Chapter 5: Dogmatic Neoliberal Ideology Suppressing Talent Development in Mathematics: Implications for Teacher Education

Mathematics teacher educators must serve many masters and please many constituents. The following nonexhaustive list of obligations provides some appreciation of the complex work required of those who serve in this important teacher preparation role. Mathematics teacher educators must:

It is perhaps the last of these obligations that is the most counterproductive and annoying for teacher educators and their students because it ultimately leads to the enfeebling of mathematics teaching and learning. Relentless criticism from ill-informed, dogmatic but influential ideologues leads to calls for misdirected educational reform, which in turn requires misguided methods for holding educators accountable (Berliner, 2012; Giroux, 2012). Subsequently, superficial measures based on mass applications of standardized testing are thoughtlessly invoked as taken-for-granted performance indicators. Unfortunately, gleaning scores from easily measurable tasks does not tap the deep complexities of mathematics that can engage students’ minds and engender the intrinsic motivation necessary for long-term pursuit of mathematical proficiency. Most of the dogmatic ideologues who preach the mantra of accountability-based school reform are not aware enough or intelligent enough to understand that mathematics teaching and learning can go beyond the mechanical and algorithmic. Moreover, it is possible that those who are intelligent enough to understand the difference prefer to reserve the more interesting, complex, and nonalgorithmic learning processes for the progeny of the privileged.