Brenner Four Pillars of Math Edu PDF

The Four Pillars
Upon Which the Failure

of Math Education Rests
(and what to do about them)
Matthew A. Brenner
Copyright 2011 by Matthew A. Brenner
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
License. See creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Rev. 6.7 (7/20/2011)
CAAMPSTM is a trademark of Matthew A. Brenner
For information contact: mbrenner@k12math.org
Electronic copies of this executive summary are freely available from:

http://www.k12math.org/doc.php?doc=4pillars-s1
Electronic copies of the full-length essay are freely available from:
http://www.k12math.org/doc.php?doc=4pillars-b1
This essay, and the pilot I hope it will spawn,
are for the countless millions of children
whose minds have been numbed, curiosity diminished,
and learning made joyless
by the unrelenting application of math education.
About the Author
Matt Brenner taught computer science to high school students at Phillips
Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH) and to high school and middle school
students at Sidwell Friends School (Washington, DC). He studied computer
science and economics at Duke University and holds an Ed.M. from the
Harvard Graduate School of Education.
At Sidwell, he was unexpectedly assigned to teach an algebra class. That
first and only experience teaching math drove him from the classroom to
unravel the mysteries of the widespread failure of math education. The
result is a new, modern, and rigorous approacha Computationally
Augmented Approach to Math and Problem Solving (CAAMPS)that
draws heavily on scientific research while focusing relentlessly on students'
understanding and explicit metacognitive skills development.
The greatest challenge is stating the problem
in a way that will allow a solution.
Bertrand Russell
Why this essay?

Math education in the U.S. cannot be made worse. The most closely
watched international test of student achievement in mathematics, PISA
(Program for International Student Assessment), shows that there isn't a
single country the U.S. competes with, in any meaningful way, where
students perform worse in math than our own. This situation is not new.
I came to math education unexpectedly and entirely by accident. What I
saw when I taught my first (and only) math class (9 th grade algebra) was a
bunch of nice kids dispirited by their previous eight years of math
education. For almost all of those children, math education had ground
down their curiosity, diminished their interest, and left them resigned to four
more years of mindless, mechanical procedures they didn't even hope to
understand. Understanding, a chief goal of every intellectual endeavor, is an
uninvited stranger in math education. Without understanding, however, all
of K-12 math education is much less valuable than a four-function
calculator from the Dollar Store.
When I began teaching that math class, I was already (if I may say) an
experienced and skillful teacher of computer science. Throughout that year,
I made a sustained effort to grasp the ways, means, and ends of my
colleagues in the math department. I also devoted much thought to the many
differences between the values, practices and goals I perceived in math
education and those I brought with me from teaching computer science.
They were worlds apart. At the end of that year I left the classroom
determined to unravel the mysteries of the failure of math education and to
develop a realistic and practical approach that can be applied widely and
with a significant likelihood of greater success.
From that effort came this essay, which I write for two reasons:
1. to set forth the fundamental problems of math education and a new

approach likely to produce better outcomes
2. to attract a public school district interested in conducting a pilot
program to evaluate and refine the approach set forth herein
I hope some innovative superintendent, disappointed with the outcomes of

math education in his or her schools, will realize there is vast opportunity
for improvement, at little cost, if tradition and momentum can be restrained
long enough to give knowledge, reason, and understanding a try.
Table of Contents
1. Math Education: It Isn't Working 1
Increasing Importance of Math Education...............................................3
Good News..........................................................................................4
Teaching Math..........................................................................................4
Trauma......................................................................................................4
Teaching Computer Science vs. Teaching Math.......................................5
Momentum................................................................................................6
Teachers Teach as They Were Taught.................................................6
Popular Textbooks...............................................................................7
Masking Failure..................................................................................8
The Bar is Never Set.........................................................................10
Delusion..................................................................................................12
A Nation at Risk................................................................................13
No Child Left Behind........................................................................13
Is the Progress Real?.........................................................................15
National Assessment of Educational Progress..................................16
No Child Left Behind Cannot Work.................................................19
Race to the Top (more of the same)..................................................21
Aren't Teachers Responsible for Educational Outcomes?................24
Conclusion on Delusion....................................................................26
Outcomes................................................................................................26
What Do Other Nations Do?..................................................................28
2. What Science Says About Learning and Teaching 33
Summary of Findings.............................................................................34
3. The 4 Pillars 37
Pillar 1: The Approach (not content) of Math Education is Too Abstract
and Decontextualized.............................................................................38
Math Education Begins Concretely but Soon Becomes Abstract.....38
Children Need Context.....................................................................39
Math Without Context.......................................................................40
From the Concrete to the Abstract....................................................40
Context at Odds with Experience and Reason..................................43
Meaningless Contexts.......................................................................45
Missing Context................................................................................47
Pillar 2: Math Education Conveys Rituals and Procedures But Not
Understanding.........................................................................................49
Math Student Rituals.........................................................................49
The Ritual of Graphing.....................................................................50
The Naming Ritual............................................................................51
Procedure After Procedure, Without Understanding........................53
Pet Tricks..........................................................................................55
Ready... Set... Ready... Set... Ready... Set... (but never Go!)............56
Reading Lessons...............................................................................56
Endless Practice in Mechanics..........................................................57
Understanding Reduces Dependence on Memory............................59
Pillar 3: Metacognitive Activity is Absent in Math Education...............60
Improving Metacognition.................................................................61
Metacognition and Intellectual Ability.............................................62
Teaching Metacognition....................................................................63
Pillar 4: Sociolinguistic Obstacles to Success in Mathematics..............65
Dominant Culture..............................................................................66
Literacy in a Speech Community......................................................67
An Achievement Gap........................................................................67
If This Seems Like Nonsense............................................................68
Preferred Narrative Form..................................................................68
What Has This to do with Mathematics?..........................................70
4. What to do... 73
10 General Curricular Requirements......................................................73
1. Understanding Must be Central in Math Education.....................73
2. Textbooks Must Not be Allowed to Undermine Math Education.73
3. Teachers Must Stop Teaching Math as They Learned It...............74
4. Curricula Must be Coherent and Cumulative...............................74
5. Worked Examples Must be Emphasized for New Material..........75
6. Curricula Must Include Examples of Excellent Performance.......75
7. Assignments Must Draw on the Old and the New........................75
8. Content Must be Meaningful and Contexts Must be Rich............75
9. Metacognitive Activity Must Pervade Mathematical Activity......76
10. Language Must be Taught, Used and Evaluated Fairly..............76
Selecting Goals.......................................................................................76
Widespread Agreement on Arithmetic..............................................77
Agreement on Content Only.............................................................78
My 5 Goals for Math Education.......................................................79
What is Algorithmic Thinking and Why is it Important?.......................80
The Emerging Importance of Algorithmic Thinking .......................81
Integrating Algorithmic Thinking into Math Education.........................82
Thinking Tools..................................................................................84
The Millennium of Glass..................................................................85
Most Important Thinking Tool of the New Millennium...................86
How Will Math Education be Improved with Computation?.................89
1. Many Problems Can be Approached Computationally First........90
2. Abstract Math Concepts Become Concrete in Computing...........93
Functions.....................................................................................93
Inverse Functions........................................................................97
Sets, Arrays, Matrices..................................................................99
Number Systems.......................................................................100
Recursion...................................................................................101
Multiple Representations...........................................................101
3. Algebraic Relationships Become Well Understood....................102
Assignment vs. Relationship.....................................................102
Relationships of Equality and Inequality..................................104
Operators, Precedence, and Overloading..................................105
4. Thinking with Symbols Becomes Routine..................................105
5. Parametric Thinking Becomes Routine......................................106
6. An Infusion of the Practical.........................................................110
7. Habits of Mind............................................................................111
The Need to Understand............................................................111
If I Can't Solve a Problem in 5 or 10 Minutes...........................112
Logic and Reasoning.................................................................113
Noticing Errors..........................................................................115
Iterative, Metacognitive Activity...............................................115
8. A Less Uneven Playing Field......................................................116
9. Work can be Divided and Shared................................................117
Pedagogy and Content or Approach with Goals...................................117
The Math Wars............................................................................117
What Students Do is Vital...............................................................119
Implementing a CAAMPS Curriculum................................................120
Starting in Middle School...............................................................120
Which Middle Schools?..................................................................121
Measuring Efficacy.........................................................................122
Curricular Materials and Teacher Support for CAAMPS...............122
Preparing Teachers for CAAMPS...................................................123
The Next Step.......................................................................................123
5. Research Findings 125
5.1 - Memory........................................................................................125
5.1.1 - Working Memory.................................................................126
5.1.2 - Importance of Meaning.......................................................127
5.1.3 - Importance of Processing....................................................127
5.1.4 - Abstracting Experience into Schemas.................................128
5.1.5 - Another View.......................................................................130
5.1.6 - Effects of Practice on Performance.....................................131
5.1.7 - How the Volume of Information Affects Memory...............132
5.1.8 - Inference..............................................................................132
5.1.9 - Memory Errors or Signs of Intelligence?............................133
5.2 - Problem Solving...........................................................................134
5.2.1 - Instruction and Examples....................................................134
5.2.2 - Mental Blocks......................................................................135
5.3 - Proficiency...................................................................................135
5.4 - Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)......................................................136
5.4.1 - Means-end Analysis.............................................................137
5.5 - Representation..............................................................................139
5.6 - Language......................................................................................142
5.7 - Problem Solving vs. Worked Examples.......................................145
6. References 149
1
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
1. Math Education: It Isn't Working
Math Education:
It Isn't Working
We, in the U.S., had one of the best K-12 school systems in the world.
Today, a great many nations have school systems better than our own. We
react not by improving our system of education, not even by ignoring this
alarming reality, but instead by working hard to delude ourselves into
believing we are actively improving it while we do nothing of the sort.
This is an important matter for several reasons. First, in an increasingly
complex and competitive world it is a shame to see our society being left
behind. The days of well-paid manufacturing jobs, ones that afford workers
a spot in the middle class without acquiring even a shadow of a good
education, are far behind us. In the world before us, those who are
uneducated are at great risk of being unproductive too. They will pay,
individually, in reduced wages, worse health, and the likelihood of finding
less fulfillment and satisfaction in their lives. All will pay the high costs of a
widespread and preventable failure to develop our human capital: higher
unemployment, greater health care costs, lost creativity and invention,
increased poverty, greater conflict, and needless suffering. Second, 10 or 12
years of educational failure are followed by 50 or 60 years of consequences.
Kids who fall through the K-12 cracks will not get another chance at
education. If children do not make a connection between themselves and
intellectual activity in their school yearsno matter the reasonssome of
their potential is lost forever.
Third, in 2008, even before our current recession, 21% of U.S. children
(under 18) were living in poverty (National Poverty Center, n.d.). For
those15.5 million children there is only one certain path to the middle class:
education. The chances of winning a lottery, entering professional sports, or
striking a big record deal are infinitesimal. Only education works every
1
2 Math Education: It Isn't Working
single time. Education doesn't guarantee success or happiness but it does

cure poverty. Our ineffective system of education least serves those who
need it most.
Fourth, widespread educational failure is a tragedy because it is
avoidable. The fault of our educational failure is not in our stars, not even in
ourselves, it is mostly the result of inertia and inattention. Not a single
American wants a fourth-rate education system, but that is what we have.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a
group of 34 industrialized countries, cooperates in many areas including the
measurement of educational outcomes. Students in only five OECD nations
(Greece, Israel, Turkey, Chile and Mexico) score (statistically significantly)
lower than our own (OECD, 2010). This is not the fault of teachers or their
unions. It is not because we lack choice or accountability, nor because the
marketplace for education needs to be more competitive. It is not due to the
disintegration of communities and the nuclear family. It is due to the inertia
of an enormous, change-resistant educational system and inattention to the
ever-increasing mismatch between this system and a world of accelerating
change.
Educational efforts began well enough in the United States. From 1852 -
1918 every state created a compulsory public school system. Every goal of
public education has been laudable from the earliest days until today:
widespread literacy and numeracy, learning our own history and geography,
understanding the world around us affectively through art and literature,
conceptually and physically through math and science, etc. Public education
is by far the most visible institution in America. Ninety percent of U.S.
children attend K-12 public schools. We have 99,000 public schools,
enrolling 50 million students, employing over 3 million teachers and
another 3 million non-teachers (administrators, support staff, etc.), using
475,000 school buses (distinctively painted in National School Bus Glossy
Yellow). Public schools are everywhere. By comparison, the postal service
(second most visible institution?) has 33,000 post offices, 600,000
employees, and 220,000 vehicles.
Schools are the bedrock of communities. We trust them with our
children. Beyond their fundamental role of education, they are gathering
pointslike no otherfor sporting events, plays, community meetings,
guest speakers, bake sales, emergency shelters and clinics, and voting. It is
in and about schools where children and parents make friends, find common
ground, and cooperate for their own and the greater good. In a come-and-go
world of unpredictable and accelerating change, schools remain ever-
present and unchanging across generations. The very scale and permanence
of schools has endowed them with enormous inertia. We don't want our
schools to change because they have no substituteso they don't.
The single most important educational activity in schools is developing
literacy, so, appropriately, literacy gets the most time and attention. Literacy
aside, far more time is devoted to math than any other subject. Yet, our math
The 4 Pillars Upon Which the Failure of Math Ed. Rests 3
students rank in the bottom quarter among our peer nations. There is no
educational endeavor in the U.S. that is less successful (actually harmful, I
will argue) than math education, the topic of this essay. Math education
wasn't much different, or any better, 60 years ago. The difference is that the
world has become more crowded and more competitive, and by not moving
forward in math education we are slipping behind.
Increasing Importance of Math Education
No doubt, math education should develop numeracy and basic

arithmetic skills in all students and support science education. Shouldn't it
also help, if possible, to develop more general habits of mind and thinking
skills? We live in a pivotal time. We are being swept by great forces in the
direction of an ethical, economic, cultural, and even biological, abyss:
journalism is in a state of collapse

shame is dead, so leaders of all stripes speak in self-service and
without regard for truth
we Americans have a deep-seated, pervasive, and unreasoned faith in
technology
marketing has been perfected to shape our culture and direct our
resources
it is easy to emigrate from the real world into countless virtual ones
concentrations of wealth are at an all-time high in our land
statistical arguments are increasingly important in public policy
debates
our planet and its ecosystems are in crisis
human experiences are increasingly indirect and mediated by
technologies or marketeers
All of the underlying forces, sweeping us this way or that, act most
powerfully and with least opposition when we are ignorant of them.
Individuals are better able to recognize and actively navigate them when
each can:
think clearly, critically and abstractly

understand statistical inference
evaluate the quality of evidence
construct well-reasoned arguments and recognize poorly-reasoned
ones
Developing these habits of mind and thinking skills can and should be
developed as part of math education. They will yield benefits in
mathematical and other contexts too.

In this four-part essay on math education I will:
1. describe the current, poor state of math education and the macro
forces that make it very resistant to change
2. present findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience about
what promotes and impedes learning
3. identify the Four Pillars Upon Which the Failure of Math
Education Rests
4. prescribe how to align math education with our present needs and
students, bring math education into the twenty-first century, and
make it more effective
Good News
Lest you fear that this essay will present gloom without hope, I tell you
now, I have good news: it is simple to fix math education in our schools.
Not easy, but simple. I don't want to close any schools. I don't want to
restaff them. I don't want to run them like businesses. I don't want to
eliminate any of their many functions. I don't care to do those things
because the steady efforts to apply those solutions over the last 10 years
have entirely failed to improve outcomes. The fundamental problems lie
elsewhere.
Teaching Math
I taught computer science (CS) at Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH)

for six years. While there, I persuaded the faculty to require the study of CS,
designed an appropriate curriculum, quadrupled enrollment, and brought
perfect gender (and other) balance to a discipline notorious for the
underrepresentation of female students and students of color. Then I joined
Sidwell Friends School (Washington, DC) to grow their high school CS
program and develop one for their middle school. At Sidwell, I was
unexpectedly assigned to teach a 9 th grade algebra class: 18 kids, five times
per week, for a year. I never intended to teach math and had never thought
about how to teach it. The experience was shocking, deeply troubling, and
prompted me to write this essay.
Trauma
From the moment I met my math students I was struck by something

terrible. For two weeks I struggled for words to help me understand what I
was feeling. The kids were charming, full of energy, and dazzled by being
in high school as only 9th graders can be. But it was also clear that most of
them were intellectually scarred. They had been traumatized by their
experiences of math education.
During the first weeks of class many of my students asked me, always
indirectly, how hard was I going to be? They weren't at all asking how
hard the math would be; they had long concluded there was no hope for the
math. The only question was whether there was any hope for me: would I
be a hard grader or an easy one?
My word search ended when it struck me that this trauma already has a
name: math anxiety. I had heard the term countless times, but never saw it
up-close or, more likely, hadn't noticed it. The term always seemed
hyperbolic and kind of silly to me, blowing a small thing entirely out of
proportion. Now, I find the term under-powering, wholly inadequate to
describe the long-term, chronic frustration and shame inflicted on countless
millions of students for years on end in the name of math education. How
many disciplines have been granted their very own category of suffering?
Teaching Computer Science vs. Teaching Math
When I arrived at Exeter, CS classes were entirely elective. Every

student in every CS class wanted to be there. By the time I left, with a CS
requirement in place, the great majority of students in CS classes were there
to satisfy the requirement. The same thing, of course, brings most kids to
math classes, but there remains a fundamental difference.
Students taking an introductory CS course start from scratch. There is no
assumption of prior knowledge or experience in CS, and the curriculum can
be flexible. It starts at one of many possible beginnings and goes until the
term runs out, without any required destination. With merely a one-course
requirement most students will not take a second course, so there is no
conceivable reason to rush; better to develop genuine understandings of
fewer important ideas and techniques than to leave students confused about
more.
In contrast, a 9th grade math class must fit between the 8 th and 10th grade
ones. This may seem obvious and insignificant, but it is profound. Each
year of math is like a piece of pavement in a road; it must connect the prior
year to the next. Also, in high school each year of math is an over-stuffed
grab bag of disconnected topics. The sheer volume of topics is so great that
teachers must move at a pace far too fast to allow most students to develop
any deep understandings. It is flatly impossible to cover all the required
topics and also devote the time students need to understand them, so the
goal of understanding is abandoned. Once understanding is displaced as the
central goal in math education, the sky's the limit, and any quantity of topics
can be covered. The faster the race through topics, the greater the
momentum, and it is momentumnot reasoned thought, or educational

efficacy, or outcomesthat drives the entire enterprise of math education.
Momentum
The momentum of math education makes it awfully difficult to change.

