There’s one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don’t

“I’m just not a math person.” We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Is math ability genetic? How do we know this? Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea that math ability is mostly genetic is one dark facet of a larger fallacy that intelligence is mostly genetic. A body of research on conceptions of ability has shown two orientations toward ability. The “entity orientation” that says “You are smart or not, end of story,” leads to bad outcomes—a result that has been confirmed by many other studies. They found that students who agreed that “You can always greatly change how intelligent you are” got higher grades. The results? 1.

Part 1 In Part 1 of a series, I focus on the distinction between high school math and university-level mathematics, suggesting they are effectively different subjects that are best learned in different ways. One of the biggest obstacles in giving an online course on mathematical thinking, which my MOOC is, is coping with the expectations students bring to the course – expectations based in large part on their previous experience of mathematics classes. To be sure, prior expectations are often an issue for regular, physical classes. But there the students have an opportunity to interact directly with the instructor on a regular basis. But in a massive open online class, apart from locally configured support groups and text-based discussions on the MOOC platform discussion forum, each student is pretty much on her or his own. The situation is particularly bad for a course like mine, designed to help students transition from high school mathematics to university-level mathematics. Like this:

Telling You the Answer Isn't the Answer This is a story from my class. The course is a physics course designed for elementary education majors. Really, it’s a great course using a great curriculum – Physics and Everyday Thinking. The basic idea is that students work in groups to collect evidence from different experiments. They use this evidence to build models about force, motion, energy, circuits and stuff like that. One of the important parts of the course is that students have a chance to build ideas and struggle with the model-building process. Here is how a typical discussion might go. The discussion then goes something like this: Student 1: I think that if the ball is slowing down, it has to have unbalanced forces. Student 2: I’m not so sure. Student 3: Both of these ideas seem reasonable. It happens every semester. The Struggle is Learning This is the first point I always make. If I just tell them the answer, that would end the struggle. Learning Isn’t What They Think It Is The instructor is gate keeper of knowledge.

Math Ed Matters: Try, Fail, Understand, Win By Dana Ernst and Angie Hodge “Try, fail, understand, win.” These were the four words written on a course evaluation at the end of Dana’s introduction to proof course from the spring 2013 semester. We believe that this perfectly captures the essence of an effective inquiry-based learning (IBL) experience for a student. Dana couldn’t ask for a better student comment. He should retire now; it’s all downhill from here. The “big” IBL conference is the annual Legacy of R. As we reflect on this year’s conference, “try, fail, understand, win” provides a good outline of the lessons learned. Try: We try something new in our classrooms.We try to engage our students in mathematics and inspire them to crave more.We try to provide our students with a safe environment where they are willing to take risks.We try to relinquish control, sit back, and see what our students can do.Fail:

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