Busting some common mathematics myths

Unfortunately, a lot of ‘school mathematics’ is often taught without meaning. It is difficult for students to make sense of it. It may be that your own experience of mathematics has been limited to ‘school mathematics’. You may rely on procedures and rules that you cannot readily apply to everyday contexts.

In today’s classrooms, we emphasise learning mathematics with understanding rather than remembering rules and procedures which may not ‘make sense’. Mathematics makes sense when taught with an emphasis on developing deep understanding.

There are rules and procedures that make it useful to complete mathematical problems correctly. Yet, these are of little use if carried out with little understanding of why they work. When you went to school, were you taught the standard algorithm for working out long multiplication problems (e.g., 76 x 45)? Can you explain why it works? Do you find yourself making statements such as ‘Put down the zero’, ‘Carry the one’?

Today, the teaching emphasis is on helping children understand the underlying mathematics. Children are to develop their own strategies for working out mathematics problems. Mathematics is so much more than a series of rules and procedures to follow. At its core, mathematics is about patterns. Mathematics is a set of ideas, connections, and relationships that we use to make sense of the world.

A strong message that we want to convey is that there are lots of ways to do maths problems. Some ways are more efficient than others, but we shouldn’t say that there is one right way to do any given problem.

Mathematics is full of uncertainty. It is more about exploring and making conjectures, rather than coming up with the right answers (Boaler, 2016).

There are right and wrong answers in mathematics. But, we should focus on how the answers are achieved, and value our children’s invented strategies for working out problems.

There is no evidence to suggest that males are better at maths than females. There is also no truth in the statement that we inherit our mathematical capability.

There is no such thing as a ‘maths brain’. Everyone (with a few exceptions who have severe learning difficulties) has the capacity to learn mathematics. Many believe that intelligence is unchangeable. But if you have a ‘growth mindset’ (Dweck, 2012) then you believe that you can achieve. You don’t give up when the work is challenging, or when you make mistakes. Mistakes are essential for learning and result in brain growth (Boaler, 2016).

View the TEDx Talk by Professor Jo Boaler (below) for more about mathematical mindsets and potential.