El Consejo Nacional de Profesores de Matemática de los Estados Unidos de América, conocido por su sigla en inglés como NCTM, ha dado a conocer el documento Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, que contiene una nueva estrategia para la enseñanza de las matemáticas durante el ciclo de la educación obligatoria.
Se trata de una visión centrada en conceptos y en el desarrollo de habilidades básicas, que en Chile podría servir para suscitar un debate entre especialistas y profesores, particularmente en un momento en que se busca mejorar la calidad de la educación y a la luz de los bajos rendimientos que alcanzan los estudiantes chilenos en el área de las matemáticas.
La parte más valiosa de este Informe se contiene en en el análisis y sugerencias para la enseñanza de las matemáticas en cada uno de los grados desde el Pre Kinder hasta el 8° grado, material que sin duda puede ser de gran utilidad para los profesores, para estudiantes de pedagogía y para los docentes de las Facultades y escuelas de Pedagogía.
Más abajo se resumen los principales aspectos del Informe “Puntos Focales”, cuyo Índice ofrece una visión de los contenidos allí abordados:
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Why Identify Curriculum Focal Points?
2. What Are Curriculum Focal Points?
3. How Should Curriculum Focal Points Be Used?
4. How Do the Curriculum Focal Points Relate to Principles and Standards for School Mathematics?
5. Curriculum Focal Points for Mathematics in Prekindergarten through Grade 8
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Prekindergarten
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Kindergarten
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 2
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 3
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 4
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 5
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 6
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 7
Curriculum Focal Points and Connections for Grade 8

Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics offers more than headings for long lists, providing instead descriptions of the most significant mathematical concepts and skills at each grade level.
Organizing a curriculum around these described focal points, with a clear emphasis on the processes that Principles and Standards addresses in the Process Standards—communication, reasoning, representation, connections, and, particularly, problem solving—can provide students with a connected, coherent, ever expanding body of mathematical knowledge and ways of thinking. Such a comprehensive mathematics experience can prepare students for whatever career or professional path they may choose as well as equip them to solve many problems that they will face in the future.
The curriculum focal points presented here offer both immediate and long-term opportunities for improving the teaching and learning of mathematics. They provide ideas that may kindle fruitful discussions among teacher leaders and teachers about areas to emphasize as they consider the developmental needs of their students and examine a year’s program of instruction.
Teachers might also see opportunities to develop or select lessons that bring together related topics in meaningful contexts to reinforce or extend the most important connections, understandings, and skills. The long-term opportunity, however, is for mathematics leaders at every level to use Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics to launch an ongoing, far-reaching, significant discussion with the potential to guide the thinking of the profession in the development of the next generation of curriculum standards, textbooks, and tests.
This work may assist in the creation and eventual development of new models for defining curriculum, organizing instruction, developing materials, and creating meaningful assessments that can help students learn critical mathematical skills, processes, and ways of thinking and can measure and communicate what students know about the mathematics that we expect them to learn.