Sure, there is always a bit of tinkering around the edges by individual
teachers doing some things in unique ways. When noticed, they are
regarded as gifted teachers or eccentric cranks depending on their methods.
Their work, however, never alters the course of math education. They retire
or leave teaching, and their methods go with them. Math education is a
runaway train driven by the enormous momentum of its self-sustaining
status quo:
1. teachers teaching the way they were taught

2. ill-conceived textbooks in print for generations without change
3. procedures and testing methods that mask failure at every level
Teachers Teach as They Were Taught
It is my assertion that 15% of humans are just good at math. Math

comes easily to them, in the same way that drawing, singing, or foreign
languages come easily to some. I can't find any published research on this
point, so this estimate of 15% is entirely my own. Perhaps the correct
percentage is somewhat lower or higher, but the notion that some people are
naturally good at math while most people are not rings true for most
everyone. Let me add that I am emphatically not saying anything about who
can and cannot learn math, merely that it comes easily to a relatively small
portion of humans. Most everyone who works hard at most anything can
develop basic competence.
I don't worry about the 15% of students who learn math easily. Those
students deserve to be nurtured and well-guided to help them reach their full
potential. But let's be clear: if chimpanzees lead their math classes those
kids will learn maththey can't help it. It's the 85% of students, the ones
who don't find math easy, that I worry about. I will argue that no student
should be taught math as it is currently taught, but for the 85% who must
work at math to develop understandings the current methods cannot be
made worse.
Now, consider math teachers (teachers who teach only math) as a group.
They're smart. They work hard. Like all teachers, they want to help kids
succeed in their subject. Just about 100% of math teachers are from the
15%. They are good at math and learned it in the same way they teach it. It
is perfectly natural for them to believe, I'm good at math. This is how I
learned math. This is how everyone else who is good at math learned it.
This is how everyone should learn it. Of course, everyone who is gripped
by math anxiety, or has been mathematically crippled by her math
education, or is terrible at math, or hates math to his core also learned math
that wayand outnumber them too.
Popular Textbooks
Few teachers have the time or specialized skills necessary to create their
own teaching materials in whole or even in large part. In math classes, most
teachers produce handouts and worksheets of various sorts but rely very
heavily on their textbooks. The textbook provides sequence (which teachers
routinely tweak), detailed explanations, examples, in-class problems,
homework problems, and review sections. Teachers fill in and around the
textbook. They identify difficulties students have understanding the text and
provide clarification, but the textbook is central in math education.
These textbooks don't change over time. It's impossible to telleven by
checking the copyright noticewhen any of them were written. For
example, the algebra textbook in use at Sidwell when I was there, Algebra
and Trigonometry: Structure and Method (2004 printing of Brown,
Dolciani, Sorgenfrey, & Kane, 2000), showed copyright dates of 2000,
1997, 1994, 1992 and 1990. One of the authors (Dolciani) died in 1985,
even before the first edition. In the 1960s, however, she began writing a
series of high school textbooks called, Structure and Method, so it seems
apparent the book I used has roots that go back far beyond 1990. There is a
1973 book with nearly the same title and two of the same authors
(Sorgenfrey, Dolciani, & Wooten, 1973).
Also, the textbook I used includes many computer programming
assignments, and assumes the use of a programming language called
BASIC. In the teacher's edition of this textbook it says, There are many
versions of BASIC. They are similar enough so that, generally, programs in
this book run on all machines (Brown, et al., 2000, p. 80). The book also
includes many short programs written in BASIC. Such versions of BASIC
were, indeed, common on all early home computers (late 1970s) and
remained common into the 1980s but disappeared from use before any of
the kids in my class were born. For two decades, at least, none of those
programs could readily run on any computer available to any student, yet
they remain in the textbook.
There is little difference between popular textbooks and, as the number
of textbook publishers dwindles, the choices become even fewer. One of the
things they all have in common is that there are more topics and chapters
than can possibly be covered in a course. The books are enormous and
contain more material than any teacher will even consider undertaking. This
contributes to a feeling among math teachers that there is a great deal that
should be covered and, however fast they are moving through the material,
they really should be moving faster. The casualty, of course, is
understanding.
Why do book publisher produce such books? It's not a plot to ruin math
education. They just want to sell their books to every school system in the
country (or at least to Texas, California, and New York). They won't risk
leaving out something that is required in any school system today or in the
future, so they include every topic from every school system, along with
every topic that might find its way into the target course in the future. The
result is enormous textbooks, updated as infrequently as possible, that never
undergo significant changes, with far more topics than can possibly be
covered in the courses for which their use is intended.
Masking Failure
Try to imagine what it's like to teach math. Here's what happens: a
newly minted math teacher takes her first job and arrives at her new school.
Schools, like all communities, have cultures and K-12 school cultures are
quite different from the new teacher's recent one in college, graduate school,
or the workplace. Culture shock is a certainty. By the way, 40% - 50% of
those who enter teaching (in the U.S.) leave the field within five years
(Ingersoll & Smith, 2003), and the first two years of teaching are especially
difficult as teachers struggle to find their footing. Learning to manage a
classroom, prepare and present lessons, assign and grade homework, and
write tests are all challenging, but it is grading tests that requires math
teachers to overhaul their thinking about teaching and shoves them down a
harmful (for students) path from which there is no return.
Two weeks into the term, the new math teacher will give a test, take it
home, and grade it. The result is always the same: the new teacher can't
believe how poorly her students did. But there's something very odd about
the grades too. For new teachers, the distribution of grades never looks like
the expected bell curve,
Number of Students
Score
Figure 1.1
where the most student scores are clustered around some average score,
with fewer-and-fewer scores farther-and-farther away from that average. It
always looks like this:
Number of Students
Score
Figure 1.2
with a small cluster of high scores and a large cluster of low scores. Oh, and
the cluster of low ones is below the passing grade for the department. That
is, a huge number of students fail the new teacher's first exam.
So, two weeks into a new career, while the new teacher is experiencing
enormous stress and culture shock on many levels, still trying to figure out
where to get classroom supplies and find the bathrooms, she discovers the
dirty little secret of math education: half the kids have absolutely no idea
what they are doing in math. Obviously, this is not the fault of the new
teacher; she's only been with these kids for two weeks, and every term
begins with a period of review. Whatever knowledge and understandings
the kids lack, they lacked when school ended last spring, before the new
teacher actually entered the profession.
What does the new teacher do with the test grades? Well, she certainly
won't write them in red ink atop the tests and hand them back. What would
happen if she did? The kids who failed would blanch at the sight of their
grades. Next, they would look around to find out how their friends did. Not
the few who are good at math but the many, like themselves, who have
absolutely no idea what they are doing in math. Quickly, they would
discover a trend: all the kids who have absolutely no idea what they are
doing in math failed the exam. How can that be? It's never happened before.
If half the kids fail a test there must be something wrong with the test,
right?
They'll go home and tell their parents that it's not their fault they failed
the test; it was too hard. They'll point out that half the kids in the class
failed, and that can't happen on a fair test. There must be something wrong
with the new and inexperienced teacher. If this is a good school (i.e.
affluent families) the parents will call or e-mail the teacher, the department
head, the principal, or all three and demand to know why half the kids failed
the test. There are three possible outcomes:
1. a fair and careful analysis of the test and the curricula from previous
years could be performed. The results would surely show that the
test was fine, and half the students failed because they have
absolutely no idea what they are doing in math
2. the teacher could be humiliated and made to change the grades
3. the grades could stand and the teacher mentored to learn how to
write an exam that produces a bell shaped grade distribution with
a suitable average
The first choice is simply off the table. Were it officially recognized that
half the kids in this class have absolutely no idea what they are doing in
math then an unavoidable question must arise: How could all of those kids
who have absolutely no idea what they are doing in math have passed their
math classes of last year?
The dirty little secret of math education would be out in the open, and
shame would shift from students who have absolutely no idea what they are
doing in math to math teachers and the charade of math education.
Choosing between (2) and (3) is a matter of administrative style. In
either case, the teacher must learn how to write a test that won't make the
phones ring. It takes a little thought, but once you figure it out (or someone
shows you) it's not hard to do; more than 200,000 K-12 math teachers
across the country do it every week or two.
As already stated, the teacher won't hand out the grades the kids actually
scored on the test. No other K-12 teacher in the school (or state or nation) is
failing half her students. Even with only two weeks of immersion in this
new culture she'll know that if she is failing half her kids nobody is going to
throw her a life preserver. She won't just lose her job, she'll need to find a
new career. Instead, she will decide to curve the test. No matter that the
bimodal distribution doesn't curve easily, she will find a way. She already
has enough problems juggling classroom management, lesson preparation,
the relentless and mind-numbing grading of utterly trivial math homework,
and coming to grips with the hideous reality that half of her students have
absolutely no idea what they are doing in math. Her test scores will be
lower than the average in her department for a while, but the kids who have
absolutely no idea what they are doing in math will be safely warehoused
for another year of math education.
The Bar is Never Set
Setting a bar is a risky business if you have a stake in the outcome. In

track and field competitions the high jump and the pole vault are fun to
watch. The bar gets set and reset, higher and higher, until all of the
contestants fail. The officials have no stake in the outcome. Their only
interest is in accuracy of measure and equal treatment for all. Whether it's a
high school event or the Olympics there is no shame. The levels of
achievement are different, but all good effort is cheered, and the bar gets set
out in the open for everyone to see. Without an accurate and honest bar
there can be no measure of achievement.
We've already seen that there is enormous pressure on teachers not to set
the bar but rather to move it wherever it needs to be to hide the reality that
half of the kids have absolutely no idea what they are doing in math. There
are two widely used approaches to manipulating the bar. Both are
interesting and neither admits to moving it. The passing grade remains
constant, say 70. Not 70% or 70 correct, or 70 of any other unit. Just 70.
Let's look at each approach to manipulating the testing bar.
Along the way, let's suppose high jump became a required course in
school, and the passing grade for high jump is 72. Without a lot of
training and natural ability it's absolutely impossible to jump over a 72 inch
bar. As we look at the techniques for manipulating the testing bar, let's also
imagine an analogy in high jump.
The first approach is the one we saw the new teacher use. She curved
the test, giving kids points, as necessary, simply to raise nominal scores.
Couldn't be easier. Almost every student scores 75 or more (passes) by
being given 50, 60, or 70. It's like digging a 3', 4', or 5' trench for the high
jump bar-stands to rest in, so the bar remains 6' above the base of the stands,
but only 3, 2, or 1 foot above the ground. If digging a trench is too much
work, the same result can be achieved with a ladder: let the high jumper
stand on a 5' ladder to leap over a 6' bar.
The second approach is much newer and hasn't found its way into the
classroom yet. It is, however, becoming popular at the city and state levels.
New York State uses this technique in scoring their Regents examinations.
Public schools in New York cannot award an unconditional high school
diploma to any student who scores less than 65 on any of the Regents
exams. Once upon a time, scoring 65 meant earning 65% of the possible
points on the exam. Not anymore.
The approach used by the New York State Education Department
[NYSED] was to change the calculation and also the meaning, of 65.
Presently, there are 87 possible points on the Integrated Algebra Regents
exam, so the raw score can range from 0 to 87 (with no fractional points).
Raw scores are used to calculate final examination scores using a table
with 88 rows of two columns, where the left column contains each possible
raw score (0 87) and the right column contains the corresponding final
exam scores (NYSED, n.d.).
There's nothing wrong with that except that the translation from raw
to final scores isn't even close to honest (linear). That is, the 87 raw points
don't get spread out evenly onto 100 final points (with 1.15 final score
points for each raw point). As you can see (linear translation in Diagram
1.3, actual Regents translation in Diagram 1.4) low raw scores get a big
boost, and a very broad swath of scores (54 - 75) get squeezed into final
scores in the 80s (to achieve an appealing distribution). Using this
technique, but without moving the bar from 65, a mere 30 raw points wins a
brass ring. Earning 34.5% of possible points is enough to pass with a 65.
Keep in mind that on a multiple-choice test, with four choices per question,
one should expect a strategy of pure guessing to earn 25% of possible points
for a final score of 59.
Diagram 1.3 Diagram 1.4

Linear Honest Translation (2010) Actual Translation (2010)
What's the high jump equivalent? Let's set the bar at 72. Not enough
students will clear this bar so here's the trick: get rid of the bar stands with
100 marks spaced 1 inch apart, and replace them with bar stands that have
100 marks spaced inch apart. Just make sure you still set the bar at 72.
Now anyone who can jump 18 inches can score a 72.
Also, please note that the values for the Regents translation table aren't
set until after students take the exams and all the raw scores have been
calculated. In New York State they don't set the bar and then wait to see
how the students do, they wait until after they see exactly how the students
did and then set the bar.
How does New York State's adjustment of the Regents bar affect the
passage rate? Complete data is available for 2008: the table used to translate
raw scores into final ones and raw score distributions (NYSED 2008;
NYSED, n.d.). In 2008, 73% of students passed the Integrated Algebra
Regents exam. That is, 73% of students were able to earn at least 34.5% (30
points) of the 87 possible points. If students actually needed to earn 65% of
possible points (a raw score of 57) then only 27% of students would have
passed the 2008 Regents exam in Integrated Algebra.
Delusion
Nobody likes bad news. Occasional bad news is bad enough. Repeated,
endless bad news is a different matter. It makes people and whole
communities delusional. When we find daily life so randomly dangerous or
find ourselves forced to act in ways that directly make others uncomfortable
or unhappy, and not even for their own good, our minds come to the rescue
by putting reason to sleep and letting us create, accept and share delusions.
The delusions let us fool ourselves into believing the terrible thing before us
is actually normal.
There can be no doubt that in the U.S. we are delusional about math
education. We have a system that doesn't do what it is intended to do. It
produces outcomes in the bottom quartile among our peer nations. But that's
just evidence of failure not delusion. To see and understand the nature,
causes, and scale of our delusions we should look at how we have
responded to alarms, sounding for decades, about the decline in our quality
of education. Let's start is 1983.
A Nation at Risk
In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE)

produced a report entitled: A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for
Educational Reform (NCEE, 1983). It begins:
Our Nation is at risk... We report to the American people that while we can
take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically
accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of
its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being
eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a
Nation and a people.
The second paragraph begins with this well-known call to action:
If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the

mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war. We have, in effect, been committing an act of
unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.
This was shocking stuff. No matter whether one agreed with the
recommendations of the report or not, the bold, sweeping language attracted
enormous public attention. Almost 30 years later, nobody can say that things
have gotten better (at least not honestly and with a straight face). A much
stronger case can be made that things have gotten worse.
No Child Left Behind
In the decades after A Nation at Risk the news about education remained
bad. When all news is bad news, it is human nature to become delusional,
tune it out, and then ignore itexactly as we did. We would be ignoring it
still but for the election of George W. Bush. Only days after his
inauguration, on January 23, 2001, he set forth an educational agenda which
he called No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
When he presented his new plan, he said his focus would be on,
making sure that every child is educated... [and that] no child will be left
behindnot one single child (Ravitch, 2010, p. 94). Such rhetoric is fine
and well, but the NCLB legislation included an accountability plan that
requires all states to achieve math and reading proficiency in 100% of their
public school students by 2013-2014.
Does 100% seem like a nice goal? Sure. Does it seem realistic or even
possible? Isn't this exactly the same as setting a goal of 100% tax
compliance for the IRS? Or setting a goal of eliminating 100% of all water
and air pollution for the EPA? Or requiring police to prevent 100% of all
crimes, fire departments to save 100% of lives and property, prisons to
rehabilitate 100% of all inmates, or politicians to solve 100% of all societal
problems? Okay, so the requirement is preposterous and no similarly
impossible requirement has ever been set for any other institution. What
about consequences? If it's a law without teeth then the requirement will be
both impossible to achieve and also ignored. But this law has fangs 10 feet
long.
NCLB requires annual testing in math and reading (grades three to
eight). Evaluation of student performance and progress is measured only by
the scores on these math and reading tests. Teachers, schools, school
districts, and states are also evaluated only using these test scores. In
addition to the 2013-2014 goal of 100% proficiency, schools must make
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). That is, if they have not yet achieved
100% proficiency they must improve according to their AYP goals every
single year. Schools that don't meet their goals can be closed. Teachers
whose students are not performing adequately are presumed to be
responsible for these failures and risk humiliation (as when they are
identified in newspapers as failing teachers) and even losing their jobs.
Each state sets AYP goals for its own schools. Since they realize that
100% proficiency is unattainable, they tend to set very low and (possibly)
achievable AYP targets for the early years and leave enormous AYP goals
for the last years. This postpones the day of reckoning (and keeps their
schools open).
It's important to note that NCLB sets no national standard and leaves all
testing and standards to the states. A national plan with no national
standard? Wow! So, each state gets to make its own test, set its own
standard, and manipulate its own bar using the techniques already described
or others. NCLB provides strong incentives for exactly the behaviors now
seen on a wide scale:
narrowing of curricula; dropping (or reducing time on) art, history,

science, etc. because AYP depends only on reading and math results
teaching to tests, training students in test-taking techniques, and
taking practice exams
schools that are able (e.g. charter schools) turn away, suspend for
exam days, or expel the students they fear will not pass the tests
(Ravitch, 2010, pp. 134, 156)
school districts and states adjust and readjust their bars to show their
progress toward 100% proficiency
Also, there is now cheating of a type and on a scale that has never been
seen before. Now it's not students who cheat, it's the adults. Far beyond
teaching to the test, there are many verified reports of teachers preparing
students for their high-stakes tests by quizzing students using actual test
questions and sometimes giving complete sets of test answers to students.
There are also many verified reportsin California, Georgia, Illinois,
Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York,
Nevada, Texas, and Virginiaof modifying exams after students take them:
filling in the correct answer on unanswered questions and erasing wrong
answer to fill in correct ones (Asimov, 2007; Fessenden, 2007; Gabriel,
2010; Judd & Vogell, 2011; Wilgoren, 2001).
Go to the Internet and visit the web site of your state's Department of
Education. If you poke around a bit, you'll be able to find aggregated test
results for your state and probably even results for individual schools.
Is the Progress Real?
No. In every case during the last decade where an educational miracle
was claimed, a careful look has revealed that the miraculous gains were
entirely the result of nothing more or less than manipulating the testing bar.
We've already seen how New York State manipulates the bar for the
Regents exam.
President Bush's NCLB plan was based on the supposed success in
Texas (under his governorship) that testing and accountability provided.
Later analysis revealed that the soaring test scores were directly attributable
to a soaring dropout rate (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey and Stecher, 2000);
the worst-performing students dropped out, didn't take the tests, and didn't
weight down the test score average. Also, while high-stakes test scores were
showing great gains in Texas, other standardized tests showed no gains
(SAT scores, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, the Texas
state test for college readiness).
In 2009, New York City announced, based on improvements in test
scores, that 84% of all elementary and middle schools had achieved a
school rating of A. Only a year earlier just 38% had an A rating. In 2009,
more than 97% of schools had ratings of A or B. These claims were so
absurd they were ridiculed in the city's local newspapers, and it quickly
came out that New York City was manipulating the bar (Stupid, 2009).
In Chicago, school officials (including their superintendent who is now
our national Secretary of Education) claimed that from 2004 to 2008, the
portion of eighth-graders meeting the state standards in math had risen from
33% to 70%. A 2009 study revealed that the gains reflected only changes to
tests and testing procedures and did not reflect any student improvement
(Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago, 2009).
None of this should be surprising. The amazing test gains in Texas and
Chicago have been called miracles. If there were, in fact, any real
improvement in educational outcomes it would be truly miraculous

without any earthly explanation. What has changed since NCLB? The
buildings are the same, the yearly and daily schedules are the same, the
students and parents are the same, the textbooks are the same, the teachers
and administrators are the same, and the curricula are the same. We have
more charter schools now, but the evidence is overwhelming that, on
average, charter school performance is significantly (in the statistical sense)
worse than that of traditional public schools 1. The only things that have
actually changed are the manipulation of the bar and a lot of wishing,
hoping, and threats to fire teachers and close schools. These threats imply
that if teachers will just try harderwhile teaching the same students, using
the same pedagogy, books, schedule, and methodsthe problems of
education will disappear.
National Assessment of Educational Progress
Presently, each of our 50 states (and the District of Columbia) gets to

design its own tests, score them as they wish, and change the scoring as
they please. Every such test should be disqualified from any consideration
in evaluating educational success, yet these tests are used as the sole
measure of each state's educational success. Is there no alternative? Of
course there is.
There is an important nationwide test of student achievement called the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). From the web site of
the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES-a, n.d.):
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest

nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's
students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are
conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts,
civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly using the same sets
of test booklets across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric
for all states and selected urban districts. The assessment stays essentially
the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. This
permits NAEP to provide a clear picture of student academic progress over
time.
From the same web page:
1 a large, well-conducted 2009 study of 2,043 charter schools in 15 states (and

D.C.) by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2009) found that for
every charter school performing significantly better than the local public school
there were two performing significantly worse. The lead researcher concluded,
This study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students
are not faring as well as their TPS (traditional public school) counterparts.
The National Assessment Governing Board, appointed by the Secretary of

Education but independent of the Department, sets policy for NAEP and is
responsible for developing the framework and test specifications that serve
as the blueprint for the assessments. The Governing Board is a bipartisan
group whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state
school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the
general public.
NAEP assesses students in grades four, eight and twelve.

