Demand Side Learning

Lifting Pedagogy Software Product

Index

1.       Problem
2.       Solution
3.       Business model
4.       Underlying magic/technology
5.       Marketing and sales
6.       Competition
7.       Team
8.       Projections and milestones
9.       Status and timeline
10.   Summary and call to action

There is a practical problem having immediate financial impact. College tuition may not result in either the credit for or the knowledge advertised. On average 60% or more of entering freshman pay for a freshman mathematics class that they do not pass. Students and parents would save, in tuition costs, many times what lifting pedagogy programs will cost.

The background

The efforts of the mathematics education community may be wrong minded, and actually deepening the crisis in mathematics education. Departments of mathematics are generally focused on training good students already having a quality understanding of pre-college mathematics. The "system" is not functioning for the greatest majority of freshman students.

When taking a mathematics class, freshman non-mathematics majors experience negative self-efficacy. This experience is largely ignored by developmental and remedial programs. Freshman programs either function is exactly the same way as fourty years ago, or are organized around skill based drilling. <*> These programs treat to absence of skill and motivation as if no negative experiences occurred during K-12. However, most students report such experiences.

If principles of biological science are applied to the question of reinforcement and the development of habituated behavioral patterns, we find a deep theory giving evidence that an acquired learning disability has developed. This theory appears to be too advanced to be communicated within the mathematics education community, where resistance to innovation is well known.

The cause of negative outcomes from K-12 and freshman mathematics training may be due to poor slow and generally un-insightful instruction during the pre-college experience. The consistancy of K-12 training leads to an acquired learning disability in almost every graduating student. Whereas earlier in life, the learner had the potential for understanding the fundamental procedures of arithmetic, this potential is now inhibited, at the time of the college freshman year, by an adaptation. <*>

The problem of acquired learning disability is to be addressed using a pedagogy and delivery infrastructure.

Most colleges and universities have adopted a pure supply side approach in supporting freshman instruction in mathematics. This means that instruction is often imposed on students who are not comfortable with either the pedagogy or the curriculum.

In theory, the standard approach to freshman mathematics is justified in much the same way that supply side capitalism is justified. Knowledge is supplied without taking into account the interests or judgments of the individual student. This may seem to be reasonable, particularly when the system regards the individual students as being somehow not able to reach a higher level of synthesis. Clearly students do not often know what they want from freshman mathematics, but is this the students' fault?

The excesses seen in the American credit crisis of 2008 are seen also in supply side education. <*> The excess revolves around control over institutions by a few, where those few may not really have the interests of the many in mind. Consequences often include inadequate classroom resources, low pay for professors, overly large and costly textbooks, and disenfranchisement of individual students and professors.

The system, professors, textbooks and testing organizations; is largely disconnected from the world of the students. This is not always true, but an investigation of the practices and concerns of faculty of mathematics in various categories of colleges and universities is revealing.

An example is in order. Many colleges have a hierarchical notion of college governance, where each level of the hierarchy is fulfilling private agendas. Faculty members in these institutions are controlled, sometimes because the faculty do not have American citizenship. In many cases, through hiring and firing practices the faculty body becomes passive and unable to support innovations. Clearly, a demand side theory of education will have difficulty within this settling.

Paradoxically, we support the thesis that the philosopher John Dewey developed a foundation that now serves as a pure model of supply side educational theory. This thesis is complex, involving the notion of empiricism, the limitations that might be found on the scientific methodology and the nature of authority. In essence, the thesis suggests that the American system of education justifies many current practices based on what is regarded as pragmatism.

In a complex sense, the role of the individual learner is made sub servant to the authority of the system. The mind is limited by the way in which minimal educational curriculum are developed. What our society needs is a system that produces a new type of curriculum that focuses on the future citizen. The demand side theory refocus the student and the system itself on the legitimacy of learning for the purpose of learning. The learner is empowered to go further and demand the highest quality of learning.