My learning mathematics memories go back to many decades when my grandfather surprised me every day by giving answers to mathematical questions investing only a few minutes in mental jogging. For a young child in me, it was intriguing to watch his brain sprint. Happily, though, it raised curiosity in me to learn mathematics and to be like him. It may not be a common experience for all, but the lessons are revealing- mental exercise holds the key to learning mathematics. Put it in another way- “practice makes you perfect”.
Fast forward, mathematics soon earned the epithet of a daunting subject to master, often requiring rigorous effort and endless hours to learn a concept. Why has it happened? I would think the way mathematics-teaching occurs as the primary source of influencing this impression. Ironically, we did away with mental training apologetically to counter rote-memorisation. On the other hand, we ended up embracing rote learning – albeit through the backdoor- in the name of learning formulae by heart and memorising procedural steps with in-built anxiety to arrive at correct answers.
Such a misplaced emphasis resulted in mathematics study without developing understanding and exploratory experience. Soon educators found themselves trapped in categorising students with lower abilities and higher capacities, depending upon their scores and struggles with no clue to help learners. In practice, however, educators must raise the children's aspiration and challenge them with problems giving variations, real-life experiences, in-depth explanations and eliciting a more profound love for mathematics as a discipline.
The context and language in learning mathematics are vital. I remember finding the water volume to fill a given size tank made no sense to us as we all fetched water from the typical village well and stored it in earthen pitchers. Operationalisation of mathematics teaching and reducing it to finding answers mechanically without any involvement, emotion, and thinking shuts children down. The alienation of the learner from both the subject and the subject-teacher becomes complete.
The perpetuation of learning focused on examination left us with no time to identify the way students learn. We failed to recognise the learning barriers at the foundation years and as the learning progresses. We could not offer any remedies to address cognitive and comprehension hurdles. Reduced student-teacher interaction also added to the woes of learning mathematics.
My personal experience with learning mathematics as a student and later teaching maths and science to young students informs me that if we do not correct mistakes early, they become a habit. Motivation and mastery go hand in hand. Technology is poised to take on these corrective roles in the classrooms. The potential of technology to accurately diagnose the gaps and suggest suitable interventions to enhance understanding brings some hope. We have evidence to suggest that interventions, human or technological, greatly influence the students' attainment.
It would be an ideal situation when both human interventions comprising empathy, belief, support and confidence building joins hand with technological interventions creating fun, problem-solving, group work and real-time feedback. Challenging students with problems based on thinking, strategy, goal-setting through gamification are the right technology marks in mathematics learning. We should embrace human-technology intervention to make mathematics teaching and learning an experiential journey for young learners and teachers alike.
National Achievement Survey 2017 conducted nationwide by the NCERT, India, reports that the national average in mathematics in classes 3, 5, 8 and 10 is 63%, 52%, 42% and 34%. Despite this level of attainment and a disturbing decline from the early to the later years in a child's life cycle, a general perception remains that Indian children have a superior cognitive ability in science and mathematics. President Obama alluded to it while exhorting the American children in his famous ‘beware of Indian and Chinese kids,’ jibe. However, we may not enjoy this honour for a long time. Global benchmarking: PISA scores, World Bank learning poverty index and SDG global indicator 4.3.1 are not in our favour.
The credibility of the Shanghai Mathematics Project is more acceptable worldwide than any other pedagogical innovation. The Chinese mathematics learning stimulation project based on whole-class instruction, embeds visuals and images, story-telling, differentiated learning and places high expectations. Prof Jian Liu of Beijing Normal University emphasised the role of textbooks, graded exercises and differentiation to elicit interest in the student while discussing the revamping of maths teaching in China in an International Conference held in Brisbane three years ago.
The National Education Policy (NEP2020), announced by the Government of India, rightly emphasises foundational literacy and numeracy, FLN to build a robust pipeline of mathematics lovers for a future world poised to adopt artificial intelligence new technologies increasingly. Prof. Raz Kupferman, Professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University emphasises that, “we have a moral duty to provide every child with the chance to succeed in life and realise their potential.” We have heard again and again about the educational challenges of the 21st century, he added. From the perspective of policy-making, a classroom is where our future scientists, engineers, programmers, doctors, economists and entrepreneurs currently sit. When you look at the same group of children twenty years later, the vast majority of them may miss the dream ride. We must work on strong foundational literacy and mathematical skills as they form the building blocks of higher-order skills, key to success in the future workplace. Teachers play an essential role in building confidence and curiosity- two critical ingredients for spiralling lifelong learning. By limiting children's belief in their capabilities, we induce anxiety and fear. To engage learners in their quest, educators must move from concrete to abstract and develop perseverance and appreciation of mathematics’ beauty and structure. As the co-founder of mathematics learning platform Matific, Prof Raz asserts that, “gamification of mathematical problems, their precision and elegance may stimulate a love for mathematics.” After all, there is no STEM or STEAM without the M.
First published in Matific, April, 2021
Comments