Professional Reading - Mathematical Mindsets - Jo Boalar

Professional Reading - Mathematical Mindsets - Jo Boalar

WHAT

- Many students hate maths and think they are not good at it. 

- Being good at maths is often associated with being smart. 

- Many kids have either been told, or it has been implied that they are not good at maths and this results in them believing that they are not a 'maths' person

- Previously it was believed that brains were born and couldn't be changed. It is now widely accepted that brains can have plasticity and can change

- When you learn a new idea an electric current fires in our brains, crossing synapses and connecting different areas of the brain. If something is only covered once, or superficially, then these connections can be washed away. 

- London taxi drivers provide a good example of how the brain can change or grow.

- For the vast majority of students (95%) any level of school maths is within their reach. 

- The very best opportunities to learn come about when students believe in themselves. 

- Students with a fixed mindset are most likely to give up on a task

- One of the reasons students have a fixed mindset is because of the praise they get from home

- Telling students they are smart sets them up for problems later. 

- Every time a student makes a mistake they grow a synapse.

- Making a mistake is more effective for someone that has a growth mindset 

- Successful people make more mistakes than non-successful people. 

- Students need challenging maths problems in order to open up the opportunity for mistakes. 

- Maths is about patterns - not about recall and procedures - testing students too much makes them feel like maths is about producing answers quickly and accurately under pressure. 

- Maths is all around us in nature - Fibonacci's golden ratio.

- There is a growing disconnect between maths at school and maths in the real world.

SO WHAT/NOW WHAT

For me the fundamental change I need to make is how I speak and how I react when discussing maths with student's - particularly when mistakes are made. Eventually, it would be good to use student's mistakes as a launch pad for discussion, but to get to this point a lot of work needs to be done around how we respond to when people make a mistake. If students feel that they will be laughed at for their mistakes, then they will be less inclined to put themselves out there and give something a go.