Joel Math Inquiry Blog (EDUC 450)

Why is "low effort" or "not being a math person" attractive to students? Even students who have experienced success in math sometimes have an aversion to admitting that they are good at math. Why is it a "badge of honour" to be bad at math?

My guiding question is: " Why is low effort or 'not being a math person' attractive to students?  Do students avoid succeeding in math? Why?" (Not entirely sure how I intend to word it yet). Some concepts that I will try to explore within my search topic: Concept A Concept B Concept C Math Identity Dissonance (I shouldn’t be a math person because I am ____) Misaligned identity with ability Social and cultural representation of math success (and failure) [women in math] [relationship between race and perceived math ability] Effortlessness (The “I barely even studied” mentality) [“if you can’t do math without trying, then it’s not for you”] “Some people just get it” My interest in this topic is directly tied to lived experience. Almost any time someone finds out that I study math or that I want to be a math teacher I'm met with the same reaction: "You must be smart/that makes you smart/etc" or "I sucked at math/I ...

In Leonard Mlodinow's book The Drunkard's Walk   Mlodinow explores the way randomness is present in and affects   our everyday life. This is especially true for people who struggle with math and numeracy, but even for those of us who have studied math, randomness can be an extremely difficult notion, especially as a species built to recognize and work with patterns. I'm sharing this book not only because it is a book that I enjoyed reading, but also because in it Mlodinow dedicates a section to discussing marking and assessment with percentage grades. My personal experience, and having read this book, lead me to say no, percentage grades are not accurate. Useful? Sure, but not accurate. Or at least not to the point of individual percentages. I am of the opinion that it is impossible to be consistent in assigning number grades to students' work. I might be biased in this because I spend a lot of time thinking about how we assess the arts, because drama is my other te...

It seems to me that the clearest reason for tests and percentage or letter grades in assessment is for students and evaluators to have a benchmark for student ability.  The students want to know how they're doing in relation to their peers and they want to know if they have what it takes to get into universities or other post-secondary programs.  In a lot of ways, grades make school about efficiency. At least, that was my experience. A student with a lot of courses and assignments will streamline their workload to only include what is graded, and beyond that the focus is on what carries more weight. They have a fixed amount of time and energy and they must decide how they will distribute it over the week. In many ways, it is about finding the path of least resistance.  In my experience as a student in high school, this was absolutely the case. I was exceptional at taking tests. I could consistently predict the sort of questions that were going to be asked based on th...

The clearest way that I can envision using embodied knowing in a classroom is to build confidence. Based on the reading, a message I picked up, was that many people have an innate sense of math and spatial reasoning that they are unaware of. And from there it is only a matter of translating that innate sense of knowing into a structured sense of knowing. It is like tapping into a source of knowledge that already exists within a student or individual, but they haven't learned to harness it yet. This could go both ways, whether someone has a strong grasp of math but think they lack creativity or someone who believes math understanding is out of reach. There was a great moment in the reading, part of Daina's story, that said: "But then I realized it was only the techniques I did not know." This quote is so striking to me because it hits very close to home. As a student in math and theatre, I am constantly told "wow, it's so great that you also have the abilit...

Today's lesson, as well as the discussion of "head, heart, hands",  reminded me of something I encountered in a reading for another class. The reading was discussing Indigenous Teachers and Learners in Australia. The quote was: "… western teaching and learning is very compartmentalized. It’s very boxed and it has to fit. […] We don’t fit into a box. We’re surrounding the box. We’re part of the box. We’re inside the box. We’re all over the box. We’re like the air, we’re all around. …White teachers don’t see that."   Santoro, N., Reid, J., Crawford, L., & Simpson, L. (2011). Teaching Indigenous Children: Listening To And Learning From Indigenous Teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(10). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2011v36n10.2 What strikes me about this quote is that it challenges the model of education that has subjects taught and assessed separately. This is the norm in Western Secondary institutions, but it's not the norm ever...

I found the video on the geometry of rope making to be very interesting. My background knowledge on the subject of ropes and braiding was only the most basic three-strand braid. So seeing the bit about twisting and using the natural tendency of the rope to twist a certain way to inform its structure was new and very exciting. The seven strand braid was a lot more familiar, even though I've never even thought about attempting to braid like that. The instructions had a similar style to some of my previous learning in knot tying and braiding, so it was easy to pick up what was being taught. I didn't get the opportunity to try it though. But I would be interested. Rope tying is very interesting to me, and in my mind braiding is very similar to knots. It's also very practical. In theatre rope tying and rope strength are extremely important ideas for rigging. Rigging is the process of hanging lights and set materials above the stage in a theatre. The word is borrowed from sai...