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Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching
Jo Boaler
Chapter 7: From Tracking to Growth Mindset Grouping
The strong messages associated with tracking are harmful to students whether they go into the lowest or highest groups (Boaler, 1997; Boaler, 2013a; Boaler & Wiliam, 2001; Boaler, Wiliam, & Brown, 2001).
In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, for example, the United States was found to have the greatest variability in student achievement—that is, the most tracking. The country with the highest achievement was Korea, which was also the country with the least tracking and the most equal achievement. The United States also had the strongest links between achievement and socioeconomic status, a result that has been attributed to tracking (Beaton & O'Dwyer, 2002). Countries as different as Finland and China top the world in mathematics performance, and both countries reject ability grouping, teaching all students high-level content.
They found that the students who worked without advanced classes took more advanced math, enjoyed math more, and passed the state test in New York a year earlier than students in tracks. Further, researchers showed that the advantages came across the achievement spectrum for low-and high-achieving students (Burris, Heubert, & Levin, 2006). These findings have been repeated in study after study (see, for example, Boaler, 2013b). A substantial body of research points to the harmful effects of tracking, yet the practice is used in most schools across the country.
Most of the unmotivated and bad behavior that happens in classrooms comes from students who do not believe that they can achieve.
In all of my experience teaching heterogeneous groups of students, I have found that when students start to believe they can achieve, and they understand that I believe in them, bad behavior and lack of motivation disappear.
They discovered that when they gave open tasks, all students were interested, challenged, and supported. Over time the students they thought of as low-achieving started working at higher levels, and the classroom was not divided into students who could and students who could not; it was a place full of excited students learning together and helping each other.
The choice or the challenge must always be available to all students.
A one-dimensional math class, of which there are many in the United States, is one in which one practice valued above all others—usually that of executing procedures correctly.
In a multidimensional math class, teachers think of all the ways to be mathematical. No one is good at all of these ways of working, but everyone is good at some of them.
A stunning 97% of students from the traditional approach said the same thing: “Pay careful attention.” This is a passive learning act that is associated with low achievement (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999).
In the Railside classes, when we asked students the same question, they came up with a range of ways of working, such as:
- Asking good questions
- Rephrasing problems
- Explaining
- Using logic
- Justifying methods
- Using manipulatives
- Connecting ideas
- Helping others
A student named Rico said in an interview, “Back in middle school the only thing you worked on was your math skills. But here you work socially and you also try to learn to help people and get help. Like you improve on your social skills, math skills, and logic skills” (Railside student, year 1).
Another student, Jasmine, added, “With math you have to interact with everybody and talk to them and answer their questions. You can't be just like ‘Oh here's the book, look at the numbers and figure it out.’” When we asked, “Why is that different for math?” she said, “It's not just one way to do it. It's more interpretive. It's not just one answer. There's more than one way to get it. And then it's like: ‘Why does it work?’” (Railside student, year 1).
A theme of the algebra course, and then later all the courses in the school, was multiple representations—students were frequently asked to represent their ideas in different ways, such as through words, graphs, tables, symbols, and diagrams. Students were also encouraged to color code, representing ideas in the same color—for example, using the same color for the x in an expression, diagram, graph, table, and paragraph (see Exhibit 7.4 ).
Many more students were successful because there were many more ways to be successful.
Although the standardized state tests the students had to take under the State of California requirements did not value multidimensional mathematics, the students achieved at high levels because they had learned to be successful in class and to feel good about mathematics. They also approached the state tests as confident problem solvers willing to try any question.
Students were able to get started through encouraging each other, rereading questions, and asking each other questions.
What is the question asking us?
How could we rephrase this question?
What are the key parts of the problem?
But teachers frequently need to inject a new piece of information or a new direction into the group work. In complex instruction, teachers do not try to do this by quieting the whole class. Instead, they call the recorder/reporters out to join the teacher for a huddle. The recorder/reporters meet as a group with the teacher, who can give information that each recorder/reporter takes back to the groups. This not only helps the teacher but also gives the students responsibility that is intrinsically valuable in helping them feel empowered mathematically.
An interesting and subtle approach recommended in the complex instruction pedagogy is that of assigning competence . This practice involves teachers' raising the status of students who they think may be lower status in a group—by, for example, praising something they have said or done that has intellectual value, and bringing it to the group's or the whole class's attention. For example, teachers may ask a student to present an idea or publicly praise a student's work in a whole class setting.
An activity I always like groups to work on before introducing any math work is to ask them to discuss together the things they do and don't like other group members to do and say when they are working in a group on math.
I find that when students think for themselves about positive and negative group discussions and come up with their own lists, they are more thoughtful about the ways they interact in groups.
I also start classes by explaining to students what is important to me. I say that I do not value speed or people racing through math; I value people showing how they think about the math, and I like creative representations of ideas.
Yet another way the Railside teachers encouraged group responsibility is a method that is shocking to some, but that really communicates the idea that group members are responsible for each other. Occasionally the teachers gave what they called “group tests.” Students would take the test individually, but the teachers would take in only one test paper per group (randomly chosen) and grade it. That grade would then be the grade for all the students in the group. This was a very clear communication to students that they needed to make sure all of their group members understood the mathematics.