NCES, part of the U.S. Department of Education, is responsible for
carrying out the NAEP project. It is highly regarded for its excellence of
testing and statistical methods and its non-partisanship. NCES has been
conducting the NAEP since 1969 and provides NAEP data in multiple
dimensions to help researchers and the public see differences between
various groups of students and changes and trends over time. It aggregates
data in many ways, including by state. It works for the public, and all of its
work is freely available.
The term proficiency is widely used in testing. State after state is
claiming ever increasing levels of student proficiency in accord with their
AYP plans and the requirements of NCLB. The NAEP assessments
recognize three levels of achievement (NAEP, 2009):
Advanced represents superior performance
Proficient represents solid academic performance. Students reaching
this level have demonstrated competency over challenging
subject matter
Basic denotes partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills
that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade.
NAEP Achievement Categories
Here are 2009 NAEP results for public school students (NAEP-b, n.d.):
Below Basic Basic Proficient Advanced
th
4 Grade 18% 43% 33% 6%
8th Grade 27% 39% 26% 8%
12th Grade 36% 38% 23% 3%
Table 1.1 - NAEP Math Proficiency Levels
(2009 data for grades 4, 8 & 12)
It seems the longer we subject children to math education the less proficient
they become. The results go from bad to worse to dreadful as the
mathematics becomes increasingly abstract.
The trend in NAEP math scores has been very slowly and slightly
upward over a long period, though the rate of increase has declined during
the period of NCLB (NAEP-c, 2009).
My own state of Virginia has developed its Standards of Learning (S-O-
L) curricular guidelines and tests. Below are the results for Virginia's 8 th
graders for 2008 2009, alongside 8th grade NAEP results for Virginia for
the same year (NAEP-b, n.d.; Virginia Department of Education, n.d.):
Va. Dept. of Ed. NAEP

Student Subgroup Fail Prof. Adv. Below Basic Basic Prof. Adv.
All Students 15% 34% 51% 24% 40% 28% 8%
Black 23% 42% 35% 41% 44% 13% 1%
Hispanic 22% 37% 41% 35% 42% 20% 3%
White 10% 32% 58% 16% 40% 34% 10%
Asian 5% 19% 76% 15% 31% 34% 20%
Students w/Disabilities 31% 35% 34% 60% 30% 8% 2%
Econom. Disadvantaged 23% 41% 36% 40% 45% 14% 1%
Limited Eng. Proficient 24% 35% 41% 45% 42% 10% 3%
Table 1.2 8th Grade Math, Virginia Dept. of Education SOL
(2008 - 2009) and NAEP (2009)
According to the bar used in Virginia, 7/8 of 8 th grade student are at least
proficient and more than 1/2 are advanced. What a pretty picture! Using the
NAEP bar, however, only 1/3 are at least proficient and less than 1/12 are
advanced. In Virginia we hear so much about S-O-Ls, but, long before they
coined the term and borrowed the acronym, S-O-L was commonly used to
mean, [plumb] Outta Luck. That's what I think of every time I hear S-O-L
and think of the kids wasting enormous amounts of their school time
preparing for and taking these educationally useless tests.
I certainly don't mean to pick on my own state of Virginia. Here is a
sampling of math proficiency claims from other states (Arizona Department
of Education, n.d.; California Department of Education, n.d.; Massachusetts
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, n.d.; Minnesota
Department of Education, n.d.; Mississippi Department of Education., n.d.;
Texas Education Agency, n.d.; Virginia Department of Education, n.d.):
Students at least Proficient
State NAEP Assessment Self Assessment Overstatement
Arizona 29% 63% 117%
California 23% 40% 74%
Massachusetts 52% 60% 15%
Minnesota 47% 58% 23%
Mississippi 15% 54% 260%
Texas 36% 79% 119%
Virginia 36% 85% 136%
Table 1.3 - State Self-Assessments vs. NAEP Assessments
Grade 8 Math (2008 2009 State Data, 2009 NAEP data)
Clearly, we in Virginia overstate our performance very well, but we'll have
to get up even earlier in the morning to outdo Mississippi. Only
Massachusetts (the nation's highest performer on NAEP) makes a claim
even close to its NAEP performance.
No Child Left Behind Cannot Work
The architects of NCLB brought a pure market mentality to the

Department of Education that remains to this day. They paid no attention to,
cared not a whit about, the two fundamental questions of education: what to
teach and how to teach it. Instead, they look only at nearly meaningless
state test score numbers, and AYP numbers, and the numbers they can
construct from those numbers. They study, compare and construct their
numbers while they wait for the magic of the market to magically
improve educational outcomes. This wait will never end.
The forces of competitive, free markets are incredibly powerful
motivators for the creation and refinement of certain kinds of goods and
services. Those same forces are perfectly powerless to prompt the creation
and delivery of other kinds of goods and services. Where,
goods or services are commodities

many substitutable alternatives are available
quality is easily and accurately measurable
relevant information is readily and cheaply available
markets work their magic. Consumer electronics, restaurants, automobiles,

communication technologies, haircuts, superstores of all variety, and
traditional commodities like grain are all examples of goods and services
that are produced or delivered very efficiently and at low prices by the
magic of the market.
There is another class of goods and service, ones economists call public
goods, which competitive, free markets always supply in too small
quantities or not at all. These are goods like national defense, lighthouses,
parks, roadways, bridges, justice systems, fire and police departments, clean
air and water, and, of course, public schools. The classic example of a
public good is a lighthouse. Once a lighthouse gets built, every passing ship
receives its full benefit. That is, the important characteristic of a lighthouse,
light, is not consumed or diminished by its users. Any quantity of other
people can see the light from the lighthouse without reducing its visibility to
any other.
Free markets fail to produce public goods because people tend to
understate the extent to which they value them. If an entrepreneur thought
to build a lighthouse, he would begin by contacting the ship owners likely
to benefit. He would ask each of them how much they will pay toward the
construction of a lighthouse. It seems to be human nature to understate the
actual worth because, once the lighthouse gets built, even those who paid
nothing will be able to see the light (and receive the full benefit). The
typical result is that not enough funds are offered. This explains why
lighthouses don't get built by entrepreneurs.
In the case of national defense, another public good, there is no way to
defend only the people willing to pay, as nobody is prepared to tell our
enemies they may freely attack the citizens who refuse to pay. Similarly, as
a practical matter, fire and police protection must be provided to a whole
region, not just to those within the region who are willing to pay.
Free markets don't produce (or significantly under produce) public
goods. This is widely recognized by economists as a market failure. A
fundamental role of governments is to finance and provide important public
goods that will otherwise inadequately provide.
No free market in the history of the world ever produced anything like
K-12 public schools. It is governments, around the world, that build and
finance public schools. The idea that market forces can be used to rescue
public schools is nutty. Even the need for public schools is invisible to
market forces. The four elements that are necessary for free markets to work
their magic do notand will notexist for public schools,
First, K-12 education is not a commodity. We divide it up into annual
grades but that's entirely artificial. Until high school, at least, children don't
decide what to study, who will teach them, what quantities of which
subjects (products?) they will consume, or much of anything else. School is
a place children go and have experiences. Public school education is no
more a commodity than sleep or conversation are commodities.
Second, what about choice? Those who can afford to send their children
to private schools, arguably, have choices. Those who can't, don't. But let's
be clear about the nature of school choice. School is not a uniform
experience for all of the children in attendance. If a child is being bullied, it
is a terrible experience whether the school is public or private, good or
bad. When a student is lucky enough to get a good teacher, with whom he
also has good chemistry, it also doesn't matter if the school is public,
private, charter or parochial. Even within a school, there is no child who
doesn't have better experiences some years than others, and the swings from
year to year are frequently enormous. There is, generally, more variation
within schools than between them. There is remarkably little meaningful
choice.
Third, is school quality readily measurable? Just for a moment, put aside
all conventional wisdom and consider how you would evaluate the quality
of educational services a public school provides, if you were starting from
scratch. Would you rate the quality of a school, or the quality of the
education your child receives at that school, only by analyzing the results of
a single multiple-choice test in math each year and another in reading? Even
if those tests were well-constructed and administered, with no manipulation
of the bar, it would be irresponsible to evaluate students, teachers,
administrators and schools on nothing more. If we really want to know how

good a school is, don't we have to look at more than math and reading?
Shouldn't we follow its students and see how they do after they graduate?
Wouldn't we want to try and discover the lasting impacts, negative and
positive, that the school has on its students, their families, and the
community? I'm not saying any of this is easy. Perhaps it isn't all possible.
But what kind of fool would look at nothing more than a pair of half-baked,
highly manipulated, multiple-choice tests and claim to be able to assess
student learning, teacher effectiveness, and school quality?
Fourth, there is no easy access to relevant information. In the case of
commodities like consumer electronics, relevant information includes
product features, specifications, price, durability, suitability for specific
applications, and the like. A school is bigger, more complex, and more
highly-faceted than a flat screen television or a digital camera. Also, when
purchasing a tangible product, one usually understands one's own needs.
This is generally not so with education. Even well-educated parents tend to
know remarkably little about education. So, relevant information about
public schools is hard to obtain, and most parents don't even know what
information is relevant. Also, when little or no choice is available, relevant
information is less valuable because it is not very useful.
Public school education, just like other public goods, is not produced by
market forces. Charter schools, initially envisioned for a different purpose,
have been put to use as part of a misguided attempt to manufacture a market
force, an attempt to inject competition where little or none exists. We have
already seen that, on average, they perform somewhat worse than traditional
public schools (TPS), with two charter schools performing significantly
worse than their corresponding TPS for each one performing better.
Market forces, so powerful under the right circumstances, are powerless
in the domain of public goods. Relying on the magic of the market to
reshape public education is like relying on magnets, no matter how
powerful, to move wood.
Race to the Top (more of the same)
Barack Obama's contribution to educational improvement is called Race

to the Top (RttT). It was announced on July 24, 2009, and it is cut from
exactly the same cloth as NCLB. What RttT adds to NCLB are incentives to
encourage states to move even further in the directions of high-stakes
testing and charter schools. Also, while NCLB ignored all matters of what
to teach and how to teach it, RttT calls for developing elements that could
emerge as approximations of national curricula in math and reading, the
Common Core State Standards (CCSS-a, n.d.) and provides incentives for
states to adopt them.
RttT is a $4.35 billion multi-year program in a country that spends about
$600 billion annually on K-12 public education (USCB, 2011, p. xi). How
can such a (relatively) small program produce more than just a ripple in the
waters of public school education? RttT leverages its modest funds by
allowing states to submit proposals; if states want RttT dollars they must
compete for them. Proposals are scored and the states with the highest-
scoring proposals win funding. Proposals earn points by aligning state laws
and policies with federal goals and guidelines. The competition for RttT
dollars achieves funding leverage by prompting states to make changes
before they find out if their proposals will be funded. RttT enjoys the
additional leverage of economic desperation, by offering cash to states
during the worst economic times since the Great Depression.
RttT has been effecting change: states with laws limiting the number of
charter schools are ineligible for RttT funding, as are states which prohibit
using high-stakes student test results for evaluating teachers and principals.
The lure of RttT funding has induced states with such laws to eliminate
them (Dillon, 2010).
Is this leverage a good thing? The answer must depend on the wisdom
and efficacy of the policies and practices RttT promotes. RttT funding
promotes charter schools. RttT has also induced 42 states (plus U.S. Virgin
Islands and District of Columbia) to adopt the Common Core State
Standards (CCSS-b, n.d.), even though the Standards are not yet fully
specified. This underscores the likelihood that states will have considerable
latitude in how they interpret them. There is not even a suggestion that
states will be held accountable for their implementations of the Standards
because the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, n.d.),
of 1965, explicitly prohibits the establishment of a national curriculum. The
very name of these standards, Common Core State Standards, raises doubt
about them being any more than federal suggestions. It seems likely that
standards, like high-stakes testing, will be left to the states.
RttT provides strong support for the use of high-stakes student tests to
evaluate teachers and principals. This is being done using a statistical
approach called value-added modeling (VAM) or value-added assessment.
VAM starts from the premise that the year-to-year change in each student's
scores on her high-stakes tests depends principally on the quality of the
teachers who have taught that student. Whether a student earns a high score
or a low one isnt the central concern. What matters is whether a student's
percentile ranking increases or decreases from one high-stakes test to the
next and by how much. It is this change for which teachers are assumed to
be individually responsible. This change is the value-added by the
teacher. The underlying belief is that the purpose of teaching is to raise
high-stakes test scores, and that the quality of teaching is captured entirely
in individual students' year-to-year scores on these tests. VAM folks are a
bit vague about how to measure the quality of teachers who don't teach
math or reading (high-stakes testing is only required in math and reading),
but there are much bigger concerns.
Value-added modeling became a very hot topic after a few academic
papers were published suggesting that students who get really, really good
teachers for several years in a row can achieve enormous gains in their
percentile ranks on high-stakes tests (Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Hanushek &
Rivkin, 2004; Gordon, Kane & Staiger, 2006). The authors of these papers
project that gains of 30even 50percentile point are possible. These are
gains big enough to close the large and persistent black-white achievement
gap. The findings in those papers have been so widely reported and
distorted that it has become a truism in NCLB and RttT circles that three to
five years of outstanding teaching will produce 30+ percentile point gains
on high-stakes tests. However, there is absolutely no empirical evidence to
support this urban myth. That is, no actual schoolanywhere in our country
has supplied any group of students with a series of great teachers for
several years and achieved impressive results, much less closed the black-
white achievement gap. Maybe the theoretical gains projected in those
papers are possible and maybe theyre not, but it is has never happened, and
projecting and hoping have nothing at all to do with demonstrating or
proving.
Are the statistical methods being used to conduct value-added
assessments accurate and reliable? It does not appear so. There are several
approaches to performing VAM, and different studies report different results
in evaluating the effectiveness of VAM. A recurring finding is that estimates
of teacher quality using the popular VAM techniques are unstable; using
exactly the same VAM techniques from year to year, the estimated quality
of individual teachers swings wildly. Most of the teachers ranked in the top
quintile in any given year were out the top quintile the next year, and most
of the teachers ranked in the bottom quintile in any given year were out the
bottom quintile the next year (Koedel & Betts, 2007; Lockwood,
McCaffrey, & Sass, 2008).
My favorite of the VAM studies was conducted by Jesse Rothstein, an
economist who analyzed data for 99,000 fifth graders in North Carolina.
VAM looks at student test scores over several years and seeks to calculate
the impacts of teachers on those scores, year by year. A typical analysis
might look at student scores in grades three, four, and five and seek to
determine the impact each teacher had on the student's fifth grade outcomes.
Rothstein turned this upside-down. He decided to use three different VAM
methods to calculate the effect of fifth grade teachers on fourth grade grade
outcomes. Of course, fifth grade comes after fourth grade, so it must be
impossible for fifth grade teachers to affect students' performance in fourth
grade. Therefore, each of the VAM methods should indicate that the fifth
grade teachers had no effect on fourth grade students. Unfortunately, all
three VAM methods indicated large and statistically significant effects of
the fifth grade teachers on fourth grade scores. (Rothstein, 2010). That is, all
three VAM methods prove something that is absolutely impossible.
It is the fundamental nature of the mathematical field of statistics that
each and every statistical method makes one or more specific assumptions.
If the statistical methods are appropriate to the task at hand, and the
assumptions upon which the statistical method relies are not violated, then
inferences produced by the method can be relied upon (within the bounds of
some confidence level or interval). When a statistical method yields wildly
varyingor flatly impossibleinferences then either the statistical method
itself is mathematically unsound, or the underlying assumptions are being
violated. Nobody is arguing that the mathematics of VAM are intrinsically
flawed. Though VAM has only recently found its way into education, it has
been long been applied in manufacturing and production. The many
researchers who criticize VAM on technical grounds all point to violations
of the assumptions that the various VAM rely upon. The central assumption
is that students are assigned randomly to teachers, and it is well-known that
random assignment is actually very uncommon. In some schools the best
teachers get the best students. In some schools students are grouped by
ability into classes. In some schools principals reward or punish teachers
with good or bad class assignments. In some schools some parents can
exert pressure to place their kids with (or away) from certain teachers.
The bottom line, however, is that all of the VAM methods in wide use
are unstable at best and make impossible inferences at worst (e.g. fifth
grade teachers affect fourth grade outcomes). VAM is unfit for its one and
only intended use: the high-stakes evaluation of teacher quality. It is a
lovely idea to think that we can simply feed the annual results of each
students' half-baked, highly manipulated, multiple-choice, high-stakes tests
into a computer and obtain a perfectly accurate measure of the quality of
every teacher but, Good Grief, how can it be so? Using these tools to
reward and punish teachers, principals, or schools is unwise and unfair.
Aren't Teachers Responsible for Educational Outcomes?
NCLB began 10 years ago and has resoundingly failed to produce better
math outcomes. A ceaseless torrent of blistering newspaper and magazine
editorials, blog postings, and movies like Waiting for Superman have been
blaming public school teachers and their unions for every educational
failure so loudly, for so long, and with so little objection that it has become
the conventional wisdom that they are to blame, but is it so?
First, it is interesting to note that the longer that NCLB has been failing,
the louder and more sustained the attacks on public school teachers and
their unions have become. Perhaps the architects of, and believers in, NCLB
hope that pointing a finger will divert attention away from their clear own
failure. In the early days of NCLB, its proponents sang the Choice and
Accountability song. No convincing case can be made that choice and
accountability have improved educational outcomes, so now they sing the
Teachers and Their Unions are to Blame song.
Second, while public school teachers sit in the hot seat, nobody says a
word against private school teachers. Mustn't we assume they are doing a
much better job? For, if we accept that public school teachers are doing a
poor job, and we also find that private school teachers produce similar
outcomes, then mustn't we conclude that all teachers are doing a poor job?
There are 4 million K-12 school teachersmore than the numbers of
physicians, lawyers, and engineers combined. Is it possible that the whole
group is just no good? What does it even mean to say that an entire
profession is to blame? Before we try to answer this question, let's see if it's
one we need to answer. Before we accept the assertion that public school
teachers are to blame for our country's educational failures, shouldn't we see
how the private school teachers are doing?
The National Center for Educational Statistics, the source of the NAEP
assessments, conducted a careful statistical study. In 2006 (using reading
and math test data from the 2003 assessment) they compared public and
private school student performance in math and reading for grades four and
eight (NAEP, 2006). The study shows that private school students, on
average, earned higher scores than public school students. Raw averages,
however, don't offer good explanations. Why do private school students
perform better in math and reading? Is it because private schools have better
teachers? Could there be other factors? Even if the student populations in
public and private schools were indistinguishable in every way, there might
be important differences between public and private schools that have
nothing to do with the students or the teachers (e.g. hours of instruction).
The NCES analysis looked very carefully at characteristic differences
between public schools and private schools (e.g. teacher experience) and
also at characteristic differences between their student populations (e.g.
socioeconomic status). They used well-established and uncontroversial
statistical methods to adjust for these differences.
The somewhat surprising result of the analysis, when factoring in
student and school differences, is that public schools achieve slightly higher
average NAEP math scores than private schools, and the difference, though
small, is statistically significant in grade four (4.1 points, p < .005, effect
size: .15), while there was no statistically significant difference in grade
eight. The results of the comparison are essentially the same when only
differences between student population are factored into the analysis. After
adjusting for student characteristics, there were no statistically significant
differences in reading scores between public and private schools.
So, private schools aren't achieving better outcomes than public schools
(when we take into account student characteristics). Does this mean public
school and private school teachers are all poor or must it be something else?
As for unions, we must recognize that private school teachers don't have
any unions at all, and every private school can fire any bad teacher at any
time. If unions are at the root of the problem in public school education,
shouldn't we expect to see private schoolsnone of which are unionized
doing much better than public schools? Also, virtually every analysis of the
correlation between teacher unionization rates and test scores (SATs, NAEP,
etc.) shows a statistically significant and moderately strong, positive

correlation: in states with higher teacher unionization rates students tend to
achieve higher scores, and in states with lower teacher unionization rates
students tend to achieve lower test scores. Perhaps it is time to look beyond
the false villains of teachers and their unions to improve education
Conclusion on Delusion
Among industrialized nations, our math students perform very poorly.

Cities and states are making preposterous claims of spectacular gains in
mathematical proficiency as they do nothing more than manipulate each of
their own personal bars, while the most respected and honest national
measure shows that only 39% of fourth-graders, 34% of eighth-graders, and
26% of twelfth-graders achieve proficiency in math. This, while we pursue
a perfectly impossible goal of 100% proficiency without changing any
educational practice or even examining any aspect of math education.
Instead, we listen without complaint to an endless scapegoating of teachers
and their unions. If you don't accept this as evidence of delusion then please
stop reading.
Outcomes
Our system of math education produces poor results. U.S. math students
rank in the bottom quartile among OECD nations. This is true when we
compare average national performance and also when we compare our best
students (top 10 percent) to the best of other countries (OECD, 2010).
Our system of math education produces some of the worst outcomes in
the industrialized world. Why? Of course, it isn't possible to say with
certainty. There are many questions to investigate:
1. are U.S. students intrinsically less intelligent or capable than those

in other countries?
2. does the U.S. spend insufficiently on math education?
3. are kids unable to attend school or unprepared for it?
4. does the wider (outside of school) culture work against math
education?
5. are the culture and practices of U.S. math education at fault?
Let's consider each:
(1) It would be absurd to imagine (1) is true. The U.S. is one of the great
melting pots. The kids in the U.S. descend from all the peoples of the world.
In such a diverse nation the student population cannot be at any intrinsic
disadvantage with respect to learning math.
(2) The U.S. spends far more on education, in toto and per capita, than
the average of all countries used for comparison (OECD, 2009). The results
simply cannot be attributed to inadequate funding.
(3) In war-torn or poor countries children are often unable to attend

school for a variety of reasons: it is too dangerous; there are no schools in
the region; their families cannot afford books, uniforms, and fees or can't
spare the labor their children provide in factories or fields. In countries of
really deep poverty or famine malnourishment interferes with the ability to
learn. None of this has anything to do with math education in the U.S.
(4) Does the wider culture (outside of school) work against math
eduction? Sure. Our culture glorifies achievement in sports and popular
music, amassing great wealth, boundless consumption, and doing all of this
as quickly as possible. Reflection and sustained effort (of the very sort
needed to develop mathematical understandings) are invisible in popular
culture. If kids do not see, first-hand, their parents (or other adults they care
about) reading and writing, discussing ideas, studying, learning new things,
struggling with difficult problems (and enjoying the struggle), they will not
learn about any of this from popular culture, except as the uncool
activities of people they don't want to become. A popular culture that
presents academic effort as unimportant, or worse, can only serve to reduce
students' academic motivation. So, yes, I think our popular culture
contributes something to the failure of math education in the U.S.
Though our system of math education did not create our popular culture,
it has flatly failed to respond to it. One needn't embrace popular culture, but
it is irresponsible to ignore it. Math education must be adapted to the world
and culture that weand especially our young peoplelive in. Yet, it
remains unchanged over generations. For example, the algebra texts in use
today are perfectly indistinguishable from the ones of 40 years ago. Algebra
itself has not changed and will not change in the future, but everything else
in the world has changed.
If we are happy to perform in the bottom quartile then there is no need
for change. If, however, we want to rise from the bottom of the barrel then
surely we must change something. In part four of this essay I will present a
new approach to math education that will make it more effective and bring
it into the twenty-first century too.
(5) Well, we're running out of suspects. What about math education
itself? Let's step back for a moment and take a look at this enterprise. Kids
study math far longer and more time-intensively than any subject except
English. What's the result? A nation of amateur mathematicians who enjoy,
long after they graduate from high school, looking for the mathematical
underpinnings of the world around them? Inquisitive minds that use the
tools and methods of mathematics to find patterns around them, to discern

truth from lies, to place reason above blather, to adore elegance and
simplicity? I don't think so.
The main result of our system of math education is to produce
mathematical cripples by the millions every single year. It is perfectly safe
to say that the main mathematical goal of the majority of high school
graduates in the U.S. is to never have another mathematical thought as long
as they live. Math education does not merely waste a great deal of time, but
it causes irreversible, intellectual harm to enormous numbers of the students
subjected to it by shutting their minds entirely and permanently to math
directly and indirectly to all endeavors that require its use.
What Do Other Nations Do?
Our system of math education produces some of the worst outcomes in

