Teaching in Context

Problem Solving (Cognitively Demanding Tasks)

What do we teach math for if it is not to have students use their mathematical knowledge and understanding to solve problems? I used to tell my students that their employer was not going to ask them to do a straight computational problem such as, 346,328 - 132,004. No, they were going to ask them how many widgets were available to ship after the Acme Company’s order of 132,004 widgets was filled.