The 21st Century Mathematics Curriculum: A Technology Enhanced Experience

Technology has the potential to impact the content of the mathematics curriculum in secondary schools as well as the methods used to teach it. Although the United States mathematics curriculum has undergone contentious shifts of emphasis over the last half century, there are points of agreement on what needs to be learned by secondary students. However, current mathematics curricula often result in three separations in students’ understanding and uses of mathematics. The first separation is the artificial distance between school and students’ “real-life” mathematical experiences. The placement of related mathematical concepts into different courses is the second separation. The third separation is the lack of mathematic applications in other curricular subjects. This chapter focuses on the 21st Century Skills, students’ problem posing, and technology integration as vehicles to change classroom mathematics to reconcile these separations. Together, these tools enable mathematics educators to re-conceptualize the mathematics classroom as a place where students learn mathematics by exploring the uses of mathematics across all of the subjects in STEAM education.

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