caring relationship must be two way.) We also talked about how Noddings does discuss a "tough love" that must be used sometimes. We shouldn't always accept any excuse and/or reason that the students want to provide.
Afterwards, James and Beth discussed the Steffe article about using constructivism to teach mathematics. During this discussion we defined constructivism. Constructivism is when students have a "body of knowledge" and when they hear something new that causes an imbalance within this body of knowledge, their mind rearranges information until the new information makes sense within their "body of knowledge."