The article of this blogger, Jaipur based educator and researcher, Dr lalit Kishore, "US Kids are Math Duds" published in MyNews.in (11 Oct 2008) was disseminated by the "Newsmagagine of the Mathematical Association of America" (Volume 28, Number 8) to highlight the issue of the child-unfriendly math education adding that among girls, the situation was much worse. There is alarming gender disparity in higher education math courses in the US due to lack of gender-responsiveness of math instruction at school level .
"A secondary analysis of the studies in admission trends in higher education STEM courses shows gender disparity because of masculine structures and emphasis on linear logical thinking skills," says Kishore adding that speaking, listening and reading skills of in math content are needed to be stressed by de-emphasizing abstract nature of math and the rule method of learning maths. He supports his statement with a study results on math literacy.
A clinical trial of intervention of reading task sheets for math topics through outlining skill, word search puzzle and crossword puzzle was done on grade-seven female student was done for 10 hours spread over 5 learning episodes of 150-200 words each. After the trial, the student reported better readiness for receiving of the topic-learning in classroom being taught by the teacher and better acquisition of reasoning and logic of steps in doing the sums. The student’s work and formats of reading task sheets are given in the inset collage.
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