This book I would say has changed my thoughts on math, teaching, and teaching math more than any other I've read in my seven year career. I will recommend it and link it forever. I will have to post my highlighted notes from it in several posts because no one would ever scroll through all of it otherwise! There is just so much to process and that I will need to read over and over again- so many opportunities for growth and change!
It's only $10.71 for the paperback and $7.99 for the Kindle version. You NEED this book. But until you get your own, this should be enough to make you want more.
Enjoy!
Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching
Jo Boaler
Introduction: The Power of Mindset
When students get the idea they cannot do math, they often maintain a negative relationship with mathematics throughout the rest of their lives.
Research studies have established that the more math classes students take, the higher their earnings ten years later.
Research has also found that students who take advanced math classes learn ways of working and thinking—especially learning to reason and be logical—that make them more productive in their jobs. Students taking advanced math learn how to approach mathematical situations so that once they are employed, they are promoted to more demanding and more highly paid positions than those who did not take mathematics to advanced levels (Rose & Betts, 2004).
That single belief—that math is a “gift” that some people have and others don't—is responsible for much of the widespread math failure in the world.
Math is conveyed as a really hard subject that is uninteresting, inaccessible, and only for “nerds”; it is not for cool, engaging people, and it is not for girls. It is no wonder that so many children in schools disengage from math and believe they cannot do well.
Part of the change we need to see in mathematics is acknowledgment of the creative and interpretive nature of mathematics. Mathematics is a very broad and multidimensional subject that requires reasoning, creativity, connection making, and interpretation of methods; it is a set of ideas that helps illuminate the world; and it is constantly changing. Math problems should encourage and acknowledge the different ways in which people see mathematics and the different pathways they take to solve problems. When these changes happen, students engage with math more deeply and well.
They believe that mathematics ability is a sign of intelligence and that math is a gift, and if they don't have that gift then they are not only bad at math but they are unintelligent and unlikely to ever do well in life.
Chapter 1: The Brain and Mathematics Learning
If you learn something deeply, the synaptic activity will create lasting connections in your brain, forming structural pathways, but if you visit an idea only once or in a superficial way, the synaptic connections can “wash away” like pathways made in the sand. Synapses fire when learning happens, but learning does not happen only in classrooms or when reading books; synapses fire when we have conversations, play games, or build with toys, and in the course of many, many other experiences.
If brains can change in three weeks, imagine what can happen in a year of math class if students are given the right math materials and they receive positive messages about their potential and ability.
The new evidence from brain research tells us that everyone, with the right teaching and messages, can be successful in math, and everyone can achieve at the highest levels in school.
What I am saying is that any brain differences children are born with are nowhere near as important as the brain growth experiences they have throughout life.
Every second of the day our brain synapses are firing, and students raised in stimulating environments with growth mindset messages are capable of anything.
A lot of scientific evidence suggests that the difference between those who succeed and those who don't is not the brains they were born with, but their approach to life, the messages they receive about their potential, and the opportunities they have to learn. The very best opportunities to learn come about when students believe in themselves.
In other studies, researchers have shown that students' (and adults') mindsets can change from fixed to growth, and when that happens their learning approach becomes significantly more positive and successful (Blackwell et al., 2007).
The highest-achieving students in the world are those with a growth mindset, and they outrank the other students by the equivalent of more than a year of mathematics (see Figure 1.6 ).
It turns out that even believing you are smart—one of the fixed mindset messages—is damaging, as students with this fixed mindset are less willing to try more challenging work or subjects because they are afraid of slipping up and no longer being seen as smart. Students with a growth mindset take on hard work, and they view mistakes as a challenge and motivation to do more.
When students are given fixed praise—for example, being told they are smart when they do something well—they may feel good at first, but when they fail later (and everyone does) they think that means they are not so smart after all.
Praise feels good, but when people are praised for who they are as a person (“You are so smart”) rather than what they did (“That is an amazing piece of work”), they get the idea that they have a fixed amount of ability.
Telling students they are smart sets them up for problems later. As students go through school and life, failing at many tasks—which, again, is perfectly natural—they evaluate themselves, deciding how smart or not smart this means they really are. Instead of praising students for being smart, or any other personal attribute, it's better to say things like: “It is great that you have learned that,” and “You have thought really deeply about this.”
Chapter 2: The Power of Mistakes and Struggle
“Every time a student makes a mistake in math, they grow a synapse.”
One reason it is so significant is that it speaks to the huge power and value of mistakes, although students everywhere think that when they make a mistake it means that they are not a “math person” or worse, that they are not smart.
When teachers ask me how this can be possible, I tell them that the best thinking we have on this now is that the brain sparks and grows when we make a mistake, even if we are not aware of it, because it is a time of struggle; the brain is challenged, and this is the time when the brain grows the most.
First, the researchers found that the students' brains reacted with greater ERN and Pe responses—electrical activity—when they made mistakes than when their answers were correct. Second, they found that the brain activity was greater following mistakes for individuals with a growth mindset than for individuals with a fixed mindset.
The study also found that individuals with a growth mindset had a greater awareness of errors than individuals with a fixed mindset, so they were more likely to go back and correct errors.
It tells us that the ideas we hold about ourselves—in particular, whether we believe in ourselves or not—change the workings of our brains. If we believe that we can learn, and that mistakes are valuable, our brains grow to a greater extent when we make a mistake.
He points out: “Imperfection is a part of any creative process and of life, yet for some reason we live in a culture that has a paralyzing fear of failure, which prevents action and hardens a rigid perfectionism. It's the single most disempowering state of mind you can have if you'd like to be more creative, inventive, or entrepreneurial.”
He also summarizes the habits of successful people in general, saying that successful people:
- Feel comfortable being wrong
- Try seemingly wild ideas
- Are open to different experiences
- Play with ideas without judging them
- Are willing to go against traditional ideas
- Keep going through difficulties
It's also a good time to reinforce important messages—that when the student made this mistake, it was good, because they were in a stage of cognitive struggle and their brain was sparking and growing.
I said “Do you know what just happened? When you got that answer wrong your brain grew, but when you got the answer right, nothing happened in your brain; there was no brain growth.”
If we want students to be making mistakes, we need to give them challenging work that will be difficult for them, that will prompt disequilibrium.
In workshops with Carol Dweck I often hear her tell parents to communicate to their children that it is not impressive to get work correct, as that shows they were not learning.
This is a radical message, but we need to give students strong messages to override an idea they often get in school—that it is most important to get everything correct, and that correctness is a sign of intelligence.
When mathematics is taught as an open and creative subject, all about connections, learning, and growth, and mistakes are encouraged, incredible things happen.
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