The Project for Teaching and Learning Mathematics As Common Sense is one of a few projects sponsored by the American Institute for the Improvement of Mathematics Learning and Instruction. The Institute is an Oklahoma chartered, Tulsa-based, 501(c)(3), not-for-profit corporation – a..k.a The MALEI Mathematics Institute.
The Project's mission is to enlighten the public and the profession of education in mathematics, about the most natural modes for human learning of the mathematical topics, processes, and perspectives required for literate citizenship in a modern, technological society – and required by the current and projected scope of the American core-curriculum in mathematics– pre-school though college.
For such purposes, the MACS Project conducts mathematical and scientific research, provides demonstration instructional programs in the Tulsa area, publishes professional documents, .sponsors presentations to regional and national professional conventions, and nurtures professional movements for reforming educational practices in mathematics.
Scientific Orientation of the MACS Project [Details]
Learning is a psychological process – and there is a scientific psychology of how the human mind learns by invoking rational thinking. Included is the psychology of mathematical learning, as routinely and quite naturally done by all functional humans.
The function of instruction is to exert a guiding influence on the progress of learning. The science of instruction is akin to the science of communications, but is more specifically concerned with the science of learning-management.
The MACS Project strives to disclose how those sciences are best applied for the benefit of mankind – through improving educational practices in mathematics. Its primary focus is on the personal mathematical development of the individual – and on how instruction nurtures or suppresses healthy mathematical growth.
Mathematics is an art of learning through personal reasoning, – a refined version of what commonly is called."using common sense". Almost all students could mathematically learn, as personal common sense, the mathematical topics that they encounter in the core-curriculum. But that usually is not how mathematics is taught in our schools and colleges.
Instead, most of American core-curricular instruction in mathematics . presently relies very heavily on the non-mathematical learning of whatever mathematical topics are covered. Students are expected to memorize things that make no sense to them (or even have no meaning for them). What is learned in that way is soon confused or forgotten, and must be re-taught and re-learned, over and over again.
Instructional reliance on non-mathematical learning of curricular mathematics has perpetuated and intensified a national educational disaster. Each year, millions of Americans mentally (or physically) drop out (or are pressed out) of the core-curriculum in mathematics. That commonly happens long before they achieve the personal mathematical intelligence needed for effectively pursuing their own life goals.All too often, it happens long before they achieve enough mathematical literacy to qualify for other than menial jobs. Millions are so victimized by (MLD) mathematics-learning distress that they are unable to continue within the curriculum, even when allowed to do so.
America's traditional core-curriculum in mathematics has proven to be educationally unhealthy for most students, for their future lives as adults, and for the nation. The MACS Project continues to the frontiers of mathematics instructional reform, with emphasis on the individual learners' personal educational health in mathematics.
Much as with the medical sciences, clinical casework with victims of moderate to severe MLD reveals much about how and why American youth and adults are so poorly served by the entrenched core-curriculum, and about how to make mathematics-educational practices healthier, more effective, and more efficient. The MACS Project conducts its MALEI Mathematical Learning Clinic not only as a bona fide instructional service for its patrons, but also as a medium for advancing scientific knowledge about healthy educational practices in mathematics.
