Answer:
Reluctant, apprehensive, frustrated math students can become willing,
involved, and competent math students. The goal of this training manual
is to help you facilitate that change in your basic skills math students.
Adult Basic Skills students who have spent years fearing math or hating
math, and probably failing in math, can learn to succeed in math. They
can even learn to like math (Glass, 2001).
How can those things possibly happen? They can happen when students
learn that math can be fun, math can be practical, and math can work for
them. Many students are mentally challenging you, the instructor, to
show them that math has any practical value – so show them! Then the
only remaining obstacle for them will be their “knowledge” that they are
not good in math. But if you guide them to successful experiences in
math, and they continue to work for success because the math they are
doing interests them, one day they will realize they were wrong – that
they can do math (Barber, Kitchens, & Barber, 1997). Many people get
larger monetary rewards from their work than Adult Basic Skills
instructors, but very few will ever know the elation that you can
experience when you help bring about that important change in your
students.
People do math because math makes their lives better (Gal, 1993;
Withnall, 1995). Math can protect us from being cheated or shortchanged. Math skills enhance our job opportunities. Math skills make our
lives more fun. Math skills help us maintain our homes, cook, budget our
money, understand the news, and plan trips and vacations. Math helps us
understand our own health and can protect us from medication errors,
including errors that have potentially devastating consequences. Math
skills help us protect and nurture our children and care for aging family
members. Math is an important, and integral, part of life.
Explanation:
