Tracking the Mathematics of Automobile Production: Are Schools Failing to Prepare Students for Work?

Global competition and technological innovation, it is often argued, have fundamentally changed the nature of work, making it more technically demanding, while schools have not kept pace. But the mathematics used in workplaces, much less whole industries, is rarely examined carefully. Observations at 16 sites involved in automobile manufacturing indicate that the level and content of mathematics required by work practices vary substantially. High-volume assembly made minimal to modest demands on workers, primarily for measurement and numerical/quantitative reasoning. Machine tool operation and work in quality labs, however, required substantial spatial and geometric knowledge in two and three dimensions. Technology affected the mathematical demands of work, but the effect was shaped by management orientation and patterns of work organization. These results raise questions about how badly schools are failing to prepare students for “the global competitive workplace.”

[1]  R. Hall,et al.  Teaching/learning events in the workplace: A comparative analysis of their organizational and interactional structure , 1996 .

[2]  H. Braverman.  Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century , 1996 .

[3]  H. Levin.  Educational Performance Standards and the Economy , 1998 .

[4]  Douglas H. Clements,et al.  Geometry and spatial reasoning. , 1992 .

[5]  Gerald W. Bracey.  International Comparisons and the Condition of American Education , 1996 .

[6]  Herbert P. Ginsburg,et al.  The development of mathematical thinking , 1983 .

[7]  James M. Moser,et al.  The Acquisition of Addition and Subtraction Concepts in Grades One through Three. , 1984 .

[8]  R. Stevens,et al.  Making Space: A Comparison of Mathematical Work in School and Professional Design Practices , 1994 .

[9]  Richard Lesh,et al.  ORDER AND EQUIVALENCE OF RATIONAL NUMBERS: A CLINICAL TEACHING EXPERIMENT , 1984 .

[10]  David W. Carraher,et al.  Street mathematics and school mathematics , 1993 .

[11]  H. Shaiken.  Mexico in the Global Economy: High Technology and Work Organization in Export Industries , 1989 .

[12]  Daniel Roos,et al.  The machine that changed the world : the story of lean production , 1991 .

[13]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[14]  Gaea Leinhardt,et al.  Analysis of Arithmetic for Mathematics Teaching , 1992 .

[15]  Richard J. Murnane,et al.  Teaching the New Basic Skills. Principles for Educating Children To Thrive in a Changing Economy. , 1996 .

[16]  Wendy Lesley Millroy,et al.  An Ethnographic Study of the Mathematical Ideas of a Group of Carpenters , 1991 .

[17]  A. Su,et al.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , 1932, The Mathematical Gazette.

[18]  Ian Westbury.  A Nation at Risk , 1984 .

[19]  Geoffrey B. Saxe,et al.  Culture and cognitive development , 1990 .

[20]  Jere Confrey,et al.  The Development of multiplicative reasoning in the learning of mathematics , 1995 .

[21]  Peter J. Denning,et al.  A nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform , 1983, CACM.

[22]  Celia Hoyles,et al.  The visibility of meanings: Modelling the mathematics of banking , 1996, Int. J. Comput. Math. Learn..

[23]  Lauren B. Resnick,et al.  A Developmental Theory of Number Understanding. , 1984 .

[24]  Carolyn Kieran.  The learning and teaching of school algebra. , 1992 .

[25]  Joanna O. Masingila.  Mathematics Practice in Carpet Laying , 1994 .

[26]  S. Scribner.  Studying working intelligence. , 1984 .

[27]  Lawrence C. Stedman.  International Achievement Differences: An Assessment of a New Perspective , 1997 .

[28]  David C. Mowery,et al.  The Impact of technological change on employment and economic growth , 1991 .

[29]  John P. Smith,et al.  Competent Reasoning With Rational Numbers , 1995 .

[30]  R. Murnane,et al.  The Growing Importance of Cognitive Skills in Wage Determination , 1995 .

[31]  Douglas A. Grouws,et al.  Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning , 1992 .

[32]  Harley Shaiken,et al.  Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer Age , 1985 .

[33]  Thomas Bailey,et al.  Changes in the Nature and Structure of Work: Implications for Skill Requirements and Skill Formation. , 1990 .

[34]  B. Greer.  Multiplication and division as models of situations. , 1992 .

[35]  S. L. Star.  The Cultures of Computing , 1995 .

[36]  William H. Schmidt,et al.  A splintered vision : an investigation of U.S. science and mathematics education , 1997 .

[37]  Patrick W Thompson,et al.  The development of the concept of speed and its relationship to concepts of rate , 1994 .

[38]  C. Hirsch.  Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics , 1988 .

[39]  Lynn Arthur Steen,et al.  On the shoulders of giants: new approaches to numeracy , 1990 .

[40]  B. Rogoff,et al.  Everyday Cognition: Development in Social Context , 1999 .

[41]  R. Rumberger,et al.  Educational Requirements for New Technologies: Visions, Possibilities, and Current Realities , 1987 .

[42]  Merlyn J. Behr,et al.  Number concepts and operations in the middle grades , 1988 .