{"id":467,"date":"2023-10-07T03:54:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-07T03:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/?p=467"},"modified":"2023-10-07T03:54:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T03:54:13","slug":"there-is-no-bad-math-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/?p=467","title":{"rendered":"THERE IS NO BAD MATH STUDENT"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Math is a notoriously hard\u00a0subject\u00a0for many kids<\/a> and adults<\/a>. There is a gender gap<\/a>, a race gap<\/a>, and just generally bad performance in many countries.<\/p>

John Mighton, a Canadian playwright, author, and math tutor who struggled with math himself, has designed\u00a0a teaching program that has some of\u00a0the worst-performing math students performing\u00a0well and actually enjoying math. There\u2019s\u00a0mounting evidence that the method works for all kids of all abilities.<\/p>

As of 2017, his program, JUMP<\/a> (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) Math, is being used by 15,000 kids in eight US states (it is aligned with the Common Core), more than 150,000 in Canada,\u00a0and about 12,000 in Spain. The US Department of Education found it promising enough to give a $2.75 million grant in 2012 to Tracy Solomon and Rosemary Tannock, cognitive scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children\u00a0and the University of Toronto, to conduct a randomized control trial with 1,100 kids and 40\u00a0classrooms. The results, due out in late 2017, hope to confirm\u00a0previous work the two did in 2010,\u00a0which showed\u00a0that students from 18 classrooms using JUMP progressed twice as fast on a number of standardized math tests as those receiving standard instruction in 11 other classrooms.<\/p>

\u201cIt would be difficult to attribute these gains to anything but the instruction because we took great pains to make sure the teachers and the students were treated identically except for the instruction they received,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>

How it Works<\/b><\/h2>

Mighton has identified two major problems in how we teach math. First, we overload kids\u2019 brains, moving too quickly from the concrete to the abstract. That\u00a0puts too much stress on working memory. Second,\u00a0we divide classes by ability, or \u201cstream\u201d, creating hierarchies which disable the weakest learners while\u00a0not benefitting the top ones.<\/p>

Mighton argues that over the past decade, the US and Canada have moved to a \u201cdiscovery\u201d or \u201cinquiry\u201d based approach to math by which kids are meant to figure out a lot of concepts on their own. The example he offers in this Scientific American article<\/a> is this:<\/p>

\u201cDiscovery-based lessons tend to focus less on problems that can be solved by following a general rule, procedure or formula (such as \u201cfind the perimeter of a rectangle five meters long and four meters wide\u201d) and more on complex problems based on real-world examples that can be tackled in more than one way and have more than one solution (\u201cusing six square tiles, make a model of a patio that has the least possible perimeter\u201d)\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>

Solomon said this approach\u2014also called problem-based learning\u2014means the teachers\u2019 role is not to provide direct instruction, but to let kids collaborate to find solutions to complex, realistic problems which have multiple approaches and answers. But too many children don\u2019t have the building blocks from which to discover the answers. They get frustrated, and then fixed in the belief\u00a0that they are not \u201cmath people.\u201d<\/p>

A key problem with this method is it requires kids to have too much happening in their brains at one time.\u00a0\u201dThis is very difficult for teachers,\u201d said Solomon, and \u201cit\u2019s very difficult for kids.\u201d<\/p>

Mighton\u00a0thinks\u2014and offers brain research<\/a>\u00a0(pdf)\u00a0to support\u00a0it\u2014that kids succeed more with math when it is broken down into small components which are explained carefully and then practiced continually.<\/p>

To explain the concept to me, he took a basic question\u2014what is 72\u00a0divided by 3? He showed me multiple ways to do it, including saying three friends wants to share seven\u00a0dimes and two\u00a0pennies. When I pause, even for a second, Mighton apologizes and says he clearly hasn\u2019t explained it well, and takes another stab at it a different way.<\/p>

Critics would argue that all good teachers approach problems like this, from multiple angles. But many teachers struggle<\/a> with their own math anxiety, and research shows that they then pass on this anxiety to their students. (That\u00a0happens with parents<\/a>\u00a0too, unfortunately.)<\/p>

And Nikki Aduba, who helped test Mighton\u2019s method\u00a0in schools in\u00a0the London borough of Lambeth, said Mighton has broken down the steps so carefully that\u00a0nearly everyone could catch on. Many teachers, she said, welcomed this approach. \u201cMany thought, okay to get from A to B there are these three steps, but it turns out there are really five or six,\u201d she said.<\/p>

When Solomon conducted the pilot program on JUMP, she said it was the small, incremental steps which made the math accessible to all students and allowed some of them\u00a0to experience success in math for the first time. \u201cBecause they can master\u00a0the increments, they are getting the checks and building the mindset that their efforts can amount to something. That experience motivates them to continue,\u201d she said. By continuing, they practice more math, get more skills, and become the math people they thought\u00a0they couldn\u2019t\u00a0be.<\/p>

