Join me as I share my favorite professional books!
This month, I will recommend a professional book each week and highlight some of the most important messages from the authors. The first book I want to highly recommend is called Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students’ Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching by Jo Boaler.
By now, we have all heard of Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking research around fixed and growth mindsets. This book by Jo Boaler takes that knowledge, and helps us better understand it in the context of mathematics education. Check out my summary of the first 3 chapters below. Check out my instagram to learn more.
Chapter 1: Brain Plasticity: In this chapter, Jo Boaler highlights two studies that prove that brains are capable of growing. Boaler points out the importance of a growth mindset, and the difference in learning that happens when a student or teacher has a fixed mindset vs a growth mindset. The messaging you give to your students has a huge impact. Instead of praising students for how good they are at something, it is more important to praise them for the work they have done.
Chapter 2: The power of mistakes and struggle Making mistakes is one of the most significant parts of the learning process. Brains grow the most when they are challenged. The best way to change how your students view making mistakes is to change the messaging you are giving to them.
Top tips for teachers:
1. Give your students challenging work.
2. Follow it with positive messages about mistakes
3. Encourage parents to value mistakes
4. Value correct work less and mistakes more.
5. Grade math work as little as possible.
Chapter 3: Creativity and Beauty in Mathematics Many math teachers and students think math is mostly about answering questions correctly and taking tests. Testing culture is more prevalent in math than any other subject. But what is math, really? It is all about pattern seeking. It is an aesthetic, creative, and beautiful subject.
Conrad Wolfram’s has 4 stages of math problem solving:
1. Posing a question
2. Going from the real to a mathematical model
3. Performing a calculation
4. Going from the model back to the real world to see if the original question was answered.
Most class time is spent on stage 3, when that is actually one of the least valuable skills in today’s job market. One of the biggest misconceptions about math is that you have to think fast. In reality, some of the best mathematicians think slowly and deeply when solving problems. This book is so well written and supported by modern research. I highly recommend you add it to your professional library!
Grab the Mathematical Mindsets Book Here!
Want to learn more about your students’ mathematical mindsets?
Get to know your students’ mathematical identities with this math mindset survey/inventory.
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