Riva, E. (2018). Brain drawing with math equations. [image] Available at:
The Second week
started to focus on the challenges that we face as math teachers in schools. It
seems like more and more math is portrayed as a subject that no one likes and
that is difficult. While it is true that the subject is difficult it is
important to maintain the idea that anyone can be good at math as long as they
are led in the right direction. For this reason, it seems like teachers tend to
play a very important role in making students become good at math.
You have to praise the students the right way and criticize them the right way or you may get a student that doesn't enjoy mathematics because of you. If someone does well, you can't say that the student is smart at math because that puts pressure on them to maintain a high mark and might dissuade them from taking on difficult challenges. Due to the fact that the students don’t want to fail, the student now might shy away from taking risks making them develop less and turning off their growth mindset.
By the same token blaming a student’s mistakes on them simply not being good at math will feed into their fixed mindset making them detest the subject and throw it away altogether. What was learned this week has to do with Teachers being precise in what they say to students as well as knowing that they have a great deal of impact as it relates to the student’s ability to succeed in mathematics.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that praising a student for being "smart" might sway students away from taking risk I completely agree. It is extremely important for students to take risks when learning something, especially math. When they do not take risks they do not challenge themselves and they cannot grow. This is why students need to be praised for their academic risk taking and hard work.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteIn your post this week, you mentioned that praise can have negative consequences on learning. In particular, it's praise that aims to label a student which can be the most detrimental, due to pressure to upkeep this image. I agree with you that it can be detrimental the other way around as well, when we label students as not being smart when they make mistakes. As we mentioned in class this week, we need to focus on commenting on the deed and not on the student him/herself.