Mighton says the small steps are critical. \u201cI am not going to move until everyone can do this,\u201d he said. \u201cMath is like a ladder\u2014if you miss a step, it\u2019s hard to go on. There are a set of sequences.\u201d\u00a0He has dubbed his method \u201cmicro discovery\u201d or \u201cguided discovery.\u201d<\/p>

There is other evidence for its success. When the Manhattan Charter School piloted the program in in 2013-14 with its fourth graders, it experienced the highest increase in math scores in all of New York City. Now every class in the school is using it.<\/p>

The program was used in Lambeth, one of the poorest areas of London, with more than 450 of its worst-performing\u00a0students. At the time they started, 14 percent were performing at grade level: when the kids took their grade six exams (called Key Stage 2 exams in the UK), 60 percent passed. Aduba said it\u00a0worked \u201cbrilliantly,\u201d especially for kids who had been struggling.<\/p>

\u201cThe key thing about the JUMP\u00a0program is it starts small and progresses in very small steps to a very sophisticated level in a relatively short period of time,\u201d she said. \u201cIt restored confidence in kids who thought \u2018I can\u2019t do maths.\u2019 Suddenly, to be able to do stuff, it boosted their confidence.\u201d<\/p>

The Bigger Problem<\/h2>

The bigger problem Mighton sees is hierarchies. Teachers tend to assume that in\u00a0most classrooms there\u2019s a bell-shaped curve\u2014a\u00a0wide distribution of abilities\u2014and teach accordingly. It means that 20 percent of the class underperforms, 60 percent are\u00a0in the middle, and 20 percent outperform, leading to a two- or three-grade range of abilities within one classroom.<\/p>

\u201cWhen people talk about improving education they want to move the mean higher. They don\u2019t talk about tightening the distribution,\u201d Mighton said.<\/p>

The reason this matters is that, as\u00a0research shows<\/a>\u00a0(pdf), kids compare themselves to each other early on and decide whether or not they are \u201cmath people.\u201d Children who\u00a0decide they are not math people are\u00a0at risk of\u00a0developing something Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck calls a \u201cfixed\u201d mindset: They\u00a0think their\u00a0talents are innate and cannot be improved upon. Thirty years of mindset research shows that kids with a fixed mindset take fewer risks and underperform those who think their efforts matter.<\/p>

Dweck has examined JUMP\u00a0and says it\u00a0encourages a \u201cgrowth\u201d mindset: the belief that your abilities can improve with your efforts. \u201cThe kids move at an exciting pace; it feels like it should be hard but it\u2019s not hard, they have this feeling of progress, that [they]\u00a0can be good at this,\u201d she said at a math conference.<\/p>

Mighton says the problem with the bell curve is that everyone worries about the kids at the top getting bored. \u201cOur data shows that if you teach to the whole class, the whole class does better,\u201d he says. And, by moving together and having so many children experience success in math, they experience what Durkheim calls \u201ccollective effervescence,\u201d\u00a0the joy of\u00a0knowing they can do it, rather than the joy of just getting a high mark.<\/p>

As school districts move away from the most commercially savvy educational publishers to programs based on proper evidence\u2014a shift that has been taking place over the past decade, albeit slowly\u2014programs like JUMP\u00a0will likely have more success. Until he won the Schwab entrepreneur of the year award in 2015, Mighton\u2014who has been working on JUMP since 2002\u2014has had no marketing team and has invested all of his budget into testing and refining the materials (JUMP is a nonprofit, and its teacher resources are available on its website). Pearson, by way of contrast, is a \u00a35.3 billion ($6.6 billion) company as of 2017, with tentacles in every corner of the education market.<\/p>

While many people try to paint their methods as new, Mighton is the first to admit that what he is teaching is age-old. \u00a0He believes math has been overhyped as hard, and all that students and<\/em> teachers\u00a0need is to have things broken down properly. Many have dubbed these simple steps as \u201cdrill and kill\u201d. But he\u00a0says the steps can be made fun, like puzzles.\u00a0<\/p>

Mathematicians \u201chave big egos, so they haven\u2019t told anyone that math is easy,\u201d he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. \u201cLogicians\u00a0proved more than 100 years ago it can be broken into simple steps.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

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This article was originally published on February 15, 2017, by Quartz, and is republished here with permission.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Math is a notoriously hard subject for many kids and adults. There is a gender gap, a race gap, and just generally bad performance in many countries. John Mighton, a Canadian playwright, author, and math tutor who struggled with math himself, has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/language.peacollege.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}