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The Report Card with Nat MalkusGet the latest from AEI's Nat Malkus Author: AEI Podcasts
The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education from early childhood to higher education and the lives of Americas children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to improve the lives of families, schools and students. The Report Card seeks to engage with everyone who is interested in education in an accessible way. It brings guests that are doing compelling work across a spectrum from high level policy changes to innovations at the classroom level, work that will start conversations about improving education and the lives of children more broadly. Each episode lets listeners policymakers, teachers, and parents learn relevant information that they can use in their efforts to improve education. Language: en Genres: Education, Education for Kids, Kids & Family Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Mathematical Flexibility and Teaching Middle School Math (with Jon Star)
Wednesday, 11 March, 2026
Math is one of the subjects that gets the most attention in American education, but how well do we actually understand what good math instruction should look like?Should math classes consist of students solving problem after problem, or should math classes also include opportunities for discussion and group work? Should students learn a topic and then move on to the next topic after they have achieved competency, or should teachers strive to teach each topic deeply, giving students many different strategies for solving problems? And if math education in America were dramatically improved, just how good could it be?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Jon Star. Nat and Jon discuss conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, whether constructivism has a place in the classroom, the value of worked examples, online curricula and the importance of curricular coherence, what mathematical flexibility is and why it matters, whether students can understand problem-solving strategies more or less well, whether math makes students better problem-solvers more generally, Chinese math education, Jon’s experience teaching middle school math and how being a researcher informs his teaching, whether math education research is sufficiently accessible to teachers, how to improve American math education, and how good American math education could be.Jon Star is the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a middle school math teacher.
