Math Textbooks for Adults?

Hello everyone!

I wanted to know if anyone had any recommendations for math textbooks for adults? I'm in the exploratory phase of textbooks searching, but so far I haven't found anything worthwhile. Any help that can be provided is appreciated.

Alfons I. Prince

Comments

Good day Alfons, you are not alone in your search for good math textbooks for adults. There seems to be a very limited selection. If you are aiming for the College and Career Readiness standards, your choices become even fewer, sadly. The following thoughts are where I have seen a number of teachers turning lately:

To build conceptual understanding in Mathematics, the Empower Math series is the best I have found for getting adult students to explore and discover math before being introduced to symbols, procedures and official vocabulary. These discovery learning exercises lay a foundation on which a teacher can easily build up procedure and application in a way that students can retain more. There is a formal professional development program available that is connected to the Empower series. This PD program is called Adult Numeracy Institute (ANI) and if you have that available or can get it available in your region, it is an educationally trans formative experience. So many of us have received a solid procedural education but almost nothing for conceptual development. The ANI experience, and the Empower series, helps math teachers discover incredibly powerful ways to help learners begin their math journey by playing with the math first to discover very powerful properties, relationships and patterns before jumping into the more formal lessons we are all familiar with. I don't often jump on a  product's bandwagon, but I am extremely supportive of the positive impact the Empower series and the ANI training can have on mathematics classrooms and learners of math. 

To build procedural understanding, I have found many using Khan Academy. This is an online free resource that provides not only instructional resources, but it gamifies the entire process with badges, levels, and a variety of exercises. The tracking features allow teacher to easily spot when students are struggling and what each student is concentrating on with their time. This allows teachers to provide more individual help where it is often most needed or to group students up in a peer support system that can be very effective in helping struggling math students. In terms of learning resources, Khan academy often includes short (8-10min) videos demonstrating and explaining the procedure and it provides step by step walkthroughs of procedures as well. Again, all of this is free and people around the world are finding this to be a very powerful platform in flipped classrooms and independent learning efforts. Rumor has it that Khan Academy even has a deal with ETS to create a "class" within Khan for HiSET Preparation which many adult education programs have been asking for of many companies. 

For application of mathematics, I am seeing that teachers really need to individually contextualize experiences based on the individuals career aspirations. Some programs have developed wonderful mentor ships as a result of this process. Either at intake or soon after intake, the adult ed program does some career exploration with the learner and helps to identify at least three focal areas the person might peruse or have interests in. This data is immediately shared with all teachers to facilitate contextualization when possible. Very often I have to go to a student and say, "You know, I know very little about hair cutting and you really get into that. Remember what we just learned about the (insert math skill here)? Can you take the next 15 minutes to brainstorm what you know of the business of hair styling and see how it might be related (math skill being studied) in any way? Maybe the proportions of color mixing follow a similar pattern? How about the cutters and how they measure the different types of cutters? How about the chairs they sit in that can be positioned in many different directions?" I may then follow up with some calls to local hair stylists with questions to see if we can get one of them to email, call or meet face to face to establish some connections...

I have been very frustrated with the lack of educational options in the Mathematical Textbook arena today. This is sad that a multi million dollar enterprise has so few really different options. I hope the above three options are useful for any in the field as you think about resources. I am sure there are other resources out there that are effective, or at least I really hope so. I look forward to hearing what others are using and finding useful!

 

Hi!  Alfons,

I like the EmPower books also.  Each has a teacher book that is a great resource (objectives, materials needed, discussion questions, practice and extension activities, blackline masters, answer key, etc.), so be sure to purchase them also if you can afford them.

Textbooks can be so expensive, so I like to use open educational resources (OER).  A couple of my favorites are:http://www.wallace.ccfaculty.org/ and www.ck12.org .  Tyler Wallace has created a Beginning and Intermediate Algebra book that is free to download.  Each has a student workbook and there are also videos to go with each lesson.  The videos are usually around 5 minutes long. CK-12 has math books at different grade levels that are also free to download.  Both of these resources can be remixed, which is great.

I hope this helps.

 

Have a great week!

 

Carolyn Hendrix

 

 

If you are looking for a web based supplement to your text books, consider i-Pathways. I would be happy to share the resource with anyone who is looking for a supplement. Since we are desinged for mobile devices, in addition to traditional computer use, studnets can complete a lesson that supports your instruction any time /anywhere. The curriculum was developed by adult education instructors and college instructors teaching math at the college developmental education level. 

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. 
Sincerely, 
Kathy Tracey