I was frustrated and saddened to see the recent opinion piece in The Michigan Daily about “Michigan Math.” As a current Graduate Student Instructor in the Math Department who has taught MATH 115 and is currently teaching MATH 116, I would like to try to address some of the points made in this article. Many of us in the Math Department would have been happy to talk to the author, and I’m disappointed that they didn’t reach out to hear from us.
The author focused on the idea that math courses at the University of Michigan follow a “flipped classroom” model, and pointed to a meta-study that found little benefit to flipped classrooms. While MATH 115 instructors indeed expect students to read the textbook before class, the intention is not that this takes the place of all direct instruction during class. We are told to give small lectures during class to explain key ideas, clear up points of confusion and provide extra examples. Since every MATH 115 course relies on the course lecture content, it is debatable whether the MATH 115 setup even qualifies as a flipped classroom. Further, asking students to read outside of class and to answer a few questions before class is a standard practice across many subjects (imagine an English class where you didn’t have to read outside of class).
The Hechinger Report cited by the author finds that the success of a flipped classroom relies on what actually happens during class. The University’s introductory math program is rare in higher math education because it actually tries to put in place decades-worth of research, much of it from U-M scholars. The research shows that doing group work for the majority of class time is not only better for the learning of all students, but also provides even stronger educational gains for women, non-binary folks and students of Color. While I agree that flipping a classroom does not necessarily lead to better learning on its own, the research is definitive that using class time to have students work collaboratively to solve problems with the support of an instructor will lead to higher quality, more equitable education.
The author referred several times to the idea that students have to teach themselves outside of class, implying that the time spent in class working on problems is not “teaching.” This is problematic for a number of reasons — chiefly because an effective teacher employs numerous pedagogical strategies, not just lecturing, and they are all part of teaching. This denigration of teaching, which is present in many spaces throughout education in general, can have a multitude of harmful effects, many of which are contributing to the low pay and poor working conditions that characterize the profession in many different institutions. Personally, I think this comes from a lack of understanding of all that goes into teaching — it is not just lecturing.
Where I did find common ground with the author was in their frustration that math GSIs receive little training before they are sent in to teach MATH 115. You might be stunned, as I was, to learn that your MATH 115 instructor generally has one week of training before they arrive in your classroom. We receive a small amount of additional training throughout our five to six years here in the form of course meetings, but these tend to focus more on logistics than pedagogy. I think it is important to note that, from speaking to colleagues from doctoral programs at more than 25 peer institutions, this amount of training is standard, and so your math lecturers and even your math professors don’t have any more training than us.
The author is calling for a major overhaul of a program that serves tens of thousands of students, is driven by the work of hundreds of GSIs and lecturers and is rooted in the research of hundreds of well-regarded scholars. I would encourage the author to solicit information from sources other than a few fellow students and a single research study. Certainly there is work to do, but let’s not waste time pointing in random unhelpful directions.
Katie Waddle is a Rackham student and a Graduate Student Instructor for the LSA Math Department. She can be reached at waddle@umich.edu.