the industrialized world. How is math education different in other countries,
especially the ones most successful in math education? The International
Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)
developed and administers the Trends in International Mathematical and
Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS is administered to fourth- and eighth-grade
students around the world. The first TIMSS assessment was conducted in
1995, and it has been administered every four years since. TIMSS and PISA
(which tests 15-year-olds) are the two most closely watched international
assessments.
In 1995, in addition to the assessing student performance, TIMSS sought
to gather information about the nature of mathematics teaching by
conducting a video study in which complete eighth-grade math classes in
three countries (Germany, Japan, and the United States) were videotaped.
The classrooms were randomly selected, and the tapes were carefully
studied, transcripts produced, and classroom activities classified, counted,
and coded for further statistical analysis. In 1999, along with the next
TIMSS assessment, an even more comprehensive video study of eighth-
grade math teaching was conducted. This time, math classes in seven
countries (Australia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands,
Switzerland, and the U.S.) were videotaped and studied. The scale of these
video studies is remarkable. The 1999 video tape study recorded and
analyzed almost 15,000 math problems.
The TIMSS videotape studies of math lessons are truly remarkable for
the scale, thoughtfulness, and care with which they were conducted. The
1999 study report (NCES, 2003) is a 236 page treasure trove of information
about the practices of math education in the participating countries. It is not
my intention to review the entire report, but only to explore one avenue.
Here are the TIMSS scores from 1995 and 1999 for the countries that
participated in the 1999 video studies (Switzerland participated in the 1999
TIMSS video study, but did not participate in the math assessment):
TIMSS Math Score TIMSS Math Score
1995 1999
Country Average Std. Error Average Std. Error
Hong Kong (HK) 569 6.1 582 4.3
Japan (JP) 581 1.6 579 1.7
Switzerland (SW) 534 2.7 --- ---
Netherlands (NL) 529 6.1 540 7.1
Australia (AU) 519 3.8 525 4.8
Czech Rep. (CZ) 546 4.5 520 4.2
United States (US) 492 4.7 502 4.0
Table 1.4 Average Grade 8 TIMSS Math Scores 1995 and 1999
U.S. student scores were significantly lower than all others in 1995. In
1999, only Czech Republic scores were not significantly higher than ours.
Among those countries, U.S. students consistently perform at the bottom
on both PISA and TIMSS math tests. Hong King, Japan, the Netherlands
and Switzerland consistently perform well on international assessments.
The 1999 video study revealed some profound differences in math
education across countries. In the U.S., on average, 53% of U.S. lesson time
was spent on review:
Chart 1.5 Class Time Spent on New Content and Review
The two best-performing countries, Hong Kong and Japan, each spent the
least amount of lesson time reviewing (24%). The study further revealed
that 28% of all U.S. lessons were spent entirely on reviewing previously
covered content. Only 8% of Hong Kong lessons and 5% of Japanese
lessons were devoted entirely to review.
Review is used to revisit concepts and techniques that students
incompletely apprehendeddid not understandon earlier visits. Review
can refresh and strengthen memory, but (later, we will see) there is much
evidence that understanding also facilitates recall. Research shows that deep
processing, of exactly the sort necessary for understanding, facilitates recall.
Where there is little understanding memories do not last. Maintaining
memory in the absence of understanding requires repeated and regular
review.
The videotaped problems were each categorized into one of three types
based on the kind of mathematical processes implied by the problem
statements:
making connections
stating concepts
using procedures
The problems in the making connections category explore relationships

among mathematical facts, ideas, and procedures. These are the kinds of
problems that promote, develop, and deepen understanding.
Chart 1.6 shows the proportions of each problem type when categorized
according to the problem statements. Notice that the percentage of making
connections problems in the U.S. lessons is unremarkable. Lessons from
Hong Kong had the smallest portion of making connections problems and
lessons from Japan had the highest (Data from Switzerland was not
included in the TIMSS video report due to a technical difficulty):
Chart 1.6 Percentage of Problem by Type

(According to Problem Statements)
An important aspect of the analysis, however, was to follow problems

all the way through. The problems in the videotapes were first categorized
according to how they were introduced by their respective problem
statements (Chart 1.6). A key question, however, was whether the same
kinds of mathematical processes implied by the problem statement were
made explicit when solving the problem or whether the nature of the
processes changed as the problem was being solved and discussed publicly
(NCES, 2003, p. 99). Therefore, problems were categorized again on the
basis of the videotaped discussion or presentation of each problem. For this

second categorization, a fourth category was added, Giving results only,
when the presentation consisted solely of stating an answer to the problem
without any discussion of how or why it was attained.
Of course, giving results only cannot possibly convey or deepen any
understanding. Chart 1.7 shows the proportions of each of four approaches
actually taken:
Chart 1.7 Percentage of Problem by Type

(According to Actual Discussion/Presentation)
A typical U.S. school year includes 180 days of classes (NCES-b, n.d.),
and the video study showed that U.S. lessons include, on average, 10
problems (NCES, 2003, p. 44). If eighth-grade math classes meet every
single school day, students will see 1,800 problems per year in their classes.
Thus, in the course of an entire school year, U.S. students experience only
18 problems that aim to develop and deepen their understandings (1% of
1,800). That averages out to only one such problem every two weeks.
The video tapes revealed that Japanese lessons rarely include giving
results only. They also show that more than one-third of Japanese problems
are of the making connections variety. Japanese classes average only
three problems per lesson (it takes longer to make connections than present
results). Still, on average, every single Japanese math class includes at least
one making connections problem.
I recall how often my math students only wanted to know, What's the
right answer?
I always sighed, or laughed, or shook my head and said, Who cares
about the answer? Unless you are building a bridge what difference does the
answer make? What matters is how you think about and approach the
problem.
As I reflect on this it occurs to me that my computer science students
never asked for the right answer. Why? Here's my theory: I was, almost
without exception, each of my students' first computer science teacher, and I
always focused on understanding. Practice is important to develop fluency,
but nothing is as important as understanding. I would no sooner give an

answer without a thorough explanation than I would give a tip without first
ordering and eating a meal. My students didn't focus on the right answer
because it wasn't prized in my classroom. My students saw me make
occasional careless errors at the board. I was always grateful when a student
pointed one out, but I was never embarrassed or concerned. Similarly, when
a student made a careless error at the board, anyone who noticed was
encouraged to offer a correction, but it was not a matter of concern.
In math education, as in no other subject, a relentlessly misguiding
preoccupation with the right answer is instilled in children from the start.
My ninth-grade algebra students already had almost a decade of training to
prize the answer and nothing else. I am sorely tempted to construct a math
curriculum in which the right answer to every single problem, all year
long, is always 6. After about a week, every student in the class would know
the right answer to every problem and would stop asking. Pretty soon
nobody would even be concerned with answers, and we could all focus
attention where it belongs: why is the answer to this problem 6?
I assert that in U.S. math education we do not just fail, overwhelmingly,
to achieve understanding, we don't even undertake it as a goal. Education
without understanding is activity without benefit; no matter the test scores,
it is failure. Each of the Four Pillars Upon Which the Failure of Math
Education Rests, set forth in Part 3 of this essay, is a distinct dimension of
how we fails to promote or develop mathematical understandings in our
students.
2
I have had my results for a long time:
but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
Karl Friedrich Gauss
2. What Science Says About Learning and Teaching
What Science Says About

Learning and Teaching
It is fruitful to see what light is shed on learning and teaching math by
research from the fields of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Any
such investigation quickly reveals that there is much that simply is not
known. However, a bigger problem also becomes clear: a great deal that is
known about learning and teaching is not being applied. It's not that we do
not know what promotes learning, it's that we do not put it into practice.
There is a harmful misconception that pervades education: teaching is a
highly personal and individual activity, and each teacher must find her own
way given the gifts she has. This misconception promotes the
counterproductive view that the best way to teach depends entirely on the
teacher and her style. It fails to recognize the reality that cognitive processes
are what they are whether we like them, or recognize them, or not. As long
as we ignore the existence of these processes it is easy to think we can just
reason our way through all questions of what (content) and how
(pedagogy) to teach. We can just say, This seems reasonable to me. This is
how I think about it, wave our hands and conjure some half-baked
explanation for nothing more than a personal opinion.
When we, the adults, mistakenly assume that students are empty vessels
we can fill with content and understanding as we see fit, our focus remains
mostly on ourselves; what should we pour into them and when? Until those
who develop, deliver, and endorse curricula recognize that cognition has
characteristics that we cannot change, and that we can improve teaching by
tailoring it to these processes, teaching will remain entirely personal.
Without any theory of cognition or learning what is there, beyond
personal preference, upon which to base decisions about content and
33
34 What Science Says About Learning and Teaching
pedagogy? As long as everything remains a matter of personal preference

why should any individual change unless he has a personal epiphany? The
deeper and richer the theory of learning, the less that remains purely a
matter of personal preference.
At this point I find myself on the horns of a dilemma: there is much
good research that bears directly on teaching and learning, but it cannot be
presented in a page or two. If I present that research here, in the middle of
this essay, I risk a protracted diversion from the central topic of math
education. If, however, I do not include the research findings at all, I cannot
very well use that research as a foundation for what follows, and I will
appear to be making claims based on nothing more than my opinions.
My approach, though imperfect, will be to navigate a middle path. Here,
I will present a summary of 19 research findings (R1 to R19) that are of
particular importance in math education. A substantive presentation of the
research summarized below is postponed until the last part of this essay:
Research Findings (p. 125). However, each finding in the following
summary ends by pointing the reader to the subsection of the Research
Findings where details can be found. For example, details of the second
research finding (R2) are found in section 5.1.3 (p. 127) of the Research
Findings section.
At this point it will be profitable to spend a few minutes reading the
summary, but do not feel obliged to read the full presentation in part five.
As you examine the remainder of this essay you will find many references
to these findings. Feel free to read various portions of the full presentation
only as your own curiosity and interests emerge. I feel responsible to make
the details of the research available to you when you are interested, but this
research should not be allowed to become an obstacle to reading this essay.
Summary of Findings
R1. Meaning is more readily remembered than specific details, and

meaningful information is more readily remembered than
meaningless information (5.1.2, p. 127)
R2. Processing information deeply promotes memory (5.1.3, p. 127)
R3. Information, processes, and relationships among them are stored in
schemas. Schemas can be very simple or very rich. They may be
correct or incorrect. Schemas can be summoned from long-term
memory and manipulated independent of the severe constraints on
short-term memory (5.1.4, p. 128)
R4. Rates of learning and forgetting are both well described by power
functions (5.1.6, p131)
R5. High quality feedback and clear models of excellent performance
promote learning in motivated learners (5.1.6, p. 131)
R6. Additional irrelevant information impairs memory, while additional
relevant information promotes memory (5.1.7, p. 132)

R7. Often the result of intentional recall is an inference rather than a
memory (5.1.8, p. 132)
R8. As memory traces fade, exact retrieval of information gets slower,
while plausibility judgments get faster (5.1.9, p. 133)
R9. Direct instruction in problem solving operations is most effective
when students receive a combination of abstract instruction and
examples (5.2.1, p. 134)
R10. When the same operations are used repeatedly, set effects arise that
disincline us to use other operations, even when they may be more
efficient or effective (5.2.2, p. 135)
R11. Incubation periods (even short ones) can help when problem solving
efforts are unsuccessful (5.2.2, p. 135)
R12. Proficiency develops through three phases: cognitive, associative
and autonomous, with much conscious, mental effort required in the
first and little or none required in the third (5.3, p. 135)
R13. Regular, spaced practice over a long period is more effective than
intensive, compressed study for achieving automaticity in
performing procedures and recalling facts (5.3, p. 135)
R14. Cognitive load theory holds that (5.4, p. 136):
long-term memory has a virtually unlimited capacity for storing
facts and schemas
novel information is processed in working memory which is
severely limited in capacity, duration, and the degree of
interaction it can support between the elements it contains
schemas can be summoned from long-term memory and utilized
by working memory. An entire schema is treated as a single
chunk by working memory (without limitations on duration,
quantity or complexity of schemas)
with sufficient practice a procedural schema becomes highly
automated. It can be summoned from long-term memory and
performed automatically, placing little or no demand on
working memory
the total cognitive load (demand) placed on working memory by
a cognitive task is comprised of intrinsic, extraneous and
germane components. The higher the total cognitive load, the
more difficult the learning, and learning becomes impossible
when it exceeds the capacity of working memory.
R15. Means-end analysis is employed when a novel problem is
encountered and imposes high cognitive load. When solving
familiar problems a forward problem solving approach is adopted.
Forward problem solving imposes a low cognitive load on working
memory and may impose negligible load if an automated schema
can be invoked for the solution (5.4.1, p. 137).
R16. We process object and spatial imagery separately and differently
36 What Science Says About Learning and Teaching
and naturally tend toward one or the other when forming mental
representations. Spatial thinking is especially important in
mathematics (5.5, p. 139)
R17. The lexicon of mathematics can pose difficulties for learners. Some
words have mathematical and common meanings. Many words are
unique to math with many (also unique) synonyms (5.6, p. 142)
R18. Language is processed sequentially in verbal working memory.
When reading or hearing math (e.g. a word problem), the greater the
grammatical complexity of the wording, the greater the cognitive
loadindependent of the mathematical content (5.6, p. 142)
R19. For new topics much more time should be spent, initially, on worked
examples and less on problem solving. Carefully presented worked
examples impose a lower cognitive load on learners than problem
solving because worked examples use forward solutions, while
problem solving requires means-end analysis. As expertise develops,
additional worked examples lose value, and problem solving
promotes further learning (5.7, p. 145)
3
Failure is only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
Henry Ford
3. The 4 Pillars
The 4 Pillars Upon Which

the Failure of Math Ed. Rests
The problems of math education raised in the first part of this essay
were all large-scale, widespread ones beyond the scope of individual
classrooms. The issues raised in this part are also widespread, but they are
small-scale ones that are rooted in individual classrooms. Small-scale
should not be understood to mean minor or insignificant. Rather, these are
problems that must becan only befixed at the individual classroom
level by teachers working with children and supported by administrators.
Here, I will identify four fundamental, widespread failings of math curricula
and pedagogy, the four pillars, if you will, upon which the failure of math
education rests:
1. the approach (not content) of math education is too abstract and

decontextualized
2. math education conveys rituals and procedures but not
understanding
3. metacognitive activity is entirely absent in math education
4. there are sociolinguistic facets of math education, invisible to most
teachers, that have no impact on many students but can present
enormous obstacles for others
As you consider these problems, I hope you will see that they can and
should be addressed at the classroom level, and that these problems are
largely independent of the problems raised in part one of this essay. That is,
these small-scale problems can be approached and solved even if the large-
scale problems cannot.
37
38 The 4 Pillars
Pillar 1: The Approach (not content) of Math

Education is Too Abstract and Decontextualized
Counting is as natural as language. Counting occurs across human

cultures, and it appears that some non-human species count too. By age
four, human children can count reliably and with intention. Obviously, they
learn to do this without any formal math training. There is no abstract
thinking required to count. Real, physical things get counted. Usually, they
can be touched and often moved and manipulated. Children already know
that each physical thing has many attributes: color green, name grape,
flavor sweet, size small, use food, etc. Counting is tricky because different
numbers are being attached to physical items which are sometimes identical
(e.g. 10 pennies) and sometimes quite different (e.g. blocks of various sizes,
shapes and colors). At first it is difficult to see what makes one item three-
ish and another four-ish. Eventually, the child comes to understand that the
attribute of interest, while counting, is sequence (even if the sequence must
be imposed by the counter).
Math Education Begins Concretely but Soon Becomes Abstract
Okay, counting is easy to understand and useful too, so eventually

everyone understands counting and becomes proficient. Next comes
addition. Addition is an extension of counting: first count the items in one
set (starting at one) and then continue counting through another set (without
restarting at one). Everything is fine and concrete and nothing is yet
abstract.
It is tempting to think that math does not become abstract until students
approach algebra and begin to use variables to represent quantities and
equations to represent relationships, but that is not so. Math becomes
abstract almost immediately. Sometime after counting, either before or just
after meeting addition, we substitute symbols (the numerals) for physical
sets. The numeral 6 represents a set of six items, and 3 represents a set of
three items:
Next, symbols for operators are introduced (e.g. the + symbol for
addition). Now, instead of presenting a child with two real sets of real
marbles and asking, How many marbles are there, all together? we ask
her to perform addition like this,
6
6+3= 6+3= ? 6 + 3 = __ + 3
Look how perfectly abstract the problem has become. What do these sets of
symbols mean? Are they interchangeable or different? There are no physical
sets of anything, nothing physical at all. There are only symbols on a page,
snipped out of the world, connected to absolutely nothing. There is no real-
world problem for us to solve, not even a hypothetical one. There is no
context of any sort. With no context at all, can there be any motivation,
beyond being commanded, to perform this trick called addition?
This is the exact point at which the math train jumps the tracks. This
leap from the concrete counting of physical things to the entirely abstract
manipulation of symbols that correspond to nothing that can be touchedor
even conjured in the mindis where math anxiety and failure begin. From
this point forward, for an unfortunately large portion of children, math has
lost every connection to the real world and it never reconnects. It is,
evermore, a bunch of procedures and (later) formulas to be drilled,
memorized, and regurgitated on demand under threat of failure.
Children Need Context
I have two children. I treasure some of the art they have made for me,
stories they wrote for me, ideas they shared with me, and humor they
expressed to me. They do too. Even the stuff I don't keep was important to
them when they made it for me. Kids likeand needto create, express,
imagine, and share. They do not, cannot, do this abstractly. They do not love
or hate people they do not know. They do not draw pictures of things they
have not seen. They can only make jokes about events and elements in their
lives. Children do everything within a context. It takes many years of living
and thinking in the concrete contexts of their lives before they can think
clearly and abstractly in their minds. This is not just a matter of emotional
or intellectual maturity but also of physical brain development.
Not every child falls in love with every subject, but everyone knows
kids who have fallen in love with a subject discovered in school and then
pursued at home. There are loads of kids who study reading and writing in
school and do even more of it at home for fun. Some kids fall in love with a
branch of science at school and get a chemistry set, or a microscope, or a
telescope and pursue science at home. There are kids who act in a school
play and then seek out community theater. Others develop an interest in
mythology, or a period of history, or drawing or painting or singing, or
programming a computer at school and take that interest home with them.
Do you know of any child who goes home and does math for fun? Have you
even heard of such a child? Of course not, because there is no such child.
Why?
40 The 4 Pillars
Math Without Context
There is no such child because math education speaks to no child. It is

so thoroughly separated from any context, decontextualized, that it connects
to nothing. When kids enter math class they are transported to a place
somewhere across the universe that has no connection to students' feelings,
creativity, imagination, experience, lives, places, or planet. To fall in love
with (or even to like) a subject means to develop a positive affective
relationship to it. How can this happen in elementary and middle school
math classes when every minute spent on math is perfectly disconnected
from everything outside of math. Even the portion of kids who learn math
easily can't find anything useful or fun to do with their math outside of math
class and invariably find themselves bored with math.
[Confession: I did meet one girl who loves math and does it
recreationally. Both of her parents are mathematicians. Although math is
perfectly decontextualized at school, it has rich contexts in her home life.
Math is important to people who are important to her. She has ample
opportunity to see that whole lives can be spent in math, and her parents are
able to connect her to math in many ways.]
In every classexcept mathteachers and textbooks attempt to connect
the students they teach to the subject under study. Exploring a subject in a
context helps students connect their own experiences, likes, dislikes and
dreams to the literature, or history, or art, or music, or geography, or science
they are studying. In their writing classes they read about other times and
places and then write about them, sometimes even writing themselves into
those contexts. In history classes they create models of artifacts from other
times and places. In art classes they imitate the art of others and create their
own original expressions too. They invent or portray characters in foreign
language skits and school plays. They delight in creating new moves in
their sports. They roll up their sleeves and conduct cool experiments in
their science labs. What about math? Why is it drier than a desert and as
cold and lifeless as the dark side of the moon?
From the Concrete to the Abstract
From a certain point of view this makes perfect sense. What is beautiful
and powerful about mathematics is its economy. A complex situation gets
boiled down to its essence. Everything irrelevant gets stripped away and
discarded. Mathematics is about scraping away the context, all the gory,
distracting, unnecessary details, so that only the naked, fundamental matter
remains. That is, a primary goal of mathematical thinking is to identify the
underlying, essential nature of a problem or situation, by ignoring
everything else, to develop a perfectly abstract view of it. To do this, one
must separate it from its context; one must decontextualize it.
The problem, however, is that the methods and habits of thought used by
experts are not usually suitable for novices. Thinking about things
abstractly, stripped of all context, is difficult for most people (85% of
them?), and the difficulty is easily underestimated by those who have
developed that skill. Abstraction and decontextualization always begin with
the tangible and concrete. When we notice patterns, commonalities, and
similarities we can generalize from specific, context-bound instances to less
specific, more general cases. We start with a concrete problem, in a specific
context, and work to understand it. We then undertake additional problems,
similar ones in similar contexts, and work to understand them. We examine
increasingly dissimilar problems, from increasingly dissimilar contexts, and
gradually learn that even as the problems seem less alike there are
fundamental elements that are exactly the same. If all goes well, eventually
we come to understand the essence of that class of problems as an
abstraction that is entirely independent of any particular context. When our
understanding becomes deep enough, context becomes irrelevant baggage.
The goal, of course, is to fully understand the abstraction, but the road to
that understanding is long. When a new topic is undertaken context is vital.
Context is often necessary to understand what we are after. One must
clearly grasp a problem before it can be solved, and it is easier to grasp a
problem when it is still embedded in a straightforward and meaningful
context. Only later, when understanding is deep and rich, can we snip it out
of the worlddecontextualize itand still see it clearly. Consider this
problem:
Given,
a+b+c+d +e+ f 14
a+b+c+d +e+ f < 20
1<d <b
c<b
d e
3b=a+c+ d+e+ f
d= f
f <c
find values for a, b, c, d, e and f
It is fully decontextualized and, whatever its educational value, it inspires

no interest among algebra students. Here is exactly the same problem
embedded in a real context:
A particularly kind algebra teacher wants to give his hardworking

students a sugar rush, so he buys them a box of donuts. There is, of
course, no such thing as a free lunch (or donut), so the students
must work for their reward. If, as a group, they can figure out
42 The 4 Pillars
exactly how many donuts, and of which varieties, are in the box
they win the donuts. If not, he'll have to eat them all himself and
get diabetes.
Here is what the students are told:

there are at most 6 different kinds of donuts in the box:
Boston cream blueberry filled
double chocolate glazed
plain toasted coconut
there are at least enough donuts for each of the 13 students and
the teacher to have one
there are less than 20 donuts in the box
there is more than 1 glazed donut in the box, but fewer glazed
donuts than blueberry ones
there are fewer double chocolate than blueberry donuts
there are at least as many glazed donuts as plain ones
for each blueberry donut there are three donuts that are not
blueberry
there are as many glazed donuts as toasted coconut donuts
there are fewer toasted coconut than double chocolate donuts
How many donuts are in the box? How many of each kind are in
the box?
Presenting this problem in class, along with a real box of donuts,

inspired my algebra students to work hard to solve the problem. They
worked in groups of three or four. They grasped the problem perfectly. They
came up with their own representations. When they found themselves
confused in a tangle of variables and inequalitiescognitively overloaded
they could easily back up, reread the appropriate portions of the problem,
and think things through again.
Also, it is worth noting that the first step taken by every group was to
transform the word problem into a set of equations, to decontextualize it.
Why? I didn't advise them on this. I suspect they did this for two reasons.
First, there is too much text to think about, so they attempted to reduce their
own cognitive load by reducing the lengthy textual statement into a compact
set of equations. Second, they believed it was easier to manipulate the
problem algebraically than textually (in part, no doubt, because while
they're in a math classroom they expect to do things mathematically). Yet,
the original, concrete context remained valuable throughout for helping
them think about the decontextualized equations. When they were uncertain
about an equation or just became confused, they could regain confidence
and verify their emerging understandings by tracing the equations back to
the context that was always clear and concrete. The context helped them at
every turn. And, when they solved the problem, each already knew what
kind of donut he would select!

