No Child Left Behind: Teaching the Metric System in US Schools

International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 2(4), 40-48. , 2012

This article addresses the importance of the International System of Units or SI. It compares the metric system with the customary system of weights and measures. There is a brief discussion involving the evolution of the decimal system from Roman numerals to Hindu-Arabic numerals followed by a longer discussion involving the evolution of SI. Closing arguments support the full adoption and mandatory teaching of the metric system in the United States. Craig, K. W. (2012). No child left behind: Teaching the metric system in US schools. International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 2(4), 40-48. ISSN: 2231-3842 (print) and 2277-8691 (online)

Evaluation Review, 1996

This article reviews U.S. metric conversion efforts, particularly as they have affected education. Education system benefits and costs are estimated for three possible measurement system conversion plans. Of the three, the soft-conversion-to-metric plan, in which all inch-pound instruction is dropped, appears to provide the largest net benefits. The primary benefit is class time saved by teaching just one measurement system. These net benefits appear to be many times larger than the costs anticipated for the controversial plan to convert all U.S. highway signs to metric or dual measures.

2014

In this paper I argue that a fragmented approach to the teaching of the SI (Standard International) units-as dealt with in the National Curriculum Statement/ Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement-Intermediate and Senior Phase Mathematics as part of General Education and Training-(GET)-when compared to the decimal system (with base 10), may interfere with understanding and conceptualisation, and with solving problems involving conversion for both learners and teachers. I also argue that isolating and fragmenting SI measurement units, complicate processes of accommodation and assimilation as advocated by Piaget. In terms of the Gestalt learning theory, fragmentation (in this context) prevents learners from seeing the greater meaning of the relationship(s) that exist among the different SI units. It thus appears, as if the curriculum writers are in favour of a more instrumental approach to parts of the curriculum as opposed to relational, which essentially also focus on the underlying mathematical relationships to enhance sensemaking.

2010

Cognition and Instruction, 2013

Extensive research has shown that elementary students struggle to learn the basic principles of length measurement. However, where patterns of errors have been documented, the origins of students' difficulties have not been identified. This study investigated the hypothesis that written elementary mathematics curricula contribute to the problem of learning length measurement. We analyzed all instances of length measurement in three mathematics curricula (grades K-3) and found a shared focus on procedures. Attention to conceptual principles was limited overall and particularly for central ideas; conceptual principles were often presented after students were asked to use procedures that depended on them; and students often did not have direct access to conceptual principles. We also report five groupings of procedures that appeared sequentially in all three curricula, the conceptual principles that underlie those procedures, and the conventional knowledge that receives substantial attention by grade 3. From the primary grades forward, many students in the United States, as well as in other countries (Bragg & Outhred, 2001; Hart, 1981; Nunes & Bryant, 1996), struggle to learn measurement. More than 30 years of empirical research, both large-scale studies and smaller more focused studies targeting student reasoning, have shown substantial weaknesses in students' understanding of measurement. In the United States and other countries, children work in the elementary grades to measure many quantities, including time, weight/mass, capacity/volume, and temperature. But more attention is devoted to measuring space-length, area, and volume-than other quantities, starting in the first year of formal schooling. 1 Despite frequent everyday experiences with spatial quantities, many students do not understand units of measure, how the iteration of units produces spatial measures, or how commonly used tools (rulers and computational formulas) generate mea

Educational Research and Evaluation, 2002

This article draws upon teacher and curriculum data collected in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study to document cultural differences in what constitutes school mathematics. These differences are explored with each curriculum instantiation: the intended curriculum as found in official content standards, the potentially implemented curriculum represented by textbooks, and the implemented curriculum as measured by teachers' reports of the amount of time they taught specific topics. In addition, cultural differences are demonstrated in how curriculum policy, as indicated through official standards and reflected however imperfectly in textbooks, relates to what students are taught in the classroom. Not only does each curriculum instantiation provide an unique profile of school mathematics within a country but the relationships among the three instantiations also demonstrate unique cultural profiles. Although countries may strive to have alignment across the three curricular instantiations, some variation remains in the definition of what constitutes eighth grade mathematics within any one country. The many differences demonstrated make it clear that there is more than one way to do eighth grade mathematics. The authors conclude that reform efforts may profit from thoughtful consideration of the many different cultural approaches to school mathematics.

2020

This chapter shows how the teaching of multiplication is structured in national curriculum standards (programs) around the world. (The documents are distributed by national governments via the web. Those documents are written in different formats and depths. For understanding the descriptions of the standards, we also refer to national authorized textbooks for confirmation of meanings.) The countries chosen for comparison in this case are two countries in Asia, one in Europe, two in North America, and two in South America: Singapore, Japan, Portugal, the USA (where the Common Core State Standards (2010) are not national but are agreed on by most of the states), Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, from the viewpoint of their influences on Ibero-American countries. (The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards (published in 2000) and the Japanese and Singapore textbooks have been influential in Latin America. Additionally, Portugal was selected to be compared with Brazil). ...

2017

In this study we explore possible long-term effects of an adaptation of the El’konin­–Davydov elementary grades curriculum, Measure Up or MU. The objectives for the study are to assess how students relate an equation of nonnumeric quantities to a length representation, and if former MU students develop and retain a perspective characteristic of the curriculum. Data were collected from thirteen former MU students and a group of fourteen peers who were instructed together with the MU students in identical middle and high school programs, but did not receive MU instruction. Findings show that former MU students reasoned about lengths as generalized quantities, applied a method for marking and labeling quantities, and justified a representation of relationships given by an equation. Implications are discussed for how a measurement context in elementary mathematics supports meaning making in the later study of algebra, particularly with regard to variables and multiple representations.

Normand R. (2020) The Politics of Metrics in Education: A Contribution to the History of the Present. In: Fan G., Popkewitz T. (eds) Handbook of Education Policy Studies. Springer, Singapore, 2020

Policy instruments are linked to the development of new modes of governance. They provide cognitive and normative frameworks for policy-makers to advocate changes, to implement new programmes, and to create new types of public interventions (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007). They contribute to the transformation of the State through the invention of new tools and devices, particularly metrics, which give legitimation to political aims, values, and ideologies. It corresponds to New Public Management which pretends reinventing tools of government and overcoming bureaucracy sometimes by reusing recipes from the past (Hood 1986). The instruments participate also in a kind of depoliticization and re-politicization of decision-making whereas policy-makers face many contestations and oppositions from different interest groups. As Michel Foucault demonstrated, these technical procedures of power and instrumentation are central to the art of governing and the development of a rationalizing State (Foucault 1977). Governmentality is not only based on measuring devices but also on intellectual and scientific technics, ways of thinking, epistemologies which become operational through metrics (Miller and Rose 2008). New relationships are established between science, expertise and politics that impact on the ownership, selectivity and choices of tools and instruments.