Several weeks ago, the TED Radio Hour podcast released an episode titled “Don’t Fear Math” where they asked the question, “Why do many of us hate, even fear math?” This is an anxiety-producing question I and many other math educators contend with every day. Through our childhood and own education, we have grown to love math so much so that we see the value in teaching it to a new generation. But we can’t hide the truth that in most classrooms, there’s probably some students who have learned to hate math. Why is this and how can we help more kids love math and thrive in learning it? This is a question I hoped to answer by attending the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Annual Meeting in San Diego this past April.
Okay, so yes, an annual conference for math teachers is about as crazy and absurd as it sounds, but for math teachers, it’s a mix of fun, networking, and professional development. There’s workshops and presentations on everything from Euler’s Number (that’s the number e which is about 2.718 you might recall from Algebra 2) to social justice in math. To put some numbers to it, there were over 600 sessions and more than 7000 math educators there. Over the course of this four-day conference, I started to develop an answer to the question I posed earlier: to help more kids love math, we need to help more students see themselves in the mathematics.
I grabbed a quick selfie with Desmos graphing calculator creator, Dan Meyer.
Classroom Discussion and Complex Instruction
The way I and the majority of people in the US learned math was through direct instruction. In the teaching business, this is what we sometimes call “I-do, we-do, you-do.” The teacher explains what the class will be learning then shows a couple examples, they might try a couple more, involving students more in the discussion this time, and then they release students to work on some practice problems. While fairly simple and effective, there are some issues both psychologically and morally with this direct approach. First, there’s always been research showing students learn and remember math better by constructing their own knowledge as opposed to following the steps a teacher outlines. Second, this model of math instruction might be critiqued philosophically as adhering to the Banking Concept of Education that Brazilian educator Paulo Friere first critiqued in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Direct instruction treats students as empty receptacles and it is the job of the teacher to deposit knowledge into them. If we always teach math this way, you start to see why students might not see themselves in the mathematics, why they might not see themselves as doers of mathematics.
An alternative to direct instruction and the banking concept of education exists: Complex Instruction. I attended several sessions at NCTM led by proponents of Complex Instruction. Complex Instruction is characterized by group work, students discussing problems with each other, and learning from each other. In this process, the teacher is much more of a facilitator of knowledge construction than a knowledge depositor. While students do learn a lot from each other, the teacher still plays a vital role in helping students who have previously felt like they have a lower standing in the math classroom, those students who often say they hate math, demonstrate their own innate mathematical knowledge. The teacher can do this by intentionally highlighting the work of such a student. This is not an easy way to teach math, but certainly it could help more students see themselves as doers of mathematics. This thought was echoed in Jose Luis Vilson’s keynote address on equity when he said math teachers must “cede the floor” so students can see themselves in the math.
Representation: The Ishango Bone and Power in Numbers
Beyond Complex Instruction, another theme prevalent in talks at NCTM was that of representation. Math educators must grapple with the fact that the doers of mathematics have historically been depicted as white, male, and from wealthier backgrounds. To help more students see themselves as doers of mathematics, we must push back against these biased historical narratives and hold up the oppressed narratives of people of color, women, and poor people doing math throughout history. As the US school system becomes predominantly students of color, we have a “demographic imperative” to hold up these narratives, which Dr. Chike Akua emphasized in his session on Black Contributions to Math Mastery. Dr. Akua walked through the countless examples of black excellence in math throughout human history which are often not mentioned in US math classrooms. Most memorable of these examples of excellence was the Ishango Bone, a mathematical tool found in present day Congo that dates back to 20,000 BC. I highly recommend reading up on the history of the Ishango Bone.
A snapshot I took during Dr. Akua’s presentation on Black Contributions to Mathematical Mastery.
Representation was also emphasized in the closing keynote address by Dr. Talithia Williams. Dr. Williams mentioned the importance of having mentors who were women while she studied math and statistics in college and in graduate school. She continues this legacy today and wrote Power in Numbers to tell the story of women who have broken through stereotypes and found success in science and math. After I finish reading it this summer, I will definitely proudly display this book in my classroom next school year.
A snapshot from Dr. Williams’s presentation.
While it is a small thing we do as math teachers, the more we can hold up the stories of mathematicians from underrepresented backgrounds the better for our students from those same backgrounds. I have even noticed my students are much more interested in the great German mathematician Friedrich Gauss when I mention he was born to working-class parents who did not complete elementary school. Representation matters.
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Some fall in love with math because of its seemingly objective and clear nature. My students echo this when they explain why they like math: “Because there’s only one answer.” But to help more students fall in love with math, we math educators must realize, as Vilson declared, “math is not and never was neutral.” Because math is taught and learned by humans, it’s open to bias just like most everything in society. If we believe math is worth knowing and enjoying by all students, we must interrogate issues of instruction and representation in math education. We have both a demographic and moral imperative to do so.
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A version of this essay first appeared in the Harvard Teacher Fellows' Field Notes blog.