There is no revelation here. There can be no surprise that the problem in
donut form is more engaging than a set of equations. Mathematicians,
scientists, historians, artists, writerseveryone who has a choiceworks
on problems or projects he find interesting or motivating rather than ones he
does not. I am not saying that all work needs to be fun. Adults and
children will do things that are not fun as a necessary part of something they
find interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, math curricula provide an
endless stream of uninteresting activities that are part of nothing more
interesting. Math doesn't have to be uninteresting. That is not its nature.
There are countless beautiful ideas, fundamental laws and relationships,
practical and elegant techniques for solving the most concrete and most
abstract problems that can only be grasped through mathematics.
Mathematics could, for vast numbers of students, be among the most
interesting and motivating subjects they study instead of the most
crushingly boring, seemingly useless, and embarrassingly difficult subject
they find it, at present, to be.
Context at Odds with Experience and Reason
Perhaps you are thinking back on your own days of high school algebra
and recalling that you did plenty of word problems and, whether you liked
them or not, every single one of them provided a context. Well, there is a
difference between a real, concrete context and a shameful bluff. Word
problems, as found in math textbooks, are the authors' attempts to show and
prove that math is relevant to the lives of students and useful in every
possible context. In reality, word problems have exactly the opposite effect
on students. Let's look at a few from the algebra text I used at Sidwell
(Brown, Dolciani, Sorgenfrey, & Kane, 2000, p. 251, problem 17):
A train averaged 120 km/h for the first two thirds of a trip and 100
km/h for the whole trip. Find its average for the last third of the
trip.
Are we really to believe that someone recorded the average speed for the
first two thirds of the trip but didn't bother to gather the average speed for
the last third of the tripwhen that is what he wanted to know?
Here's another (p.53, problem 20):
In a bicycle race, Lionel gives Robert a 500 m advantage. Also,

Lionel agrees to start 15 min after Robert. If Lionel bikes at 17
km/h and Robert at 14 km/h, how long will it take Lionel after he
starts biking to overtake Robert?
The problem makes sense only in that we can identify the underlying
44 The 4 Pillars
algebra problem and solve it, but it makes no sense at all if we try to take it
seriously as an event in the world. While a car can travel at a nearly
constant speed (though 9th graders don't drive, so they have no such
experience), can anyone who has ever ridden a bike believe that a race can
be conducted at a constant speed? Hills, road surfaces, pedestrians, traffic
lights, adrenaline, and exhaustion all combine to make bicycle travel at a
constant speed perfectly impossible. By the way, where is the finish line? In
a race, isn't the appropriate question, Who will win? Who cares when or
whether Lionel overtakes Robert?
Just one more (p. 133):
A financial planner wants to invest $8000, some in stocks earning

15% annually and the rest in bonds earning 6% annually. How
much should be invested at each rate to get a return of $930
annually from the two investments?
Even putting aside the fact that most kids don't know what is a stock or a
bond and the ridiculous notion that one can know how much a stock will
earn in the future, what kind of fool would buy any quantity of bonds that
earn 6% when there are magic stocks available that are guaranteed to earn
15% annually? And who can locate the planet upon which anyone has a
financial goal of earning a return of a certain number of dollars ($930)?
Kids may or may not know their algebra, but they aren't stupid. How can
anyone who understands these problem statements (whether she can solve
the problems or not) take them seriously? They are foolish problems that the
authors should be thoroughly ashamed of and absolutely nobody should be
expected to ponder. Such feeble efforts to make math seem real to
students do no such thing. They do not help to make connections between
students, math, and the world. Instead, they reinforce students' suspicion
that the only way to connect math to the world is in contrived, unrealistic
ways. Placed on a steady diet of such word problems, for years on end, a
thoughtful person could reasonably conclude that math is for solving the
problems of fools and imbeciles.
The algebra text I used had hundreds more of such word problems to
prove how useful math is in every enterprise under the sun: painting houses,
building barns and fences, detasseling corn fields, calculating speeds and
distances and times of every variety, banking, investing, plumbing, flying
ultralight airplanes and commercial jetliners, buying and selling prom and
raffle tickets and clothing and cookies and electricity, storing grain,
canoeing with and against currents, dieting, mountain climbing, throwing
balls and firing projectiles into the air (or dropping them out of windows),
calculating dues, splitting restaurant checks, kicking field goals, firing
cannons, estimating flamingo populations, and so much more. Yet, for each
problem that can be taken seriously there are dozen upon dozen of problems
that cannot.
Flimsy or absurd contexts are not a minor matter. When a problem itself
is irrationally presented or isn't sufficiently contextualized, the word
problem itself becomes an obstacle to reason. The student faces a word
problem she must abstract into a mathematical form and a context that
interferes with this process because it doesn't make sense.
Meaningless Contexts
The word problems already presented are in domains that students can at
least imagine, but in their zeal to show how useful math is to everyone,
everywhere, and every day math texts also include plenty of problems like
these (Brown, et al., 2000, p. 361, problems 1, 4):
The frequency of a radio signal varies inversely as the wave

length. A signal of frequency 1200 kilohertz (KHz), which might be
the frequency of an AM radio station, has wave length 250 m.
What frequency has a signal of wave length 400 m?
The conductance of a wire varies directly as the square of the

wire's diameter and inversely as its length. Fifty meters of wire
with diameter 2mm has a conductance of 0.12 mho (mho which is
ohm spelled backwards, is a unit of conductance). If a wire of
the same material has a length of 75 m what is its conductance?
Isn't it enough for students to wrestle with the algebra in an algebra

textbook? Should they also face problems that are unlikely to make sense to
them because they haven't studied physics? Without any understanding of
the nature of radio signals the first problem is almost incomprehensible (and
why the irrelevant clause about AM radio?). The second problem is
practically meaningless if a student doesn't know what is conductance, a
mho, and an ohm.
You could argue that students do not need to know what is a radio wave,
a frequency, a wave length, kilohertz, or amplitude modulation (AM) to
solve the first problem. That's true. There is enough information for a
student to solve the problem without knowing any of those things. But
without such knowledge the student must manipulate those terms and units
as pure, meaningless abstractions. The function of context is to ground a
problem in prior experience and understanding, and its value is to aid by
invoking associations and relevant schemas. When the text of a word
problem contains unknown terms and concepts it increases the (extraneous)
cognitive load and underscores a student's inexperience and lack of
knowledge about the problem domain. If the student has not yet mastered
the algebra the added challenge of working with unfamiliar terms and
unknown concepts is counterproductive.
There is another point too. Even if the student can solve the radio
46 The 4 Pillars
frequency problem, isn't the solution guaranteed to be purely superficial? If

a student doesn't understand what is a frequency and what is a wavelength
but is able to mechanically calculate the correct answer, what is the point?
Has working the problem shown the student that algebra is useful in
understanding radio theory? Certainly not. The student who didn't know
anything about radio theory before this problem doesn't know any more
about radio theory afterward, even if she solved the problem. The only
lesson a thoughtful student can take away from solving this problem is that
one needn't understand anything when it comes to math; just figure out
which procedure to use, plug in numbers that don't mean anything to you
(e.g. 1200 kilohertz), and hope for the best.
It seems to me there are three ways to deal with such a word problem:
1. do nothing. Leave the problem in the textbook, assign it, and let the
students do the best they can with it
2. remove that problem from the textbook and all others that embed
themselves in contexts students are very unlikely to know anything
about, or at least don't assign any of them
3. use such a problem as an opportunity to develop new
understandings about a new context in which math is genuinely
useful and relevant
Option (1) is the status quo which is the problem this essay is intended to
repair. Option (2) is easy, but once we decide to discard all problems with
meaningless contexts where will it end? Won't we next be tempted to
discard all the problems in nutty and irrational contexts too? If we take that
second step, it's likely there will only be a dozen or two problems left in the
textbook.
Maybe it's just me, but I think frequency, wavelength, amplitude
modulation, sine waves and signals are interesting and fertile ground for
learning a lot about mathematics and how to use it to explore the nature of
sound, waves, and the magic of radio, telephony, television, cell phones,
remote controls, light, radiation, and more. I defy you to find a kid who isn't
curious about how sounds and images and other information pass through
wires and space. Find me a middle or high school student who wouldn't be
interested in seeing sounds as waveforms on an oscilloscope or by seeing
the infrared digital signals sent by remote controls, or amplitude modulated
radio signals, or hearing sound waves add together or cancel each other.
It seems to me that this problem of radio frequency and wavelength
could easily be the basis for a week or longer investigation. Why is it that
every science class includes labs? Are math and physics so different from
each other that it should be impossible to find a physics class that doesn't
include lab experiments and also impossible to find a math class that does?
There are countless clever and engaging physics lab experiments for
studying waves, frequency, and wavelengthexactly the context of the
word problem. What prevents math education from including experiments

in its curricula?
Why do kids have to wait until high school or college, when they can
study physics, to take a close look, a mathematical look, at the physical
world around them? There ought to be a good reason because there is a
great cost. I have picked the example of radio theory, but there are infinitely
many equally good topics that can bebut aren'texplored with math. The
cost of separating mathematics from everything interesting, practical, and
useful for 10 or more years is that by the time kids are allowed to do
anything fun and interesting with math they have not merely lost all interest
in math but most have learned to detest it. This is harm that cannot be
undone. This harm is rooted, again, in the inertia of the enterprise of math
education. Math has always been taught in its own little vacuum,
decontextualized and abstracted from all of life and experience, and so it
remains, to the detriment of tens of millions of students every year.
Missing Context
To teach a subject without introducing any of the important pioneers,

advocates, or most colorful figures is to rob it of its character and humanity.
To teach a subject while ignoring its creation and subsequent consequences
is to snuff out its history. New knowledge and understandings do not come
from outer space or prehistoric times, they spring from the minds of women
and men who, for specific reasons, decide to devote enormous time and
effort, sometimes whole lives, to unraveling a mystery, or solving a
problem, or pursuing a dream. Each is motivated by some combination of
determined curiosity, ego, family tradition, circumstances of war, personal
loss or good fortune, and more. There is always a person in a social and
historical context, and this is an important part of the subject. To teach a
subject without introducing any of the important historical problems or any
of the people who were attracted or forced by events to create, expand, or
dash the knowledge and understandings of their days sterilizes and deadens
it.
I am not a mathematician. I studied math every year from elementary
through secondary school, and I took math classes almost every term as an
undergraduate. I never learned anything in any math class about any
historical event nor any mathematician. I never learned, in any class, when
or why any of the math I studied was developed. Sometimes a theorem or
procedure is named for a mathematician, in which case a name creeps into
math education, but I never learned anything more than a few names. Years
later I returned to school to study education. It was then, in graduate school,
that one (and only one) of my statistics professors (Terry Tivnan) never
missed an opportunity to provide some historical or current context,
describe the most important characters and the events that motivated them,
and the consequences of their efforts. I was fascinated by statistics and the
48 The 4 Pillars
power of statistical inference, but no less was I fascinated by its history and
creators. Even if those stories were only stories they would be valuable but
they are more. Learning about the historical and the interpersonal contexts
provides additional ways to think about the ideas and helps create countless
connections between the ideas, the people, the days of their creation, and
today. This enriches and deepens understanding and promotes recall too
(research finding R6).
There are many valuable, non-mathematical lessons to be learned too.
For example, Professor Tivnan shared the story of Ronald A. Fischer (1890
1962), a giant in the development and application of statistics, who
attended a sort of office party where he poured a cup of tea and offered it to
a staff member, Dr. Muriel Bristol. She declined, saying that she preferred
the taste of tea added to milk over milk added to tea. Fisher doubted her
ability to make that distinction, but she insisted she could taste the
difference. Doubtful, but not dismissive, he designed an experiment (and
invented Fisher's exact test) to investigate the question: eight cups of tea
were prepared, four of the milk-and-then-tea variety and four more of the
tea-and-then-milk variety. The eight cups were presented to Dr. Bristol in a
random order. She correctly identified the order of mixture in every one of
the eight cups. Years later, Fisher (1935) wrote a classic essay on
experimental design: The Mathematics of a Woman Tasting Tea. This
story illustrates that there are wonderful lessons to learn beyond the
statistical methods and principles developed by Fisher, among them:
the seemingly ridiculous (milk-tea order matters) may not be

serendipitous events (an office party) can spark valuable research
it does matter whether milk is added to tea or tea to milk
My dear Professor Tivnan enriched our study of statistics, time and again,
by introducing historical and contemporary contexts, and those lessons were
no less valuable than the more mathematical ones.
Here is a typical example of historical context for algebra students,
again from Brown, et al. (2000, p. 220):
Biographical Note / Ch'in Chiu-Shao
Ch'in Chiu-Shao (ca. 1202 1261) has been called one of the greatest
mathematicians of his time. This achievement is particularly remarkable
because Ch'in did not devote his life to mathematics. He was
accomplished in many other fields and held a series of bureaucratic
positions in Chinese provinces.
Ch'in's mathematical reputation rests on one celebrated treatise, Shu-
shu chiu-chang (Mathematical treatise in Nine Sections), which
appeared in 1247. The treatise covers topics ranging from indeterminate
analysis to military matters and surveying. Ch'in included a version of the
Chinese remainder theorem, which used algorithms to solve problems.
His interest in indeterminate analysis led Ch'in into related fields. He
wrote down the earliest explanation of how Chinese calendar experts

calculated astronomical data according to the timing of the winter solstice.
He also introduced techniques for solving equations, finding sums of
arithmetic series, and solving linear systems. His use of the zero symbol is
a milestone in Chinese Mathematics.
You couldn't wade through it could you? To me, this is perfect model of
what not to do. Beyond having lived for 59 years, I learn virtually nothing
about the man, what he did, or the consequences. Could it be less
interesting? There is no chance that algebra students know what is
intermediate analysis, the Chinese remainder theorem, an algorithm, an
infinite series, or a bureaucratic position. Therefore, much of the text, quite
literally, meaningless. Military matters, surveying, astronomical data, and
calendar experts could all be interesting, but we learn nothing about them.
At least the textbook includes a nice watercolor of Ch'in. How does this
help connect students to mathematics?
Pillar 2: Math Education Conveys Rituals and

Procedures But Not Understanding
...information is an undigested burden unless it is understood. It is

knowledge only as its material is comprehended. And understanding,
comprehension, means that the various parts of the information acquired
are grasped in their relation to one anothera result that is attained only
when acquisition is accompanied by constant reflection upon the meaning
of what is studied.
John Dewey (1933)
Rituals are customs and practices that we perform without question.

Sometimes there is a story that goes with a ritual; many religious rituals
have a narrative that ties the ritual back to a time and place and events that
the ritual has come to symbolize. Other rituals have lost their stories and are
simply done because they, it seems, have always been done. I have no
objection to harmless rituals, but not all rituals are harmless.
Math Student Rituals
Some rituals are universal among math students. These are the rituals
that they learn, implicitly, from watching their math teachers who,
themselves, learned the rituals from their own math teachers. They are not
incorrect in that they violate no mathematical truths, but they are
unfortunate because they are performed ritualisticallywithout thought.
Ritual behaviors cannot promote understanding because they are performed
50 The 4 Pillars
automatically, by rote, without thinking.
The Ritual of Graphing
Ask a math student, a good one or a bad one, to present information

graphically. It doesn't matter what kind of information. Here are some
examples:
1. graph a line given its equation

2. there is a well-known relationship between the price of a good and
the quantity of it demanded (purchased): higher price, lower
demand; lower price, higher demand. Show this graphically
3. plot the 100 points that represent the landing positions of 100
arrows that were shot straight up into the air
4. all 7th grade students took the same statewide math exam. You are
given the average score for all students and also the number of
students who earned each possible score. Please show the average
and how quantities of scores are distributed around the average
score
5. using a company's annual cost and revenue data, plot the company's
year-by-year profit (where profit is calculated by subtracting total
cost from total revenues)
6. present a graph of anything you like
The result will always be the same: the student will

begin by drawing a pair of axes and labeling them x and
y. Whenever students are asked to graph something they
begin in this way. They do this reflexively and without
thought. It is automatic. Drawing the axes and labeling them is a display of
ritual knowledge (Perkins, 1992, p. 25). Part of the ritual of creating a graph
is to draw those intersecting axes and label them x and y. Students generally
know that points will fall to the left or right of the y-axis as their x-values
are positive or negative and below or above the x-axis as their y-values are
negative or positive. From that starting point, every point can be plotted
whether it can exist or not.
Consider Graph 1, where the student must plot a line

given its equation. Here the ritual beginning happens to
be appropriate. Depending on the particular equation, any
point might be on the line. But what about the other
graphs? Is the same pair of axes and labels always a
thoughtful starting point?
Look at Graph 2. Prices cannot be negative and neither can the quantity
demanded, so the graph cannot include points to the left of the y-axis nor
below the x-axis. Also, since the student is graphing a relationship between
the price of a good and the corresponding quantity that will be demanded,
the labels x and y are perfectly meaningless. Labeling the axes price and
quantity is more meaningful.
The ritual of using intersecting axes labeled x and y is, by luck,
appropriate for Graph 3, but not for graphs 4 and 5. These are better:
Graph 4 'score' Graph 5 'year'

cannot be negative cannot be negative
This ritual of beginning all graphs with a pair of intersecting axes and
labels x and y indicates a shallow (or absent) understanding of the purpose
of a graph and its nature. The ritual is performed because that's how to start
a graph. Beginning a task without thought, passively going through the
motions and setting forth a work space (a graph with four quadrants) that
is ill-suited to the problem fails to focus thought in fruitful directions and
suggests possibilities that are inappropriate. As we will see (when we look
at metacognition, p. 60), expert problem solvers behave quite differently:
they spend a large portion of their time actively working to understand a
problem before they attempt any solution.
The Naming Ritual
There is plenty more ritual knowledge too. Some of it doesn't just reveal
a lack of understanding but actually contributes to it. Ask 100 algebra
students to solve one of the problems we looked at earlier,
A financial planner wants to invest $8000, some in stocks earning

15% annually and the rest in bonds earning 6% annually. How
much should be invested at each rate to get a return of $930
annually from the two investments?
and all 100 of them will let,
x represent the quantity of bonds to purchase

y represent the quantity of stocks to purchase
52 The 4 Pillars
or vice versa. If you ask them, Why on earth does x seem a good name for
a variable that will represent the quantity of bonds? they will look at you
like you have 14 heads and won't even be able to muster a response. The
question won't even make sense to them; not even to the few who really do
understand their math. If you ask them to try and pick a better name
they'll either remain silent because they can't imagine what you're talking
about, or offer up a or z or some other equally meaningless name just to try
to please you. They pick the name x because that is their ritual; they have
always picked the name x. But x is not like or or or each of which,
by tradition, is always understood to mean a certain thing. The name x is
simply what they choose as they perform the ritual of decontextualization.
They choose y to represent the next quantity in the problem (stocks in this
problem), and if there were a third quantity it would, of course, receive the
name z.
Next, suggest something radical: suggest they use the variable name
bonds to represent the quantity of bonds (and use stocks to represent the
quantity of stocks). The students will be appalled. They will, to a person,
laugh or scoff and tell you that a variable name cannot be more than one
letter long. They will tell you that if you name the variable bonds, then
nobody will know that it is a single variable, and everyone will assume it is
the product of five variables:
b o n d s
They will say this as though they are performing a work for hire that will
be reviewed by an outside panel of experts, rather than a tiny bit of work for
themselves and their own eyes only. The ridicule and scorn from the
students might, for a moment, make you question your own position. A
moment's reflection (if you happen to be experienced in computer software
development) will remind you that most every modern computer language
allows programers to give variables names of unlimited length. It is the
mark of the novice programmer to use variable names that are one letter
long. Competent programmers try to choose meaningful variable names
(words) because they use lots of variables and make lots of mistakes. When
a program isn't working correctly, fixing it requires understanding it, and it
is easier to understand the purposes and states of variables with meaningful
names than meaningless ones. But back to the riot...
Since the students simply won't be able to wrap their minds around the
heretical notion of giving meaningful names to things (at least not in math
class), you can compromise. You can suggest the variable name b for the
quantity of bonds and s for the quantity of stocks. That will calm them, but
every last kid will still use x and y to work the problem, and when they
solve it they won't remember whether x stands for the bonds or the stocks. A
sizable portion of the kids who calculate correct values for x and y will then
incorrectly connect x to the stocks and y to the bonds.

