Mary Mokris, a senior advisor there, defended the importance of learning times tables so thoroughly that it becomes automatic. I telephoned Kumon, which produces the kind of repetitive worksheets that Boaler abhors, to see if there’s another side of the story. Students who learned primarily through rote might freeze during an inevitable moment of forgetfulness, and be unable to think through the problem and come to an answer efficiently. (For example, you might remember that 7 x 7 is 49 and then add 7 to that to arrive at 56). The human brain is forgetful by nature, she argues, and what she wants is students to develop the number sense to calculate 7 x 8 quickly even when their brains can’t recall the math fact instantly. “I never memorized my times tables as a child because I grew up in a progressive era in the U.K.,” Boaler said. But Boaler says that “mathematical ideas” are different, and stands by her position that times tables are unnecessary. Just the way that the fast repetition of scales is useful for a Juilliard musician, for example, or vocabulary drilling is useful for a foreign language student. I asked Boaler if rote memorization might be a beneficial supplement to a rich mathematics curriculum that emphasizes creative problem solving. Jo Boaler says these types of math cards, depicted in “Fluency without Fear,” help students practice math without blind memorization. population that goes across all achievement levels.” “But when we combine those who are stressed with those who are turned away from math because of them, we have a large section of the U.S. “Some students are fine with them,” she said. Over time, the anxiety builds and their confidence erodes.īoaler admits not everyone is harmed by timed math quizzes, but doesn’t see anyone benefitting from them either. A 2013 University of Chicago study found that that the working memory portion of the brain becomes blocked in stressed students and they cannot access the math facts that they know. More than a third of students, according to one study cited by Boaler, experience extreme stress around timed tests. The most compelling research evidence that Boaler presents is about how time pressure provokes math anxiety in many students. Often, they’re high achieving students who have the kind of creative minds that would otherwise excel at it. And she is currently working on a study with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in which she is finding that the lowest performing students in the world are the ones who think math is about memorization.Īlso, Boaler argues that memorization of boring math facts, such as times tables, turns students off from math. Too much emphasis on rote memorization, she says, inhibits students’ abilities to think about numbers creatively, to build them up and break them down. She cites her own 2009 study, which found that low achieving students tended to memorize methods and were unable to interact with numbers flexibly. She explains that the key to success in math is having something called “number sense,” and number sense is developed through “rich” mathematical problems. In a new working paper, “ Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts,” updated and published online on January 28, 2015, Boaler argues that many common math teaching tools - flash cards, math sprints and repetitive worksheets - are not only unhelpful, but also “damaging.” And she singles out the new Common Core math curriculum in New York state, saying it misinterprets numerical “fluency” to mean rote memorization and speed.īoaler’s argument has several parts.
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