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TEDx Talks
Title: How you can be good at math, and other surprising facts about learning | Jo Boaler | TEDxStanford
Published: 2016-05-23
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icoSeGqQtY
higher so I'm here to tell you that what you have believed about your own potential has changed what you have learned and continues to do that continues to change your learning and your experiences so how many people Hey let's get a show of hands have ever being given the idea that they announced a math person well that they Kong go on to the next level of
mastery of the brains for it let's see a show of hands so quite a few of us and so I need to tell you that idea is completely wrong it is disproven by the brain science but his is fueled by a single methods out there in in our society that's very strong and very dangerous and the masses that this such a thing as a math brain
but you're born with Juan well you know we don't believe it's about other subjects we don't think we're born with a history brain owe a physics praying we think you have to learn those but with math people students believe it teaches believe it parents believe it and until we change that single myths we will continue to have widespread under achievement in this country total directs research
a mindset has shown us but if you believe in your unlimited potential you will achieve a higher levels in maths and in life and an incredible study on mistakes show this very strongly so Jason Moser and his colleagues actually found from MRI stands but your brain grows when you make a mistake in mass fantastic when you make a mistake sinopsis fire in the brain and if
I didn't MRI scans they from that when people made mistakes sinopsis fired when they go what a correct less sinopsis fire it so making mistakes is really good and we want students to know this but they found something else that is pretty incredible this image shows you the brit brit voltage maps of people's brains somewhere you can see here is that people with a growth mindset
to believe that I had unlimited potentially could learn anything when they made a mistake their brains grew more than the people who didn't believe that they could learn anything so this shows a something that brain scientists of nine for a long time that cognition and what we learn is linked to our beliefs enter our feelings and this is important for all of us not just kids
in math classroom if you go into a difficult situation a challenging situation and you think to yourself I can do this I'm gonna do it I knew messo will fail you brain will grow and more and react differently than if you go into a situation thinking I don't think I can do this so it's really important that we change the messages kids getting classrooms we know
that anybody can grow their brain and brains are so plastic to learn any level of mass we have to give this up to kids we have they have to know the mistakes really good but maths lessons have to change in a lot of ways it's not just about changing messages the kids we have to fundamentally change what happens in classrooms and we will just have a
brace mindset to believe that they can grow online anything but it's very difficult to have a growth mindset in maths if you're constantly given short closed questions that you get rights or wrongs those questions themselves transmit fix messages about math you can do to you comment so we have to open up math score chin so the space inside them from learning and I want to give
you an example how Russia gonna ask you to think about some maths with me so this is a fairly typical problem is given ass in schools and I want you to think about it a bit differently so we have three cases of squares and in case to the small squares than case woman in case through this even more and also in this is given out with
a question how many squares with the B. in case a hundred dual case fan but I want you to think of a different question now I want you to think without any numbers it sold over us any algebra II when you think entirely visually and I want you to think about where do you see the extra scorers if there were more squares in case to the
case one where all day so even the consummate your long time to think office but %HESITATION in the interest of time I'm gonna show you some different ways people think about this and I've given this permits many different people and it appears my undergrads at Stanford who said to me or one of them sets may owe its I sit like raindrops where raindrops come down on
the top so it's like an outsider laya that grows near each time it was also my undergrad who said you know I see it more like a bowling alley you just spend extra Rebecca wrote skits tools that comes in at the bottom very different way of seeing the growth it was a teacher or member who said to me was like a volcano the sensor goes up
in the lava comes out there's another teacher said owners like the posse the Red Sea shape separates them is a duplication with an extra Santa and I remember this I was %HESITATION own sermon on this one as well some people see it as triangles they see the outside growing as an outside trying go and then there's a teacher in New Mexico you said some may always
like Wayne's world stairway to heaven access denied and then we have this way of seeing it if you move the scratchy noise can and you rearrange the shape of it you'll see that about she grows of squares so this is what I want to illustrate this question what is given out in maths classrooms and this isn't the west of Christians I'd given up with a question
of how many and kids camp so they'll say in the first place this pool in the second this nine they might stir about column of numbers for a long time and say if you add one to the case number each time and squares then you get the total number of cigarettes but when I give it we have to teach our students and teachers high school teachers
and I'll say to them and they've done this so wise that squint you think why do you see that squared function they'll say no idea so this is widespread the function gross of the square you see that squaring in the algebra representation so when we get these problems to students we give them the visual question may also and how they see it they have these rich
discussions and they also reach deeper understandings about a really important part of mathematics so we actually need a revolution in maths lessons we need to change a lot of things and part of the reason we need to change so much is because research on maths teaching and learning is not getting into schools and classrooms and I'm gonna give you a stunning example now so this %HESITATION
is really interesting when we calculate even adults calculates where a break in the area but sees fingers is lighting up we're not using fingers but that brain area the sea's fingers lights up so there's a brain area when we use thing of some of the primary when we see fingers and it turns out but seeing things is really important for the brain and in fact finger
perception is %HESITATION scientists test a finger perception by asking him to put her hands on the table never Kansi them touching a finger and then seeing if you know which finger has been touched the amount that university students have good thing a deception per ticket predicts a calculation schools and the amounts of finger perception grade one students have is a best a prediction of maps achievement
in grade two than Tesco's it is brass important but what happens in schools and classrooms students are told they have to learn to use their fingers that's how its babyish they're made to feel bad about it when we stop children learning number three fingers it's akin to hold too many American development and scientists have known this for a long time and the nearest scientists concluded that
fingers should be used for students learning number and arithmetic if we hadn't publicist republish listen to pay from the Atlantic last week I don't know any educator who knew this is causing a huge riffle through the education community so I want to %HESITATION there's lots of other research has not nine by teachers and schools we also know that when you perform a calculation the brain is
involved in a complex and dynamic communication between different areas of the brain and including the visual cortex yet mass classrooms are not visual where numerical an abstract so I want to show you now what happened to me bush eighty one students on the campus last summer and we told him differently so we told them about the brain growing we taught them about mind sets and mistakes
and we but we also told them creative visual beautiful maths and but they came in for eighteen lessons with us before they came to us the taken a district standardized test we gave him the same test at the end of our eighteen lessons I may improved by an average of fifty percent they all can AC one students who arrangements human levels told us on the first
day I'm SMF person they couldn't name the one person in that class who was a math person we change their beliefs on this is a clip from a longer music video that we made %HESITATION of the kids we Nnamdi Unna we need to get research outages we need a revolution in maths teaching if you don't believe me come listen to this kid his a middle schooler
and we had worked with his teachers to shift from worksheet math to open mouth with mine sent messages on this is in reflecting on that ship last year was notes and out you learn only little box you just boxed in you are like by yourself does every man for themselves but now this year is just open where a whole big like it's like in a city
where all working together to create this new beautiful world I think the challenges and like the future that lies ahead of for me and like like all if I if I keep on pushing if I keep on doing this someday I'm gonna make we have focused for so long in education in maths education on the right way to teach a fraction on the standards for use
