This volume examines how several key components of the mathematics education system in the
United States fail to provide teachers with adequate and effective tools to teach mathematics
in K-12 classrooms. These components consist of teachers' own learning experiences as students
in K-12 classrooms their undergraduate or graduate trainings in mathematics and their
in-service professional development trainings. Newton argues that unless we improve these
system components as a whole and recognize the importance of teaching future mathematics
teachers explicitly and rigorously the topics they are expected to teach teachers will
continue to recycle a body of incoherent and incomprehensible mathematical knowledge to their
students because these are the only types of mathematical knowledge they have at their
disposal both in terms of what they themselves have learned as K-12 students and in terms of
the mathematical resources available to them including the textbooks they rely on to teach as
mathematics teachers.
