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Playing Chess with Learning: Jim Mamer on Math Reform That Lasts
Playing Chess with Learning: Jim Mamer on Math Reform That Lasts
Posted by Carlos Lopez Gonzalez on 2026-03-26

OCTM leader Jim Mamer sat down with Carlos Lopez Gonzalez and Michael Todd Edwards to discuss what it really takes to sustain math reform: strong tasks, coherent curriculum, and long-term support for teachers. "The tasks matter," Mamer says. "If we have 20 math teachers in a district, and everybody's individually making up their own things, we're not running a system." Reflecting on decades in [...]

Generative AI turns up throughout this issue. The pieces I keep returning to use it to make students think harder, not less. For example, Kumar runs thousands of coin tosses in a browser so a class can watch empirical probability settle toward its theoretical value. Cho’s preservice teachers discovered that the hard part of prompting a chatbot was naming what they didn’t yet understand themselves.

The focus isn't soley on AI. It's important for all of us to remember more timeless qualities of mathematics and the role of effective teachers. For example, Mahmood proves a² − b² = (a + b)(a − b) with one picture; Svoboda and Roustan do the same for the rules of square roots. Imaninezhad grows a textbook bouncing-ball problem into an infinite series. Smith hands future teachers a truck and a pile of boxes, then watches their first model fall apart.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/ojsm.issue.379


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