When you point this out it will make no impression.
Procedure After Procedure, Without

Understanding
Ours is not to reason why, just invert and

multiply...
When children first begin counting they just rattle off numbers, in and
out of order, skipping some, repeating others, counting some items once,
others two or more times, and missing some altogether. They can't
recognize that their application of the counting process is flawed because
they don't yet understand what counting is. They have absolutely no idea
what they are doing in counting. Without understanding the subject matter,
counting, there is nothing to guide or let them check the process. The only
hope is to memorize the process and practice it enough to achieve a
superficial proficiency through procedurization. Yet, without understanding
the what and why of the process, and without any particular reason to apply
it, what intrinsic motivation can there be to perform a process? There can,
of course, be extrinsic motivations: the adults become happily excited when
I do this; my teacher gave me an assignment; my boss will fire me if I don't
do this.
After counting, and without explanation, we expect students to come to
grips with the mechanics of using a number system (we favor a base 10
system) and the notion that we use only 10 symbols (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) to
represent an infinity of numbers. We gloss over the huge idea that using
only the numeral 1 we can represent 1, 11, 111, etc., and that a 1 and an 8
are used as easily to represent 18 as 81. We make no mention of the
interesting reality that countless other number systems are possible, that no
one of them is best in any thoughtful sense, and that some number
systems are better suited to certain tasks and contexts than others.
Perhaps it is not developmentally appropriate for elementary school
children to be tormented with the idea of a number system or base.
Appropriate or not, we don't even suggest that we are using a number
system to systematically manipulate our numbers. Instead of focusing on
understanding and then codifying it in a procedure, we skip the
understanding entirely. In the absence of understanding all that can remain
is procedure. The first procedure we teach is how to add a column of
numbers:
1 Add all the digits in the rightmost column and write down
35 (below the line) the least significant digit. Write any
+ 55 additional digits atop and alongside the column to the left of
90 the one that was just tallied and call it a carry. Proceed
54 The 4 Pillars
leftward to the next column, tally all digits in that column, add
Base 10 the carry (if there is one), again record the least significant
digit below the line, and carry the remaining digits. Continue
leftward across all columns until done.
By the way, aren't these sums also correct if we use bases 9, 8, 7, 6 and 16?
1 1 1 1
35 35 35 35 35
+ 55 + 55 + 55 + 55 + 55
101 112 123 134 8A
Base 9 Base 8 Base 7 Base 6 Base 16
If the base 10 sum seems obvious, while the rest seem less so, to what
can we attribute this other than years of mindless arithmetic in base 10
without understanding what is a base? Do you think the one result is more
obvious than the others to a beginner? Oh, and is there some reason to favor
base 10 beyond that God or Evolution has given us 10 fingers? What,
exactly, is the relationship between our 10 fingers, the way we count, and
our use of base 10? Isn't this question important enough for students of
arithmetic to explore? Is some other element of arithmetic more important,
or interesting, or more arbitrary than this? Do you imagine any student can
come to understand base 10 or what is a base without exploring another
base? Well, nobody can; not any more than he can understand what is a
noun by considering only one.
Obviously, even without understanding anything about number systems
one can become very proficient at adding columns of numbers using the
specified process and a lot of practice. Of course, if a student makes a
careless error (writing down the 1 and carrying the 8, instead of writing
down the 8 and carrying the 1), he can get a ridiculous sum:
8
19
+ 9
91
If, however, the student doesn't understand what the procedure actually
does, he will not notice that the sum is wildly wrong.
Working countless hundreds of these mindless addition problems in
class and for homework reinforces the process while making absolutely no
use of understanding. Beyond that, when a teacher corrects such work it
is generally impossible to tell anything about a student's understanding.
Understanding is not necessary, only mastery of a process, so corrections
are made to the execution of the process, not to any fundamental
understanding of the nature of addition.
Subtraction, multiplication and division are presented similarly. What do

children learn from working endlessly on such arithmetic problems in the
early school years? Mostly, they learn that math is procedural because they
learn one procedure after another for performing arithmetic. They learn that
math is about remembering which sequence of steps to follow and when.
They spend years practicing to become a four-function calculator from the
Dollar Store. They never see any of the math they do in any context except
in the kind of word problems we have already seen. Consequently, students
find math singularly dull and joyless. Any suggestion that mathematics is a
creative endeavor that can be fun, surprising, and even exciting is laughable
and ridiculousin spite of the fact that math can be a creative endeavor that
is fun, surprising and even exciting.
Pet Tricks
Kids are taught math as pets are taught tricks. A dog has no idea why its
master wants it to perform. With careful training many dogs can be taught
to perform complex sequences of actions in response to various commands
and cues. When a dog is taught to perform a trick it has no need or use for
any understanding beyond which sequence of movements its trainer
desires. The dog is taught a sequence of simple physical movements in a
specific order to create an overall effect. In the same way, we teach children
to perform a sequence of simple computations in a specific order to achieve
an overall effect. The dog uses its feet to move about a space and
manipulate objects; the student uses a pencil to move about a page and
manipulate numbers. In most cases, the student doesn't know any more than
the dog about the effect he creates. Neither has any intrinsic motivation to
perform nor any idea why the performance is demanded. Practice, practice,
practice, and eventually the dog can perform reliably on command. This is
exactly how kids are trained to perform math: do a hundred meaningless
practice problems, and then try to do the same trick on the test.
Obviously, however, there is a large difference between a dog and a
child: a dog cannot understand and a child can. Children are smart.
Children begin with intense curiosity and have the capacity to understand as
a dog never will. To train children as we train pets is disrespectful,
ineffective, and actually harmful. We certainly do not expect a dog to go out
into the world and find opportunities to shake hands or roll over. Do we
really expect kids to go out into the world and find opportunities to add
columns of five-digit numbers or divide a negative fraction by a positive
one? I don't suppose a dog ever becomes disappointed and dispirited that
rolling over is not useful; all he wants is praise and a treat. Children, by the
tens of millions, do become disappointed and dispirited as they spend year
after year memorizing and performing math tricks they do not understand
and for which they have no use.
If the only result of K-7 math training is to produce kids well-drilled in
56 The 4 Pillars
arithmetic then why not just give them calculators and devote the time spent
on math to learning a foreign language, or philosophy, or something else
that can be satisfying and useful? If there really is some great value in being
able to add a column of numbers without a calculator, I hope someone will
share it with me. Is the fear that someone might get stranded on a deserted
island without a calculator and then what? Why don't we have the same fear
of being without a pencil? In today's world isn't it generally easier to find a
cell phone than a pencil, and doesn't every cell phone include a calculator
application? Do we still teach children how to build a cooking fire, or make
nails of wrought iron, or spin cotton, or pluck chickens?
I have no objection to performing arithmetic by hand, and I believe that
every child should learn how to do this. But how much time should be
devoted to developing this skill and at what cost? Even if we believe that it
is important, as I do, should we do it to the exclusion of everything else? A
seven or eight year diet of only arithmetic in math education is fatal to
mathematical curiosity and deadens the life of the mind. Such curricula fail
to develop concrete or abstract thinking skills, or reasoning skills, or any
kind of understanding. They completely ignore these faculties and let them
lay fallow during a period when they can and should be actively developed.
Ready... Set... Ready... Set... Ready... Set... (but never Go!)
In elementary school our children spend time every day, year after year,
studying math in class and doing math homework. All that work is aimed at
no more than mastering the mechanics of arithmetic. They never get to do
anything mathematical. They spend years preparing for that big step. By the
time that opportunity arrives no interest remains in taking it. Fortunately,
there is no other subject taught as math is taught. Let's try to imagine,
however, what an analogous approach would look like in another discipline.
Reading Lessons
Imagine teaching children to read English, beginning in kindergarten, by

starting with letters only. No stories, no books, no illustrations. First learn to
recognize and name the letters. Begin with upper-case and then lower.
Forget about associating sounds with the letters. That will come later. Much
drill and practice will be needed to instantly recognize each letter. After
learning all of the letters, words can be introduced. Lots of words, including
many that the kids don't know, because learning to spell those words will be
useful later if they learn what those words mean. At this point the words
should not be used in sentences, as the mechanics have not yet been
mastered. The spelling of each word can be drilled and tested. This is a
good time to learn which part of speech each word can serve: nouns and
verbs and articles and prepositions and the like. No need to understand each
part of speech, but only to remember which words are nouns, etc. Enormous
attention must be paid to verbs: how to conjugate them and how they reflect
tense. No doubt, it will take years to memorize the forms of the irregular
verbs, with lots of drill and practice.
Jargon is important too. Every student must learn the lexicon of reading:
participle, gerund, passive voice, irony, perspective, and many more. The
lexicon of printing should also be studied: fonts and typefaces and glyphs
and ligatures. Next is the time to learn about punctuation which should be
introduced with a lot of rules so students will know when to use a
semicolon instead of a comma and which punctuation gets the privilege of
climbing inside of a closing quotation mark and which do not. English has
many special cases, and they must be enumerated and memorized. Only
after these mechanics and more have become automatic should the student
be allowed to undertake the reading of a book. Writing comes much later.
One must not attempt to be creative or expressive until the complete
foundation of mechanics has been carefully laidin graduate school, or
possibly near the end of college.
Can you imagine teaching reading without actually reading and writing
too? I'm all grown up, and I'm not proud to say this, but I don't know what a
gerund is. Perhaps I should have been exposed to some examples and
drilled a few million times in their use before being permitted to read or
share my thoughts in writing. The mechanics of reading and writing are
important and useful but neither as an end in themselves nor worthy of
study at the exclusion of actually reading and writing. In the best of
circumstances the first steps toward literacy take place at home with the
reading of picture books and bedtime stories. We do this to connect literacy
to the child's world and imagination. Reading and writing become joyous
mysteries that children want to unlock even though it takes years of effort.
We sustain the joy and the mystery of literacy by reading books we love
with children we love. We do this to strengthen our relationships, instill a
desire for literacy in children, and connect ourselves and our children to the
thoughts and experiences of others too.
Most parents, as a result of their own math educations, know nothing of
mathematics beyond some math facts (e.g. multiplication table) and a very
few of the pet tricks (e.g. long division) they learned as children and still
remember. Obviously, these parents are not going to curl up with their kids
at bedtime, open a math book they love, and share that love with their kids.
If children cannot develop a positive affective relationship to math at home,
isn't it all the more important to construct math curricula with that potential
at school?
Endless Practice in Mechanics
But in math, the argument goes, kids need to master the mechanics of
arithmetic, or they can never be successful in the math that follows.
Sometimes the cure is more harmful than the ailment. Our system does
58 The 4 Pillars
achieve arithmetic proficiency (of the Dollar Store calculator variety) on a

wide scale. So, with all those kids having mastered the mechanics necessary
to succeed in math, shouldn't we see high levels of mathematical
achievement in middle school and high school? We do not.
Perhaps I'm taking a too narrow view of mechanics. Maybe the
mechanics necessary for success include fractions, decimals, algebra and
geometry too, and real success in math can come after that. All of those
topics are taught by emphasizing mechanics too. We have seen how they are
decontextualized. This is done to make it easier to adopt a mechanical
approach. They are snipped out of the world and disconnected from all
experience. They are mastered by memorizing procedure after procedure
and working thousand upon thousand of crushingly boring and tedious
homework problems. No, it is not the mechanics that are necessary for
success in later math, it is understanding that is necessary. Understanding is
necessary and mechanics are helpful, not the other way round. Without
understanding, one can practice enough to become a calculator from the
Dollar Store, but no further mathematical achievement is possible.
Take another look at the NAEP math scores for grades four, eight, and
twelve (p. 17). Perhaps the reason that proficiency rates decline from grade
four (39%) to grade eight (34%) and again from grade eight to grade twelve
(26%) is that, mechanics aside, more and deeper understandings are
required for proficiency as students advance through the grades and
undertake more sophisticated mathematics. Perhaps the mere application of
mechanical procedures, without understanding, is insufficient in fourth
grade, even less sufficient in eighth grade, and less sufficient still in twelfth
grade?
Please, however, make no mistake. I am not saying that mechanics are
irrelevant or unimportant. Students must obtain enough practice in basic
arithmetic for a great many routine number facts to be recalled instantly and
for basic procedures to be performed automatically, fluidly and correctly.
These facts and procedures are the most basic necessities, the most
primitive tools of mathematics. A good woodworker, through practice and
experience, becomes skillful in the use of his tools. A painter uses brushes
and oils, and knives, and canvas. A writer wields a lexicon and grammar,
has internalized the conventions and expectations of readers and other
writers and publishers, and the mechanics of typing and using a word
processor. Part of achieving mastery is developing the ability to use tools
deftly and without conscious effort. Proficiency in any endeavor requires
mechanical mastery of the tools. While the tools are helpful, they are never
central. A fine painter, writer, woodworker, or scientist can express his art or
conduct his investigation without his favorite tools and even invent new
techniques and tools. Mastery doesn't depend on tools but merely makes use
of them. Mastery depends on a deep understanding of the why and
wherefore, history and consequences. Tools without mastery express,
consider, and produce nothing because tools are devoid of understanding.
Consider this: after a writer, a scientist, or a painter has matured (or

passed on) it can be interesting to look back and try to trace her
development. When available, a look at the early writings, paintings,
contraptions, or experiments that attracted and engaged the young person,
and developed and sustained her interest, can be fun. They may reveal skills
and understanding as they developed in the person. Can you imagine trying
to do this in math? What would a look back at the middle school math of a
mathematician reveal? He was very good at carrying? He loved and adored
the 9 row of his multiplication table, but for several years he was rather
careless when placing the decimal point? The very idea of looking at
anyone's middle school math seems nutty, and the idea that it could be
interesting is unimaginable. With math curricula in their current forms it is
nutty and unimaginable, but does it need to be? Of course not. This is not
the nature of math, it is the nature of our math curricula and pedagogy.
In the next part of this essay I will set forth an approach to math
education that is rigorous and based on understanding, with ample
opportunity for students of widely varying ability to develop necessary
mechanics, and also produce creative and engaging work. Most kids still
won't love math (any more than most kids love any one subject) but more
will, and legions won't be driven to hate it.
Understanding Reduces Dependence on Memory
When math is taught as a disconnected sequence of topics (e.g. as

algebra is always taught) it is hard to develop understandings because after
one topic is studied it often vanishes for months, years, or altogether (see
research finding R13). This reduces the likelihood of making additional
associations (R6) and makes deep understanding unlikely. Where there is
not understanding there can only be the most shallow learning: mindlessly
memorizing facts and procedures. Memory is important in the support of
understanding, but recalling disconnected math facts cannot substitute for
understanding. So, for example, every child should memorize the
multiplication table, but that memory is useless without understanding what
is multiplication. Knowing when and why multiplication is a useful tool
depends on understanding. Understanding also aids memory (R1, R2, R3).
If I understand, for example, what is variance then it is easier to remember
how to calculate it because I both remember and understand that variance is
the sum of the squares of the differences between each data value and the
mean. Since I also understand each element of that definition, it is easy to
remember: I merely state my understanding. In this case, the understanding
eliminates any need to remember any procedure because with my
understanding I can easily work one out when I want to calculate variance.
Similarly, variance and standard deviation are close relatives, so if I
understand them both it is easy to remember how to calculate the one
from the other. Understandings are ideas and connections to other ideas and
60 The 4 Pillars
to specific information (R3). Without the understandings, all that remains

are bits of unconnected specific information: the multiplication table, a
formula for variance, another for standard deviation, etc.
Certainly, students can learn to do calculations without any
understanding of why or what for, but how is that valuable? If we present
procedures for calculating averages and standard deviations to a student, he
can master the mechanics of these calculations, but how will he know when
to perform them or what to make of the results? Of course, he will know to
perform these tricks when he encounters a problem on his math test that
begins, John has taken 10 quizzes and earned these scores: ..., and ends
with, ...calculate John's quiz average and the standard deviation. But that
is no more an indication that the student has learned anything mathematical
than Fido barking when you say, Speak! indicates the dog has learned
language. If, however, the student comes to understand what is an average
and a standard deviation he might be able to use that understanding to
concisely describe data distributions, or to develop additional statistical
understandings, or to make sense of a statistical argumentmaybe even to
evaluate it. Education without understanding is a brutal waste of time; no
matter the test scores, it is failure.
Pillar 3: Metacognitive Activity is Absent in Math

Education
Metacognition is the most essential ingredient in the process

of understanding.
Me (I think)
Meta-what? Metacognition is cognition about cognition. The term is

credited to John Flavel (1976) who described it most simply as, thinking
about one's thinking. Metacognitive activities include a person monitoring
her own approaches to learning and understanding, recognizing when she
does or does not understand something, identifying her points of confusion,
consciously altering her learning or problem solving strategies when she's
stuck, unraveling the errors in her own thinking, deciding what kind of
evidence to look for to convince herself that something is true or not, and
the like. In the context of problem solving, cognition focuses on solving a
problem, and metacognition focuses on the process of solving a problem.
So, for example, recalling information and ideas that may be helpful in
solving a problem is a cognitive activity, while monitoring the progress and
managing the process of solving a problem are metacognitive activity.
While there is no single, universally accepted definition of
metacognition (Alexander, 2008), Schraw and Moshman (1995) set forth a
comprehensive description of the components of metacognition that has
found wide acceptance across a range of research fields including education

and cognitive psychology (Legg & Locker, 2009). Within this definition the
broadest distinction is made between metacognitive knowledge (what one
knows about cognition) and metacognitive skills (how one uses such
knowledge to regulate cognition). Each of the two broad categories is
divided into three sub-categories:
Metacognitive Knowledge
Declarative knowledge about oneself as a learner and about
what factors influence one's performance
Procedural knowledge about execution of procedural skills that
lead to skill automaticity and more effective
strategy selections and sequencing
Conditional knowing when and why (conditions) to apply
various cognitive actions
Metacognitive Skills
Planning selection, before beginning a cognitive task, of
appropriate strategies and allocation of resources
that affect performance
Monitoring one's awareness and comprehension of task
performance while engaging in a cognitive activity
Evaluation appraising the results of one's learning efforts and
processes applied
Some theorists consider a third, broad category of metacognitive beliefs, but

the nuances of metacognition theories are beyond the scope of this essay.
Improving Metacognition
I will focus on two of the most fundamental, important, and well-

established findings from metacognitive research:
1. metacognitive skills can be taught and learned and result in

improved learning outcomes2 in many different target domains
(reading, writing, physics, math, etc.)
2. while some metacognitive knowledge and skills may be of a general
and broadly applicable nature3, there is also metacognitive
knowledge and control strategies that are specific to individual
fields of study4
2 Brown & Palincsar, 1989; Cross & Paris, 1988; Delcos & Harrington, 1991;
Desoete, Royers, & De Clercq, 2003; King, 1991; Kramarski, 2004; Pennequin,
Sorel, Nanty, & Fontaine, 2010
3 Veenman, M. V. J., Van Hout-Wolters, B. H. A. M., & Afflerback, P., 2006
4 Lester, Garofalo & Krull, 1989; Schoenfeld, 1992
62 The 4 Pillars
Much research has been conducted that establishes the importance of

metacognition in mathematics and problem solving (for a summary see
Pennequin, et al., 2010). Experiments by Desoete, Roeyers and Buysee
(2001) found that metacognitive knowledge and skill levels accounted for
37% of the variation in mathematical problem-solving performance for the
third grade students they studied. They also found that assessments of
metacognitive ability were effective for distinguishing students with
mathematics learning disabilities from merely below-average performers
and also for distinguishing average from high-level performers.
Metacognition and Intellectual Ability
A fascinating study of correlations between metacognitive skillfulness

