Giving Compass' Take:

• Educators are introducing a growth mindset to teaching math and encouraging students to make mistakes and be flexible problem solvers. 

• Will teaching math this way be effective? 

• Read about the benefits of small group math instruction. 

Nearly two decades ago, international math and science tests revealed mathematics instruction in the United States as an inch deep and a mile wide. Since then, we have grappled with how to get depth over breadth in classrooms.

Classroom teachers, education professors and psychologists are working to help us recapture mathematics as a discipline that involves sense-making and reasoning, not just memorizing steps.

No one has all the answers, but in the San Francisco Unified School District, our math curriculum emphasizes teaching students to persist using a mindset that allows them to make and learn from mistakes.

Often, that involves creating a classroom atmosphere that allows students to take risks with their thinking without fear of being laughed at or corrected.

We want to hear mathematical thinking as students talk in class. Teachers ask students: How did you approach the problem? Why didn’t it work? How is your thinking the same or different from the ideas we just heard?

Our PreK-12 math curriculum is taught using principles of “growth mindset,” a concept developed by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Taught with this framework, students learn mathematical reasoning; embrace mistakes as learning opportunities; and work together to build the flexibility and resiliency required for success in math. The goal is to help students stay motivated in the face of challenging work. We’re working to reframe the question, “What does it mean to be good at math?”

Another component is that students must be flexible in their approaches to problem-solving. We don’t pretend the correct answer doesn’t matter. That is not our message. But if we only present questions that can be answered with a single correct computation, students never think about more complex situations or explore alternative ways to find answers.

Read the full article about math scores by Lizzy Hull Barnes at EdSource