As the approach they experienced became more multidimensional, they came to regard each other in more multidimensional ways, valuing the different ways of seeing and understanding mathematics that different students brought to problems.
Many parents worry about high achievers in heterogeneous classes, thinking that low achievers will bring down their achievement, but this does not usually happen. High achievers are often high achievers in the U.S. system because they are procedurally fast. Often these students have not learned to think deeply about ideas, explain their work, or see mathematics from different perspectives because they have never been asked to do so. When they work in groups with different thinkers they are helped, both by going deeper and by having the opportunity to explain work, which deepens their understanding. Rather than groups being lowered by the presence of low achievers, group conversations rise to the level of the highest-thinking students. Neither the high nor the low achievers would be as helped if they were grouped only with similar achieving students.
Two practices I have come to regard as particularly important in promoting equity, and that were central to the responsibility students showed for each other, are justification and reasoning.
Always give help when needed, always ask for help when you need it.
Chapter 8: Assessment for a Growth Mindset
Students with no experience of examinations and tests can score at high levels because the most important preparation we can give students is a growth mindset, positive beliefs about their own ability, and problem-solving mathematical tools that they are prepared to use in any mathematical situation.
Study after study shows that grading reduces the achievement of students.
The students receiving comments learned twice as fast as the control group, the achievement gap between male and female students disappeared, and student attitudes improved.
When we give assessments to students, we create an important opportunity. Well-crafted tasks and questions accompanied by clear feedback offer students a growth mindset pathway that helps them to know that they can learn to high levels and, critically, how they can get there.
I have seen this shift happen with many teachers with whom I have worked. It comes about when teachers are treated as the professionals they are and are invited to use their own judgment, helped by research ideas, to create positive learning and assessment experiences for their students.
He went on to describe how the valuing of different mathematics strategies allowed him to feel he could work with mathematics in any way he wanted, to explore ideas and learn about numbers.
When students are given scores that tell them they rank below other students, they often give up on school, deciding that they will never be able to learn, and they take on the identity of an underperforming student.
The grades and scores given to students who are high achieving are just as damaging. Students develop the idea that they are an “A student” and start on a precarious fixed mindset learning path that makes them avoid harder work or challenges for fear that they will lose their A label. Such students often are devastated if they get a B or lower, for any of their work.
When students develop interest in the ideas they are learning, their motivation and their achievements increase.
They found something amazing: a form of assessment so powerful that if teachers shifted their practices and used it, it would raise the achievement of a country, as measured in international studies, from the middle of the pack to a place in the top five.
In A4L, students become knowledgeable about what they know, what they need to know, and ways to close the gap between the two. Students are given information about their flexible and growing learning pathways that contributes to their development of a growth mathematics mindset.
One important principle of A4L is that it teaches students responsibility for their own learning.
Assessment for learning can be thought of as having three parts: (1) clearly communicating to students what they have learned, (2) helping students become aware of where they are in their learning journey and where they need to reach, and (3) giving students information on ways to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be (see Figure 8.3 ).
The researchers concluded that a large part of the students' previous low achievement came not from their purported lack of ability but from the fact that previously they had not known what they should really be focusing upon.
The two main strategies for helping students become aware of the math they are learning and their broader learning pathways are self-and peer assessment.
If students start each unit of work with clear statements about the mathematics they are going to learn, they start to focus on the bigger landscape of their learning journeys—they learn what is important, as well as what they need to work on to improve.
Studies have found that when students are asked to rate their understanding of their work through self-assessment, they are incredibly accurate at assessing their own understanding, and they do not over-or underestimate it (Black et al., 2002).
In addition to receiving the criteria, students need to be given time to reflect upon their learning, which they can do during a lesson, at the end of a lesson, or even at home.
Peer assessment is a similar strategy to self-assessment, as it also involves giving students clear criteria for assessment, but they use it to assess each other's work rather than their own. When students assess each other's work they gain additional opportunities to become aware of the mathematics they are learning and need to learn.
Peer assessment has been shown to be highly effective, in part because students are often much more open to hearing criticism or a suggestion for change from another student, and peers usually communicate in ways that are easily understood by each other.
When students are given information that communicates clearly what they are learning, and they are asked, at frequent intervals, to reflect on their learning, they develop responsibility for their own learning.
An effective way for students to become knowledgeable about the ideas they are learning is to provide some class time for reflection. Ask students at the end of a lesson to reflect using questions such as those in Exhibit 8.4.
As I noted in Chapter Four, brain science tells us that the most powerful learning occurs when we use different pathways in the brain.
They tell us that mathematics learning, particularly the formal abstract mathematics that takes up a lot of the school curriculum, is enhanced when students are using visual and intuitive mathematical thinking, connected with numerical thinking.
In this realm there is one method that stands above all others in its effectiveness: the process of teachers giving students diagnostic comments on their work. One of the greatest gifts you can give to your students is your knowledge, ideas, and feedback on their mathematical development, when phrased positively and with growth messages.
Always allow students to resubmit any work or test for a higher grade
Share grades with school administrators but not with the students.
Use multidimensional grading.
Do not use a 100-point scale.
Do not include early assignments {review?} from math class in the end-of-class grade .
Do not include homework, if given, as any part of grading.
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