That maths is a generally maligned subject is without much doubt. When I meet a new person and they ask my job and can see the sweat begin to bead on their foreheads. As a maths teacher it can be
Students and Advice
Previously I wrote about teachers and advice in terms of their effectiveness. Recently I stumbled on some research that looks at the effects of students and advice giving. The study involved 318 students who were randomly assigned either to receive
Flipped Classrooms in Secondary School: Mind the Gap
This is an exciting time of great experimentation by many people to seek out a variety of good active learning teaching techniques for mathematics. What I can contribute is an evolutionary process of my own questioning, experience, reaction, and adaptation
The Importance of Teachers Talking to Each Other
Our account suggests that district policymakers can influence teachers’ access to their expert peers, but relying solely on making student test data widely available to teachers is likely to be insufficient, due in part to the skepticism among school staff
The Map is not the Territory
“There’s nothing more real to you than your subjective experience of reality and there’s nothing more opaque to science”.1 – Michael Pollan If this is true, and I think it would be silly to argue otherwise, then any person should
What I think about when I think about thinking
What does it mean to think and develop thoughts in a particular subject or field of interest? What does it mean to say that a student knows something as opposed to them having simply repeated the answer verbatim? What does
The Conflict in Teachers Between What Feels Right & What Probably Is Right
After my last post I had a discussion with a friend and he said the following: I once raised the point with a teacher [that Learning Styles Theories lacked any corroborating evidence] and the response was that theory didn’t need
Learning Styles Theories
tl;dr: It seems Learning Styles are demonstrably not really a thing. Basics: In a 2015 paper titled, “The Scientific Status of Learning Styles Theories”1, the authors posit that evidence is lacking in the defense of the Learning Styles Model. On
Kamaji & Maths: The Power of Habit in Problem-Solving
In Charles Duhigg’s book, ‘The Power of Habit’, he lays out a compelling argument both for the powerful and simplicity of habits. They seem to happen without requiring any cognitive output, prompted by some unbeknownst thing working in the back