By Larry Urish, contributing writer
If terms like “multiplication tables,” “long division” or “coefficient” tend to jack up your blood pressure, you’re not alone. Millions of people have an aversion to math.
Mallika Scott, Cal State Fullerton assistant professor of education, believes that this common fear can be addressed at a young age, provided mathematics is taught with the right mindset in a nurturing classroom environment.
To that end, she has studied the challenges beginning teachers face in teaching math, and she offers ways to support them while raising the confidence of their young students. A paper co-authored by Scott that outlines some of the key ideas that guide her research, “We Ask So Much of These Tiny Humans: Supporting Beginning Teachers to Honor the Dignity of Young People as Mathematical Learners,” was published in the journal Cognition and Instruction in 2023.
“One challenge is the status that math has in our society,” Scott said. “It’s closely acquainted with smartness. So when people struggle with math, sometimes they feel inadequate or inferior. People can say ‘I’m not a math person,’ but that’s not particularly true about any other subject.”
The classroom environment, Scott said, has been lacking. “Math instruction in the U.S. has not been great for a long time. (It involves) a heavy focus on procedures and following steps, but it lacks any focus on a deeper understanding and applying math to relevant issues and problems in the world. Teachers have been through that same schooling system, and they haven’t always had a chance to develop a strong grasp of the math concepts that they’re going to teach.”
In addition, Scott noted that teachers do a lot of the thinking for their students in math classrooms. “They show kids things and then kids follow steps, but kids don’t always make sense of the math ideas for themselves or make connections on their own,” she said. “So math can feel like a series of disconnected things that they’re supposed to memorize. If key ideas aren’t connected to each other, it can feel totally overwhelming.”
While high school and middle school teachers receive subject-specific assistance, Scott maintains that math support for elementary-level teachers is minimal. As such, her work has focused on helping prepare teachers to teach math, as well as working with teachers once they’re in their own classrooms specifically focused on math. A former middle school math and science teacher, Scott later engaged in professional and curriculum development for school districts. This involved supporting teachers with their math instruction. After working with teachers who’d been in the profession for a while, she wanted to reach teachers earlier in their career. So she returned to school, earning a doctorate in learning sciences and human development from UC Berkeley.
Scott stressed two key elements that are largely absent in today’s math classrooms: community and dignity. “We need to create a math community where we learn from each other and where everybody’s ideas are welcome,” she said. “And the classroom can be a place where kids feel seen, where their ideas are valued, where everyone has things they can contribute. … Math classrooms haven’t always been a place where young people feel a sense of dignity. Their humanity, potential or unique contributions aren’t valued or seen. When kids don’t feel valued, they tend to shut down. They’re not in a learning space they want to be in.”
This is particularly true when it comes to mathematics. “With other subjects like reading, writing or social studies, kids often feel that their ideas matter,” Scott said. “But math classrooms tend to be narrower or more rigid.”
One activity that Scott uses, “visiting” Planet Pent, helps teachers better understand the math-learning process done by their young students. Planet Pent uses a base-five counting system, in which numbers are organized in groups of 5 instead of 10. (The ancient Greek prefix “penta” means “five.”) “As adults, we take the normal base-10 number system for granted,” Scott said. “Planet Pent is a way to help teachers reconnect with the challenges of making sense of a new number system. It puts teachers back in the experience that young children have when they’re five, six or seven years old, trying to understand how numbers work. The same errors that kids make in our base-10 system, teachers make on Planet Pent. It’s a way for teachers to understand the math more deeply.”
Scott remains confident in the abilities of math teachers and their young charges. “Research shows that everyone can be good at math. Everyone is capable with the right support and effort,” she said. “That doesn’t mean everybody wants to become a mathematician or has that level of interest in math, but everybody can do math at the high school level and be successful in that with the right support.”
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