(MS), intellectual ability (IA) and learning outcomes was conducted by
Prins, Veenman, & Elshout (2006). The subjects were first year
undergraduate psychology students studying physics. They were classified
as novice learners or advanced learners according to how many terms of
physics each studied in past. The units of physics training proceeded in
three phases: easy, intermediate and complex. Learning outcomes were
positive for both groups, with greater overall gains for the novice than
experienced learners.
Using statistical methods they isolated the contributions of intellectual
ability and metacognitive skillfulness to learning outcomes. For novice
learners, metacognitive skillfulness was the main contributor to learning in
the easy phase. For the advanced learners, metacognitive skillfulness was
the main contributor to learning outcomes during the intermediate phase.
During other phases intellectual ability and metacognitive skillfulness each
made much more modest contributions to learning for both groups.
Their results suggest that when a topic or problem type is well-known to
a learner (e.g. experienced learners in the easy phase) he is operating well
below his boundary of knowledge and long-term memory recall is sufficient
for cognition. When a novice learner undertakes something new, but within
her capacity (e.g. novice learner during easy phase), and also when a more
advanced learner undertakes a problem that is challenging, but still within
her range of expertise (e.g. advanced learner during intermediate phase),
metacognitive skillfulness, rather than intellectual ability, appears most
important for successful learning. Let me underscore that in both cases the
student is working at (but not beyond) the boundary of her knowledge. This,
of course, is exactly where we want students to be when learning: working
with material that they do not already know, so there is something to learn,
but not so far beyond their knowledge that they become overwhelmed. This
is precisely where metacognition is most important to learning.
Teaching Metacognition
The importance of metacognition in doing and learning mathematics

that has emerged over the last 40 years is exciting and important. While
there is no dispute that cognitive abilities vary widely, there is no body of
research indicating how or how much they can be improved. Yet,
metacognition regulates cognition, and there is ample evidence that
metacognitive knowledge and skills can be taught alongside domain content
and at no great cost, with significant benefits.
Experience has shown, in multiple domains, that teaching metacognitive
knowledge and skills should be woven into the fabric of curricula. This is
one of three fundamental principles that have emerged for successful
metacognitive instruction:
1. metacognitive instruction should be integrated into the subject

matter of curricula
2. the benefits of metacognitive activities should be explained to
learners, and they should be encouraged to work at these activities
3. metacognitive instruction and practice must be sustained over a
long period before students habituate metacognitive activity
Let's look at one example. Alan Schoenfeld is a mathematician and

faculty member in the graduate school of education at the University of
California, Berkeley. He taught undergraduate classes in problem solving
into which he carefully integrated metacognitive skills development. He
made more than 100 videotapes of pairs of students working to solve
unfamiliar problems; ones where the students didn't know in advance
which techniques would be helpful.
A fundamental characteristic of problem solving in the real world is that
there are no such clues to a solution yet, in math classes, students are
typically presented with problems that match up precisely with the topic
under study at the moment. Schoenfeld (1992) reports that at the beginning
of his course 60% student pairs worked like this:
They spent a minute or two reading the problem, quickly picked an

approach, and never changed course whether they were making progress or
64 The 4 Pillars
not. At the end of 20 minutes, when asked how their approach would help
them solve the problem, they couldn't say. Using such a strategy, if the
initially selected approach is unsuitable, there is no chance of success.
Schoenfeld contrasts the student activity with that of a member of the
mathematics faculty working on a difficult, two-part problem:
Notice how much time the expert spent trying to make sense of the problem
(analyzing). The triangles indicate points where the problem solver
commented aloud something like, Hmm. I don't know exactly where to
start here... or Okay, now I need to... The expert made numerous false
starts, heading off in wrong directions, but carefully monitored his own
work and, unlike most students, drew himself back from dead ends.
By the end of the course, this kind of activity was typical of many
student groups:
Though still not performing as experts, there appears to be much

improvement in metacognitive control, and the students were generally
more successful at solving problems.
In those classes, about one-third of class time was spent with students
working in groups of three or four working on problems. Schoenfeld visited
one group after another in a consultative capacity, always reserving the right
to ask these three questions:
What (exactly) are you doing?

(Can you describe it precisely?)
Why are you doing it?

(How does it fit into the solution?)
How does it help you?

(What will you do with the outcome when you obtain it?)
Early in the term, students were usually unable to answer those questions.
As it became clear to the students that he would continue to ask these
questions, relentlessly, throughout the term, the groups began to defend
themselves by discussing them before he asked them. By the end of the
term this metacognitive behavior became their habit. Schoenfeld notes that
most of a semester is needed for this kind of behavioral change.
Pillar 4: Sociolinguistic Obstacles to Success in

Mathematics
When people use language in face-to-face (FTF) communication there

are many channels over which communication occurs. There are, of course,
the words spoken. That is but one dimension of the vocal channel. Other,
purely physical dimensions include tone of voice, inflection and loudness,
accent, the timing and rhythm of speech, and others too. Hymes (1974)
describes key as the tone, manner, or spirit in which a [speech] act is done
(p. 57). For example, the key of a speech act might be friendly or impatient.
A skillful speaker may place key in conflict with textual content, as when a
speaker wishes to convey sarcasm. Here, the key actually overrides the text
of the speech. Key itself may be conveyed vocally, or in part or whole by
other means, as with a smirk or gesture. Akin to key is the concept of
register: speakers combine lexicon, prosodic features, and dialect in
culturally prescribed ways for communicating in particular social contexts,
as when a child adopts an authoritative register when asked to explain an
idea in class (Adger, 1998). Register is a combination of vocal and nonvocal
choices.
Alongside the text of speech, vocal communication includes the
interrelationship of speech and silence (Reisman, 1974), the complex
dynamics of turn taking in dyadic conversation, and taking, maintaining,
and giving up the floor in group conversation (Goodwin, 1990).
In FTF communication nonvocal channels are extensively employed.
Eye contact, facial expression, head nodding, smiling, touching, posture,
dress, gesture, body orientation and lean, and physical distance of
participants convey important information about attentiveness, cooperation,
honesty, friendliness, politeness, and content itself.
The foundational idea and very essence of sociolinguistics is that
language separated from culture is without meaning. Meaning does not
66 The 4 Pillars
derive from dialect and lexicon. Rather, it is socially constructed within a

speech community. The processes of language acquisition and of
becoming a competent member of a speech community are inextricably
entwined. Beyond language, communication depends on shared cultural
knowledge and the skillful application of culturally specific speech
conventions within a speech community (Durante, 1997; Hymes, 1964,
1974; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1996). We are each born into some social setting
where, in the course of our primary socialization (long before we enter
school), we become part of our first (home) speech community. We acquire,
simultaneously, language entwined with culture. Later, we may become
members of additional speech communities: at school, in our peer groups,
on sports teams, as tradesmen, among our professional colleagues, etc.
In written communication the text of speech can be communicated, but
eye contact, facial expression, head nodding, smiling, touching, posture,
gesture, and physical orientation that are ordinarily conveyed non-vocally in
FTF communication are entirely lost. The relationship of speech to silence,
if not entirely lost, is severely distorted.
Math education takes place, face-to-face, in the classroom. It also takes
place in writing when students read textbooks and blackboards and write
their homework and exams. All math activity occurs in the speech
community of a school math class. The greater the similarity between the
speech community of the math class, and one with which the student is
already familiar and comfortable (e.g. home), the more natural and
comfortable it will feel to the student. The greater the differences, the more
alien the speech community of the math classroom will seem.
Dominant Culture
In countries of cultural diversity (including the U.S.) there is typically a

dominant culture. The dominant culture doesn't usually make explicit claims
about itself, but rather reflects itself by dominating the mainstream such
that the dominant culture becomes the mainstream one. The voices we hear
on radio and television use the dialect of the dominant culture. Movies,
television programs, news stories, and advertisements generally reflect the
values and concerns of the dominant culture. The institutions of a country
are designed and implemented, first and foremost, to serve the needs of the
dominant culture. Naturally, public schools adopt and promote the values
and dialect of the dominant, mainstream culture.
Children within a multicultural society who do not happen to be from
the dominant culture, and whose home speech community is different from
the dominant one, are not as well-matched to mainstream institutions,
including schools, as children from the mainstream.
Literacy in a Speech Community
It takes many years for a child to develop literacy, and the path to
literacy begins long before children enter school. In their home settings,
young children internalize their first culture and join their first speech
community. This primary enculturation includes developing a relationship
to books as well as people. The ways of taking from books are as much a
part of learned behavior as are the ways of eating, sitting, playing games,
and building houses (Heath, 1982, p. 49). Children learn how to use and
regard books:
In our country, children growing up in mainstream communities are

expected to develop habits and values that attest to their membership in a
literate society. Children learn certain customs, beliefs, and skills in
early enculturation experiences with written material. (p. 50)
Children from outside the mainstream culture may come to school with
relationships to books and written material different from mainstream
children and thereby be disadvantaged.
An Achievement Gap
Every NAEP assessment in mathematics, from its first report in 1973 to

its most recent, has shown a large and significant difference in scores by
race/ethnicity. Among the five racial/ethnic groupings (White, Black,
Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native) black
students have consistently scored lowest. A Black-White achievement gap
exists not only in mathematics, but across all NAEP subjects. The
achievement gap (difference in average NAEP scores) between black and
white fourth-grade students declined from 32 points to 27 points from 1990
to 2003, and the gap has remained steady at 26 points in every assessment
since (2005, 2007, 2009). During the same period, the achievement gap
between black and white eighth-grade students declined from 33 to 32
points. While it is certainly good that this achievement gap is closing, the
very slow rate of closure is troubling.
Analysis reveals that the rate of decrease of this gap has not been
constant. The rate of decrease slowed after 1988 (Hedges & Nowell, 1998),
and during the early 1990s the gap widened again (Campbell, Harnbo, &
Mazzeo, 1999). This early achievement gap has lifelong consequences for
individual children. It reduces later educational opportunities and,
consequently, employment choices, earnings (Jencks & Phillips, 1988), and
even health (Reynolds & Ross, 1998).
What accounts for this achievement gap? Many factors have been
suggested and explored, including differences in socioeconomic status,
inequitable distribution of resources between schools in advantaged and
disadvantaged neighborhoods, differing levels of parental involvement, and
68 The 4 Pillars
differences in family and community stability and values. These all reflect
enormous macro (societal) difficulties, some of which are more tractable
(e.g. resource allocation) than others. Equally interesting, and certainly
more tractable, are micro-explanations based on individual differences in
culture, language, Discourse, communication and miscommunication, and
understanding and misunderstanding that meet in a huge, societal blind spot
where hides the reality that academic success and failure are largely social
constructions.
Among the micro-explanations are:
students from outside the mainstream must adopt unfamiliar and

uncomfortable dialects and Discourses5 (Gee, 1989) to achieve
academic success; they must act white in school (Delpit, 1992;
Fordham, 1998; Ogbu, 1992, 2004)
differences in teacher expectations for black and white students
(Ferguson, 2003)
tendencies of public school authorities to evaluate black students by
white cultural values with the result that the institution of School
serves to sort and assign blacks to lower stations in societyeven in
the absence of overt racism (Ogbu, 2003)
cultural differences in preferred narrative form.
It is this last explanation, cultural differences in narrative form, that is the

focus of this section and will play a role in the intervention proposed in part
four of this essay.
If This Seems Like Nonsense
Let me be blunt: if your initial reaction as you read this section is that I
am spouting nonsense, then please take a break, find a mirror, and take a
look. You will almost certainly see a white person from the dominant
culture. I am not trying to create a race issue, and I hope you won't either.
It is universal human experience, across all multicultural societies, that
members of the dominant culture are as blind to their numerous privileges
as members of non-dominant cultures are shocked and endlessly confronted
by them (Kivel & Zinn, 2002).
Preferred Narrative Form
A central goal of primary education is for children to achieve literacy.
5 In the sociolinguistic literature, a Discourse (capital 'D') is the culture of

a speech community and includes its lexicon and its ways of knowing,
doing, making argument, evaluating evidence, and making sense. Every
profession, trade, and even social group has its own Discourse.
Of course, there are the mechanics of literacy: learning to process symbols

left-to-right (i.e. in English) and top to bottom; forming letters with a
pencil; the grouping of letters into words, words into sentences, sentences
into paragraphs; lexicon, spelling and punctuation. Beyond those mechanics
are correct word usage and grammar. Effective FTF communication is, in
many ways, different from effective non-FTF written communication.
Students must learn to identify relevant background information a reader
may be lacking and provide it explicitly because it isn't possible to ask a
book for additional information. Students must also learn to lexicalize and
grammaticalize information that in FTF communication is exchanged over
nonlexical channels including voice inflection, facial expression, timing,
register, body language, and tone. Change in topic, emphasis, perspective,
and time must also be lexicalized. A variety of classroom activities are
employed to help students develop these literacy skills, and some of them
begin far in advance of writing prose.
As already mentioned, language without culture is devoid of meaning. It
must be emphasized that meaning is a social construction between members
of a speech community. Communication across the boundaries of speech
communities is fraught with opportunities for miscommunication and
misunderstanding, not just of meaning but also intention and affect.
Perfectly appropriate and intentioned speech acts and behavior by a person
from one speech community may be regarded as inappropriate, offensive, or
foolish by a person from another.
Sarah Michaels (1981) looked at sharing time (or show and tell) in a
well-mixed, black-white first grade classroom. Michaels observed that
during sharing time one student at a time came forward to join the teacher
and describe an event from the recent past about which the rest of the class
knew nothing. A student was expected to describe the event itself, along
with any background information deemed helpful by the child. Michaels
found she could not analyze the students' discourse in isolation because the
teacher played a crucial role in the activity. The teacher provided emotional
support and also imposed a structure on the child's discourse. The teacher
asked specific questions when she felt the group needed additional
background information and modeled and required what she considered
good sharing. Michaels observed that when a child naturally used the
teacher's preferred narrative form the student's sharing time proceeded as a
relatively smooth collaboration between teacher and child.
However, when a student's narrative form was at odds with that of the
teacher, the result was much less successful. When interviewed, the students
whose discourse style didn't match the teacher's reported feeling interrupted
and shut down. Both the teacher and student felt frustrated, and the teacher
tended to evaluate those student as unsuccessful in the activity.
Michaels' discourse analysis revealed that the white students in the class
tended to share the (white) teacher's mainstream, narrative form, a form
Michaels described as topic centered. In a topic centered narrative there is a
70 The 4 Pillars
clear beginning, middle, and end with a linear progression of information

and a steady focus on one event or topic. The black students that Michaels
observed tended toward a narrative form that she described as topic
associative. Discourse in this form tends toward a series of implicitly
associated personal anecdotes without an explicit statement of a theme or
point. Thematic development is achieved through anecdotal association
rather than linear description. Both are complex, rich forms of narration, but
they are so different that when the one is expected and the other provided it
may be unrecognizable as a narrative form. The first grade teacher often
found herself unable to identify any topic at all in the narratives of the black
children. She often interpreted the inclusion of associated eventscentral to
the narrative form being used by many of the black childrenas
introducing irrelevant details and an inability to stay focused on the topic.
Mainstream culture in the U.S. favors topic centered narratives (Delpit,
1995), and white middle class families immerse their children in this form
through movies, bedtime stories, television programs, and even popular
music lyrics. Cazden (1988) describes a study in which stories told by black
and white first graders were read (after removing all syntax dialectical
markers) and tape-recorded by a white adult. A group of black adults and a
group of white adults listened to the tapes and commented on the stories.
The white students' stories were generally topic centered, and the black
students' stories were generally topic associative. White adults were
uniformly negative in rating the stories of the black children, while black
adults rated them highly.
In a particularly stark example, black adults described one of these
stories as well formed, easy to understand, and interesting, with lots of
detail and description. Three of the five black adults rated this story as the
best one, and one black adult judged the child as exceptionally bright,
highly verbal, and undoubtedly successful in school. The comments by
white adults on the same story included, terrible story, incoherent, [n]ot a
story at all in the sense of describing something that happened, she might
have trouble reading, she exhibits language problems that affect school
achievement, and that family problems or emotional problems might
hinder her academic progress.
What Has This to do with Mathematics?
Mathematical expression is yet another form of narrative. It narrates a

step-by-step solution to a problem. It has a clear beginning (the problem
statement), a middle (sequence of steps) and an end (solution). It is highly
linear. Good mathematical writing is acutely topic centered, and wasted
motion (unnecessary or redundant information) is abhorred. The work of
children accustomed to expressing themselves in a topic associative form
might well be interpreted as confused, round about, unfocused or wandering
when read by someone expecting a topic centered narrative form. If the
work concludes with a correct answer, the teacher might wonder where it
came from. If it concludes with a wrong answer, the seemingly irrelevant
associations can mask some genuine understandings and may leave the
teacher clueless about where to begin to help that child.
To improve math education for all students, especially the ones who are
meeting with the least success, it is important to develop curricula that
welcome students into, and help them join and learn the ways of, the speech
community of school mathematics.
4
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account
not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov
4. What to do...
What to do...
All that remains is to apply the lessons of the first three parts of this
essay to create a math curriculum. Even if the curriculum is thoughtful and
well constructed, it can only be adopted on a wide scale if it:
can be adopted and effectively taught by current math teachers

produces better learning outcomes using the assessment instruments
(standardized tests) already in use: NAEP and state tests
requires no (or little) additional resources
Let us begin by staking out the general principles to which every math
curriculum should adhere.
10 General Curricular Requirements
1. Understanding Must be Central in Math Education
Throughout this essay I have endeavored to emphasize the importance

of understanding in math education and also its widespread absence as a
goal and then as a result. Developing understandings must be the central
and unrelenting focus of math education.
2. Textbooks Must Not be Allowed to Undermine Math Education
Math classes, more than any others, rely on their textbooks. Textbooks
73
74 What to do...
provide the content and structure and guide the pedagogy of math classes.
Unfortunately, most popular textbooks brush aside understanding in favor of
excessively abstract and decontextualized procedures presented as an
overstuffed grab-bag of disconnected topics. Teachers must be provided
with better curricular materials, ones that emphasize the development of
understandings and help to make positive connections between students and
mathematics.
3. Teachers Must Stop Teaching Math as They Learned It
We must break the self-sustaining cycle of math education, in which

some small portion of the children taught by ineffective methods happen to
succeed anyway and then grow up to become math teachers who use those
same ineffective methods. Teachers must stop teaching math as they learned
it, and be guided to and along a more effective path. It is natural for math
teachers, who are generally from the 15% of humans who learn math easily,
to assume that everyone learns math the same way. It is also easy to assume
that everyone who is good at math learned it in the best possible way and
that everyone can and should learn math that way.
One of the important steps to take toward changing teaching methods is
to help teachers see that most children do not thrive in the current
environment of math education. As well, math teachers must be provided
with methods that are likely to be more successful. The most important
element, however, in changing the way math is taught must be to design
more effective curricula and curricular materials. Every element must stress
the importance of understanding, and assessments must be developed to
reward understanding and help students verify what they do and do not
understand.
4. Curricula Must be Coherent and Cumulative
By coherent I mean that each topic is introduced in such a way that it

fits with students' prior knowledge and also with curricular elements already
introduced. That is, as a topic is introduced associations can and should be
made with students' prior knowledge and experience. This promotes
understanding, recall (R6), and inference (R7). There should be no
disconnected, orphaned elements in a curriculum.
By cumulative I mean that each topic, once introduced, remains active in
the curriculum. Topics that appear once, without connecting to other topics,
and then disappear until another course or year don't promote understanding
and are unlikely to be remembered.
Coherent curricula promote understanding and the development of rich
associations and schemas. Cumulative ones promote the kind of long-term,
recurring experience and practice that promote recall and even automaticity
(R13).
5. Worked Examples Must be Emphasized for New Material
New concepts and techniques must be demonstrated initially through

numerous worked examples. Worked examples impose lower cognitive load
than problem solving (R15, R19). Also, exposing students to a broad range
of specific applications of a concept or technique (including the very typical
and also the more unusual) will help to ensure that the schemas they
construct are rich (R3). As students gain expertise, worked examples should
be phased out and problem solving phased in.
6. Curricula Must Include Examples of Excellent Performance
Students need models of excellence and guidance to help them improve

their own performances as they emulate those models. This helps to ensure
that the schemas students construct are sound (R5). The modeling and
guidance must be provided without creating an impression that there is only
one way to solve any problem. Creative solutions developed or discovered
by students should always be recognized, prized, and applauded.
7. Assignments Must Draw on the Old and the New
When assignments consistently require applying only the most recently

learned concept or skill students automatically know how to approach them.
This encourages a load-up-and-disgorge learning strategy, where students
load up their memories with the current topic for the next test and then
disgorge their memories of that topic to load up on the next one. This may
result in good short-term test results but is not effective for promoting
understanding and longer-term recall.
Instead, assignments (whether projects or homework) must draw on
knowledge of the current topic and also a variety of prior ones. This forces
students to consider each problem and assignment individually because the
chapter topic is no longer a reliable cue to an appropriate solution. This also
keeps prior topics alive in students' minds, avoids set effects (R10),
exercises students' full problem-solving repertoire, and promotes long-term
practice (R13) and proficiency (R12).
8. Content Must be Meaningful and Contexts Must be Rich
It is meaning that is remembered rather than specific details (R1).

