Old school or new? Math teachers debate best methods as Canadian scores fall

"Canadian kids are falling behind their peers in other countries, and there’s no clear solution." according to The Globe and Mail.

Math teacher Paul Alves holds a visual learning aid as he sits below a traditional math equation on a classroom's chalk board at Fletcher's Meadow Secondary School in Brampton, Ont.

"Don’t get math teachers started on best teaching practices."

The discussions are emotional, heated and they don’t agree on much – except that Canadian kids are falling behind their peers in other countries, and there’s no clear solution.

There are generally two camps: those in favour of the old-school method to lecture kids with a “drill-and-kill” format that preaches practice, and another, ever-growing group that believes a more creative approach is needed to engage students.

At a recent event in Toronto, dozens of teachers waited in line to take selfies with math-teaching celebrity Dan Meyer, delaying his keynote talk at the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education conference. He is part of the new-school camp.

His approach is simple, Meyer says on the phone from California, where he’s a math education researcher at Stanford University.

He presents a problem at the start of class, and lets the students try to figure it out. Hopefully, he says, the students will struggle.

“That initial moment of struggle prepares them for what they’ll learn later,” he says.

Meyer cites several studies that back up his ideas, including one from Manu Kapur, a professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Kapur’s study shows students who are given a problem to solve on their own – before instruction from a teacher – outperform students who are given the traditional lecturing style.

The technique is in the early stages of implementation across Ontario, according to Sheena Agius, a math coach who helps teachers with the new method in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Just like all other boards in Ontario, it is moving away from rote learning to try to get students to understand math at a deeper, more conceptual level.

“Just because we’re doing it, doesn’t mean we’re doing it well yet,” she says. “But it’s a learning process for teachers and that will come.”

Meyer has many acolytes, such as Paul Alves, president of the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education and a high school math teacher at Fletcher’s Meadow Secondary School in Brampton, Ont., northwest of Toronto.

“Teachers are really engaged by the way (Meyer) teaches math because when they try it they see the same thing – the excitement students have to do the math – and it changes the classroom. It invigorates it and energizes it, which wasn’t the case before,” Alves says.

That engagement is priceless, Alves says.

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Source: The Globe and Mail