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| Photo: Holly Korbey |
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In the basement of the North Branch Library in Nashville, Tenn., on
a recent Saturday, you could hear alternating murmurs of excitement and
exasperation over the soft clicking of needles. A small group of kids
were learning how to knit.
A 10-year-old carefully knitted a case for his iPod with
multicolored fuchsia, green and blue yarn, while a more experienced
teenager carefully counted rows to create a raised pattern of the
letters “H” and “K.” Young knitters racked up rows that one day, with
practice, might become something — a blanket, a scarf or even, someday, a
sweater. A nearby grownup commented on how nice it was to see young
people so focused on making something, remembering how her brother once
carved beautiful crosses out of a fallen tree in her yard. “He was
always good with his hands,” she said.
For many of today’s kids, “being good with your hands” often
means texting at lightning speed. While the Maker Movement has increased
awareness and participation in building, tinkering and making things,
most American students don’t learn any kind of formal handwork in
school. Home-economics-style sewing and handcrafts classes, as well as
shop classes, have been pushed out of most schools to make room for more
“academic” subjects like reading, math and science.
But knitting and academics, especially math, are more closely
related than they first appear, and there’s a growing movement in
certain math and science circles to bring the two together — not only to
teach math concepts also but to address the startlingly wide gender gap
in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. As the
number of women who choose STEM careers continues to drop, participation
in knitting, especially among young women, continues to grow.
While the research is only in the beginning phases and no
hard data is available yet, researchers are confident that knitting can
be used to teach math concepts, and they are using the studies to figure
out which concepts work best. They hope their findings will be used in
the near future to convince schools that knitting a scarf or crocheting a
sweater provides a unique opportunity for students to learn hands-on,
problem-solving skills in a way that is fun and interesting. And they
are hoping that bringing knitting into math class will alert girls to
the career possibilities of STEM.
Researcher Melissa Gresalfi, an associate professor of math
education at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University,
says that textile arts like knitting can teach rich mathematical ideas
that can be difficult for students to understand. Her KnitLab project,
which includes afternoon workshops as well as week-long summer camps for
kids, is part of a larger exploratory study into the overlap between
complex mathematics, problem solving and textile arts like knitting and
crochet.
Gresalfi expects that the four-year effort, supported by a
National Science Foundation grant, will illuminate the usefulness of
handcrafts to help students visualize and explore mathematical concepts.
“We’re trying to say that the creation of textile designs becomes a
resource that supports mathematical reasoning,” she says.
Gresalfi’s work is focused on middle school students ages 10
to 14. But she’s most interested in the girls — who have the highest
math anxiety and lowest workforce participation in the science,
technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
Source: UMass Lowell
