Implementing the “Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics”: Applying the Standards to the College Mathematics Classroom: Ideas and Obstacles

This assumption that how teachers teach mathematics is fundamentally connected with how they learned it underlies the first standard of the “Standards for the Professional Development of Teachers of Mathematics.” This standard, Experiencing Good Mathematics Teaching, focuses on the role of the college and university mathematics professors in the process of reforming school mathematics teaching. It is essential that mathematics teacher educators invite and encourage college-level mathematics faculty to join them in implementing the teaching standards. The NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989) and Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991) present a new vision of school mathematics. Mathematics courses and programs of study in colleges and universities should share in this vision.