Exit Slip: Jo Boaler

 I resonated with a lot of the concepts in this video, partially because I already had some ideas about these things, and the video just helped to solidify and formalize them. I'll talk about three big ones here:

(1) The idea that only some students can be good at math vs. the research that says all students can excel at math

This one is both interesting and encouraging. 

I've often wondered about whether musical ability (or inability) is something that is genetic/inherent or whether it's something that's learned. There are people who have perfect absolute pitch (that is, they can identify a pitch accurately without a reference pitch) and that there have been no cases where an adult has learned to have perfect absolute pitch (that is, you seem to be born with it). On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who have musical amusia, which is commonly referred to as tone-deafness. This can be congenital or due to brain injury. Everyone else seems to lie somewhere in between with varying "natural" levels of musical ability which can be developed and honed depending on their opportunity, effort, and interest. 

I figured that math must be the same. If your parents are good at math, you might be good at math. You might be genetically pre-disposed to be good at math and, therefore, those on the other end of the spectrum would be not-so-good at math. However, this video says that the research points to this being false: all kids can excel at math. I don't know why or how, but I'm glad to hear it. 

(2) Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

This is something I've already explored in a previous blog, and something I've already written about ad nauseam so I won't repeat it here. What I didn't realize is that Carol Dweck actually wrote a paper specifically about math education. I haven't reviewed this yet, but it's on my list. 

(3) Humans vs. Computers in Math   

In the TED Talk Jo Boaler showed as part of her lecture, the speaker talked about the four stages of solving a real life math problem:

1. Pose the right question
2. Real world -> mathematical formulation
3. Computation
4. Mathematical formatulation -> real world

Humans can do 1, 2, and 4. Computation, 3, is done by a... you guessed it... computer. So why do we focus so much of our math classes on being computationally fluent? Yes, there are some benefits to being fluent, but it's definitely not worth focusing 80%+ of our attention on. 

I'm imagining a future classroom of mine where we spend more of the time on these multi-dimensional things like problem-solving, interpreting, formulation, communication, trail + failure, reasoning, and all those other things that humans do best and computer don't. In this model there would still be room for computational fluency, or the 1-D goals, but it's put it its rightful place as just one piece of the puzzle. 

Allow me to use a rock climbing analogy. In rock climbing, fitness and finger strength surely helps you become a better rock climber. Indeed, some of the best rock climbers in the world have really strong fingers. However, the best rock climbers in the world don't spend all their time hangboarding. They spend most of their time working on their climbing technique, honing their rope skills, training their mental capacity for stress, problem-solving the most efficient routes, and even a whole lot of time just climbing for fun! Hangboarding has its place, but it's just a tiny piece of their overall training. Their success as an athlete depends more on all the other stuff they do.

Computational fluency is the hangboarding of math - useful for some things, but needn't be the focus of the sport... or subject. In my future class, I might actually try framing it this way to the students. Let's call these worksheets "workouts" or "conditioning" so they too can see that it's just for mental fitness and is not the main event.