When pondering the question, why don’t kids like math? I kept coming back to my personal experience as a math teacher and tutor, thinking, but they do like math! In fact, many of them love math!
So, I think the right question to ask is…Why do we think kids don’t like math?
A 2018 survey from Texas Instruments revealed that 46% of students actually love or really like math. In fact the issue may not be that kids don’t like math, instead we as a society have accepted a pervasive myth that kids don’t like math because it is a skill that you are innately born with or not.
The greatest challenge with getting kids to say they like math may be two-fold. First, it is culturally accepted to “not be a math person”. The same survey from Texas Instruments revealed that 75% of kids have heard an adult speak negatively about math. Secondly, math can be hard and almost always gets harder. Additionally, in contrast to reading and stories where there are many right answers, math has a right and wrong answer.
However there are 5 Core Messages that we as parents and educators can share with our students that can change our student’s fear of math as well as our society’s fixed mindset.
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Doing Hard Things (Like Math) Is What Crucial for Our Brain To Grow
Neuroplasticity is the idea that the brain can actually change and form new pathways throughout life. It is remarkable that with repetition and determination we can all build new neural pathways in order to become excellent math students. Just like our biceps get bigger as we do curls…our brain gets stronger as we work on hard problems.
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Being good at math is not innate. It takes hard work and a Growth Mindset.
Carol Dweck’s theory of Growth Mindset focuses on the idea that ability can be developed through hard work and practice, rather than just being something innate within us. She has shown that praising effort, rather than innate ability dramatically affects kids’ self-perception and outcomes. Additionally, focusing on the process of problem solving, not the whether a student gets the answer right or wrong, reduces math anxiety and students willingness to engage in challenging tasks. Growth Mindset is core to our curriculum and teacher training at wondermath.com and is incredibly effective at improving students grades, confidence and math enthusiasm.
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Help your child focus on the process of trying hard things and making new mistakes.
In a 2018 Stanford University study, researchers identified the impact of teachers believing whether their students could change their math performance. The results? It does.
When teachers believe their students can evolve as math learners, they create environments where students are comfortable trying new things and making mistakes, while they become “math people”. When teachers work with their students (and their parents) on eradicating myths, like the innate math ability myth, students report having more positive attitude towards math as well as higher test results.
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Elementary School is THE core time to make sure your kids have a strong math foundation.
According to the National Science Foundation, kids who are proficient in math by 5th grade are 2.5x more likely to major in STEM fields in college. Building a strong foundation in math skills and confidence while in elementary school is key. As math gets harder, kids can either build more self-confidence and assuredness around themselves as math learners or the opposite. Making sure your student’s math confidence and skills are being built and reinforced in elementary school is especially important.
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What parents say about math matters!
If you tell your child you are just “not a math person” or you learned math using standard algorithms and this new common core curriculum doesn’t make sense, you are making a dramatic impact on your child’ perception towards math. Instead, consider reinforcing the idea that math is part of everyday life and modeling a Growth Mindset!
Being a parent means that you are also an educator. Your children see whether you run to or avoid math in everyday life (like calculating the tip or doing measurements while baking). By setting an expectation that kids should love math, even if it is hard, you are changing your student’s reality and future.
Bio: Ashley Glockner
Ashley has been a teacher for over 8 years. She leads the teacher recruitment and training for Wonder Math. With a specialization in math and elementary school, Ashley has seen first hand the effectiveness of Growth Mindset on transforming students math confidence and skills.
