When Good Teaching Leads to Bad Results: The Disasters of “Well-Taught” Mathematics Courses,

In the article, When Good Teaching Leads to Bad Results: The Disasters of “Well-Taught” Mathematics Courses, Schoenfeld (1988), we are looking at how students are lacking true knowledge and comprehension of math.

Using word based problems; we see how students are unable to make real world connections, therefore demonstrating not a lack of comprehension, but rather memorization of a formula, and not necessarily the correct way of doing something. If we look at the example of how many buses are needed, students plugged in a formula they believed to be correct, and that was it resulting with a response as "31 with 12 left over" instead of responding with a number of busses. I wonder if this problem was given to students outside of math if students wouldn’t feel the necessity to just look at this as numbers. Could students answer this problem correctly if we change the context of their learning?


A "good teacher" is identified as one who teaches a number of different ways to look at the same thing so all students "get it". But is this enough? Just because there is more than one way to explain something doesn't make it any easier for students to truly understand. The practice of math and students understanding will be different for every child with every topic, and that's where problems occur. I think it's easy for teachers to say; well their workings are right so that's enough. We need to reinforce the importance of proof of knowledge in students. This can only accomplished by students making connections for themselves.