Content, examples, and word problems must be meaningful to be
understood and also to be remembered. When contexts are rich enough for
students to explore them, and detailed enough to require thoughtful
examination, then students are more likely to engage in the kind of deep
processing that also promotes memory (R2).
New concepts and techniques should be well-grounded in concrete
76 What to do...
contexts, until they are well understood and practiced, at which point it is
appropriate to discuss and apply them in more abstract and decontextualized
ways (Pillar 1, p. 38). Inappropriate contexts, whether meaningless because
they are filled with terms students do not understand (p. 45) or because they
are at odds with student experience and reason (p. 43) make it difficult to
take mathematics seriously and inject doubts about the relevance of math to
the worlds students know.
9. Metacognitive Activity Must Pervade Mathematical Activity
Metacognitive activity should be ever-present in curricula, classroom

activities, and assignments (Pillar 3, p. 60). The deep processing that
accompanies metacognitive activity promotes understanding and recall
(R2). Metacognitive monitoring, in particular, is essential for solving
difficult problems.
It is well established that metacognitive skills can be taught (p. 61). To
be effective, however, metacognitive skills training should be woven into
curricula over an extended period.
10. Language Must be Taught, Used and Evaluated Fairly
Language and speech are so natural, effortless, and automatic that for
most people, most of the time, they are as invisible to speakers as water to
fish. We are only likely to notice them when we encounter differences
between the sounds, words, and waysthe Discourseof our own speech
communities, and those used by members of other speech communities. The
Discourses of school are much more familiar to some students than others.
If curricula are to be most effective for students from a variety of speech
communities, they must be designed to minimize assumptions about
students' use of language (Pillar 4, p. 65). Curricula must also welcome and
introduce students to the speech community of mathematics.
Math curricula should avoid excessive jargon, clearly define the jargon
they use, and be designed to minimize extraneous cognitive load by
avoiding unnecessarily complex language and sentence structures (p. 142).
Selecting Goals
I see essays, here and there, by individuals setting forth a favorite goal
for math education. Whether I happen to agree or not, I usually find them
thoughtful, but only short essays get published, so they are brief and can
only scratch the surface of this fundamental question. Some organizations
have produced richly detailed sets of goals (California State Department of
Education, 1985, 1992, 2006; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,
1980, 1989, 2006), but they tend to ignite controversy more often than
collaboration or agreement.
Experience has shown that there is no way to enter these watersno
matter one's viewswithout being mischaracterized by some, appreciated
by others, and demonized by a few. For more than 100 years there have
been two broadly competing views about what to teach in math classes and
how to teach it. This conflict, dubbed the math wars, waxes and wanes,
sometimes becoming ferocious and political. The history of the math wars,
though fascinating, is beyond the scope of this essay. For an account from
each side see Schoenfeld (2004) and Klein (2007). I have (albeit briefly)
corresponded with both authors and, though their views differ so greatly
that they cannot both be correct, there can be no doubting the sincerity and
good intentions of either.
Still, to address content, pedagogy, resource needs, assessment, or other
parts of a system of math education, without first identifying goals, is to put
the cart before the horse. So, let's look at some possible aims of math
education.
Widespread Agreement on Arithmetic
There is widespread agreement that math education should provide all

students with a basic understanding of numbers, counting, and arithmetic
(addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). It is widely agreed that all
students should, at some point, learn the standard algorithms for
arithmetic. That is, no matter how kids are introduced to arithmetic, they
should at some point learn to use the traditional, standard algorithms
(procedures) for adding columns of numbers, subtracting one number from
another, multiplying one number by another, and performing long division.
The standard, tried-and-true algorithms are important because they are
efficient, which is why they became the standard algorithms. Most everyone
also agrees that, as a result of math education, students should:
develop an understanding of fractions and how to perform arithmetic

with them
understand the role of the decimal point and how to perform
arithmetic with decimal numbers
learn how to convert numbers between fractional and decimal forms
understand what is a percent and learn to express decimal numbers
and fractions as percentages
Additionally, most everyone agrees that students should not just learn
how to use the standard algorithms, but should become proficient in their
use. We already know that achieving autonomous proficiency requires much
practice.
78 What to do...
Agreement on Content Only
Please note that the general agreement I have so far identified has to do
with content only. Everyone agrees that math education should achieve the
arithmetic proficiencies already described. Of course, there are many
possible approaches to achieving proficiency. It is likely that some are better
than others, though it is possible that some are equally effective and certain
that some approaches are better suited to some students than others. In
education-speak, the approach taken reflects a pedagogy: the methods of
instruction and the principles that underlie them. Even where there is
agreement from all directions on content, there are long-standing, deep-
seated, and competing beliefs about the effectiveness of alternative
pedagogies.
Until recently, these beliefs had to be based on gut feelings rather than
strong evidence because there simply were no data good enough to support
any strong claims of comparative pedagogical efficacy. The data situation
has changed. Now there are data that provide strong evidence that some
pedagogical approaches are better than others. Unfortunately, disagreements
over pedagogy are so strong that even compelling data cannot change
minds. But there is another very important point too: a curriculum isn't good
or bad only as a result of the pedagogy it deploys. That is, good pedagogy
poorly implemented can produce just as bad a curriculum as poor pedagogy
poorly implemented; a poor implementation of any pedagogy will produce a
poor curriculum. The most interesting comparisons are ones between well-
implemented curricula based on different pedagogies.
Beyond arithmetic proficiency, the goals for math education come from
many, varied, and sometimes incompatible directions, and some explicit
goals imply others. In no particular order, some of the common views are
that math education should:
a) be required from K-12 to promote the development of

mathematicians and scientists
b) develop problem solving and abstract thinking skills in students
c) include algebra, as it is the language of science
d) only teach what is practical and useful in daily life
e) contain as much content as possible, the more math content the
better
f) achieve deep understanding of the math that is studied, even if that
means reducing the volume of content significantly
g) provide a basic understanding of statistics because of the ever-
increasing role of statistically-based arguments in deciding matters
of public policy
Notice that goals (a) and (e) are in line with each other, and ensure that (c)
is achieved too but conflict with (d) and (f). One can't get far down the path
toward (b) in the absence of (f). Goal (f) is agnostic with respect to specific
content. Goal (g) is at odds with none of the other goals.
My 5 Goals for Math Education
It will be no surprise that, for me, the main goal of math education must
be to:
1. achieve deep understanding of all the math that is studied (goal f

above)
I also believe deeply in the importance of:
2. developing a basic understanding of statistical concepts and

methods (goal g)
Not everyone will agree on the importance of studying statistics, but that is
no matter as the methods I will set forth for improving math education are
the same whether the content includes statistics or not. The approach I
present also ensures that students will,
3. develop problem solving and abstract thinking skills (goal b)

4. learn and understand basic algebra (goal c)
in greater measure than using current methods.

I have no particular position on whether students should study math all
the way through twelfth grade (goal a). I don't believe that only the practical
and useful should be taught (goal d), but I have already argued that math
should be sufficiently concrete and contextualized (at least when new topics
are introduced) to make solid connections to the worlds students know.
Covering as much content as possible (goal e) is unwise, as it encourages
exactly the kind of over-stuffed and unsuccessful curricula widely used
(from algebra onward) today.
I'll also add one more goal that isn't on the list (above) of common
goals:
5. students should learn to think and express themselves

algorithmically
They should not learn to do this at the expense of any other modes of
thinking and expression but in addition to those other modes.
80 What to do...
What is Algorithmic Thinking and Why is it

Important?
What is algorithmic thinking? It is thinking directed at creating,

understanding, applying or analyzing algorithms. So, what is an algorithm?
An algorithm:
a) specifies a step-by-step process that produces some desired result

b) must specify each step unambiguously
c) must have a clear starting point
d) must have a clear stopping point, which the algorithm must ensure
will eventually be reached
There are some algorithms that everyone learns. In elementary school,

as part of your math education, you learned how to add a column of
numbers algorithmically. You learned to start at the rightmost column of
digits, add each digit from top to bottom, record the least significant digit at
the bottom of the column, and carry the remaining digits to the top of the
next column. You learned to repeat that process, working your way from the
rightmost to the leftmost column of digits before stopping. Similarly, you
learned algorithms for performing subtraction, multiplication, and long
division.
None of those algorithms require you to exercise any judgment. Taken
together, requirements (b), (c) and (d) ensure that an algorithm never relies
upon the judgment of whoever (i.e. a person) or whatever (e.g. computer) is
being guided by the algorithm. While it is possible that you will make a
mistake when you perform an algorithm, that mistake will be entirely due to
careless, human error rather than any trace of ambiguity in the algorithm or
poor judgment on your part.
Well, you might ask, What's the difference if I make a mistake
balancing my checkbook due to my own carelessness or my own poor
judgment?
Frankly, the answer is, None. Your checkbook is out of balance in
either case, and it may not be any easier to eliminate your carelessness than
to improve your judgment. As long as the entity executing the algorithm is
error prone (human) then algorithmic processes must be unreliable. But,
suppose a special potion became available to eliminate all possibility of
careless errors. After drinking that potion the only possible errors could be
ones of judgment. However, algorithms are unambiguous specifications that
never rely upon or even allow judgment, so any human who consumed the
potion could execute any algorithm flawlessly. The single, remaining
obstacle to performing tasks algorithmically would be time.
Algorithms have been well known to mathematicians for thousands of
years (e.g. Euclid's Algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of
two whole numbers). Until the twentieth century, however, algorithms were
performed by people. Even when performed correctly they could only be

performed at human speed. With the development of high-speed, digital
computers the breadth of application for algorithms exploded. In only a
decade or two it became apparent that algorithms requiring hundreds,
thousands, or even millions of stepsfar beyond the capacity of humans to
perform in a lifetimecould be quickly and flawlessly performed by
computers. That is precisely why algorithms are perfectly suited to
computers. Today, any inexpensive computer can perform hundreds of
millions of steps per second, blindly, without any intention, knowledge,
understanding, or sense of purpose. This combination of speed and
mindlessness works effectively because the algorithm a computer performs
leaves no room for judgment or interpretation. The computer follows the
algorithm perfectly. Every time a computer performs a particular algorithm,
using the same information, it does exactly the same thing. No other
possibility exists. The unambiguous instructions force the computer, step-
by-step, at miraculous speed, to the only result the algorithm can yield.
If this talk of algorithms is new and unfamiliar, it is only because you
are more accustomed to speaking of computer programs but the one is just a
form of the other. Before a computer can perform an algorithm the
algorithm must be expressed in a form that a computer can process. Such
expressions (of algorithms) are called, of course, computer programs.
The Emerging Importance of Algorithmic Thinking
The invention of fully-electronic, digital computers in the mid-twentieth

century led mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and scientists of all types
to invent and apply increasingly complex, computationally-intensive
algorithms to their work. Still, in those days computers were so expensive
that access to them was limited to the few who needed them most. As the
numbers of computers increased in both the scientific and commercial
sectors, especially in the 1960's, efforts to create artificial intelligence began
for the first time on a large scale. Researchers began developing software to
play games like chess, understand natural language (e.g. written English),
and look at the world through electronic eyes (computerized vision). As the
cost of computers declined through the ensuing decades these became
commercial products along with machines and software able to read aloud
to the blind, respond to voice commands, provide driving directions,
recommend spelling and grammar corrections, recognize human faces,
write poetry (not so good), invent new electronic circuits (some patentable),
and search staggering volumes of data for specific information (e.g. Internet
search engines).
Now, in the twenty-first century, all but the most disadvantaged people
living in modern societies have ready access to inexpensive computers of
staggering speed. After computers found their way into mathematics and
every branch of science and engineering, they gradually moved into every
82 What to do...
facet of the lives of ordinary people. Teaching, learning, writing, banking,

buying, selling, advertising, distributing, communicating, accounting,
researching, entertaining, editing (documents, images, video) have all been
transformed by inexpensive computers and the algorithms that drive them.
Whole industries have collapsed (e.g. newspapers) as others were born (e.g.
social networking). As computers continue to fall in price and increase in
speed and capacity even more opportunities for automation arise. At the
same time, new algorithms improve the quality of the work already
performed by computers and spawn entirely new uses too. Our modern
world is awash in algorithms that affect us every day, and they will never go
away.
Integrating Algorithmic Thinking into Math Education
Should we allow compulsory education to ignore the nature of the most

profound, far-reaching, and rapid technological transformation since the
steam engine and the Industrial Revolution? Well, you might say, I don't
know how a steam engine works, nor a combustion engine, nor an electric
motor and what of it?
The various technologies of the Industrial Revolution were not its
transformative elements, and the specific technologies of the computer are
not transformative either. The transformative elements of the Industrial
Revolution were the ideas of mechanization and automation. It is ideas,
ones that change perceptions across a culture, not technologies themselves
that spark revolutions. The transformative element of The Computer
Revolution and The Information Age is not ultimately the computer, or even
information, but the idea of algorithms doing fabulously complex work
autonomously.
In the early days of electronic computing the computers cost millions of
dollars and only performed algorithms of modest complexity. Computers
filled vast rooms with many thousands of hand-wired circuits, so it was easy
to confuse the relative importance of the computer and the algorithm. As
computers became increasingly fast, powerful, cheap, and ubiquitous the
algorithms became commensurately complex, flexible, clever and effective.
Once upon a time, access to powerful computers was the central barrier in
computing, and the algorithms were almost incidental, but now powerful
algorithms are central and the computers are incidental.
Algorithms provideactually aregoals and methods. They can be
written down on paper, or magnetic, optical or solid-state media but those
are their traces and shadows. Algorithms themselves are pure ideas, ethereal
and without any physical form. If you think, for even a moment, that
algorithms need computers consider that web pages move across the
Internet without any regard to the computers they pass from, through, or to.
Algorithms on your computer request web pages from other computers and
present them without ever needing to know anything about your computer,
the hosting computer, or any of the many computers in between. A series of
interacting algorithms does all of the work invisibly and in spite of the
specific computers, not because of them. Computers are to algorithms as
batteries are to electronic devices. When you consider a digital camera, a
cell phone, a GPS system, or even a portable radio or flashlight it is clear
that batteries are necessary but insignificant. Thus are computers to
algorithms.
Nearly all of the technology of modern societies depends on algorithms.
If we don't know what they are or how to think about, invent, express, and
apply them we cannot use them to improve our lives and our society nor can
we understand how others use or wish to use them to the advantage or
disadvantage of ourselves and our society. We can encourage our students to
ignore algorithms and algorithmic thinking by including it, marginally, in
our curricula as the topic of elective courses, or we can embrace it as a
fundamental mode of thinking, important enough in modern times to justify
its study as a basic element in a twenty-first century education. There is no
better way to do this than to integrate algorithmic thinking and expression
into math curricula.
Integrating mathematics with algorithmic thinking (and expression) is a
perfect marriage of the old with the new, the traditional with the modern,
the abstract with its practical application. In the course of learning to create
algorithms and express them as computer programs students learn abstract
ideas, how to express them with extraordinary precision, and then watch
their ideas come to life as their algorithms breathe life and purpose into
their computers. Students invent things entirely in their imaginations and
then manufacture them with nothing more than a keyboard and their
thoughts, creativity, understandings, and determination. They learn ideas
and techniques that enable them to guide, algorithmically, the breathtaking
speed of inexpensive, modern computers, and amplify their own abilities
and creativity to solve practical problems that cannot be solved by humans
acting without them. At the same time, mathematics and mathematical
thinking pervade the development and expression of algorithms. Computer
programs are themselves mathematical artifacts expressed use mathematical
notations, and creating them promotes mathematical thinking. Math
curricula will be supported and enriched by this integration.
Recall that in part one (p. 39) I asked if there is any child who comes
home and does math for fun, and then I stated the obvious: no such child
exists. Ask teachers who teach kids how to think and express themselves
algorithmically (through programs) the analogous question: Are there kids
who go home and write programs for fun?
You will hear a unanimous chorus of, Absolutely!
I am certainly not urging that we teach the one and not the other. The
fact is they are not even separate topics. If we teach them together, students
will learn both better. They will find countless points of connection that will
84 What to do...
deepen their understandings of mathematics and help them see connections

between mathematics and everything they think about algorithmically.
Thinking Tools
I remember, very well, my first contact with a computer. I was 11 years

old. My father, my brother, and I went on a series of visits, from
Pennsylvania to Vermont, to look at high schools. This was just a couple of
years before the very first microprocessor chips (these chips made home
computers possible) were created and a handful of years before the first
home computers. On a tour of one school, our student-guide introduced us
to the school's computer, named Oz. It was an IBM Selectric typewriter that
was electrically connected to a large and expensive computer at some far-
off location. Each message he typed to Oz was followed by a brief delay, as
if Oz was thinking, before the golf-ball head of that sleek, state of the art
typewriter would spin to life and bang out replies. I was mesmerized, and
intrigued, and certain that I wanted to learn about computers. I selected a
different school, but only a few years later I got my first opportunity to
study computing. My interest and involvement have never waned.
Over the following decades, as computers became ever less expensive
and more powerful, the Internet was born and blossomed, and schools
became wired and filled with computers I have watched very closely.
Needless to say, I am not a Luddite but I am, by nature, deeply skeptical.
There are enormous commercial pressures (from the many companies
that enjoy the vast revenues) to wire schools, fill them with technology, and
upgrade them as frequently as possible. There is plenty of research,
produced by parties with vested interests, to show how all of these
expensive technologies and services will improve educational outcomes.
Gradually, these companies that advertise and market relentlessly, finance
and then call upon their political benefactors, and feed on our unique and
unbounded American faith in technology have led us to spend vast and ever-
increasing sums on educational technology. This, in spite of the reality that
there simply isn't good research to support claims of efficacy for these
technological interventions. Larry Cuban, a Stanford University expert on
the history of technology in education (Cuban, 1986), took a close and
scholarly look at the effectiveness of computers and related technologies in
schools. The title of his book is telling: Oversold and Underused (Cuban,
2001). From my own formal studies (in 2008, I received an Ed.M. in
Technology, Innovation in Education, from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education) and my survey of the research literature on the effectiveness of
technology in education, I can only conclude that bringing computers into
classrooms doesn't necessarily make anything better or worse. The only fact
that is beyond dispute is that bringing computers (and all of the related
technology) into schools is very expensive. And make no mistake,
computers grow old quickly and must be replaced, and the money for all of
this technology doesn't come from outer space. Rather, a large portion of the
money used to feed our technology addiction is money taken away from
other educational programs. It is, simply put, just plain nutty to be spending
billions and billions of dollars on technology, year in and year out, without
strong evidence that it helps. There is no such evidence, and we spend the
billions anyway.
Okay, I can't change our nutty faith in technology or our nutty spending
on technology, but eventually it dawned on me that among the countless
good and fine uses for computers, from word processing and desktop
publishing to e-mail, browsing the Web, retouching images, composing
music, and bookkeeping, and more, there is one that stands above all others,
yet it goes ignored. We spend all the money, but ignore the greatest possible
benefit. As I thought about this unique and most valuable use for computers,
I began to look for an analogous technology from an earlier time, both to
help me explain and also to better understand this situation. After a couple
of weeks it struck me: the computer in our time is like glass in an earlier
time.
The Millennium of Glass
There is no material in the world more remarkable than glass. It is

neither solid nor liquid with properties of both. It is, arguably, the most
versatile material ever discovered or created and has certainly transformed
the world as no other. It has played enormous roles in some civilizations
and modest, little, or none in others. Without glass there would have been
no Enlightenment, no Renaissance, no Industrial Revolution, no modern
chemistry or medicine, no clear windows or good mirrors, no electricity, no
artificial light, no photography, microscopy or modern astronomy, no
knowledge of microbes or DNA, no Scientific Method, no modern science
at all. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century alternatives to glass were
created but only with the help of glass itself. (For a fascinating, and
endlessly insightful history of glass see Macfarlane and Martin (2001),
Glass: A World History.)
The origins of glass are not known. It was probably made by accident in
the Middle East, in Egypt or Mesopotamia. Its origin is estimated by some
at 3000 2000 BC, but there are also indications that it glazed pottery as
early as 8000 BC. From around 1500 BC glass-making began to spread.
Glass has countless uses: clear and stained windows, beads, mirrors,
ornamental (imitation) jewelry, vessels, insulators, construction material,
etc. Glass is most powerfully used, however, when it is ground to take
advantage of its optical properties to create prisms and lenses for spectacles,
microscopes, telescopes cameras, and the like. When used in these ways
glass becomes a thinking tool.
The Romans produced glass of such high quality that it was not
surpassed until the nineteenth century, but they never used it to think. They
86 What to do...
loved glass. Their civilization was drenched in it as no other, but they never
made lenses, prisms, beakers or other tools with which to explore and
understand their world. The enormously rich cultures of China and Japan
had glass, but for many reasons never found much use for it. From the ninth
to the twelfth centuries, when their science was preeminent, the most skilled
glass-workers were found in the Arab world blowing clear glass into
beakers, tubes and flasks and creating refracting and reflecting tools to
support and advance their thinking. When the optical qualities of glass were
explored and exploited by some Western cultures, in the second half of the
last millennium, it precipitated an explosion of reliable knowledge that
fueled the development of Western science and technology. The study and
understanding of light and optics that emerged from studies of and with
glass contributed fundamentally to the Enlightenment and also to the
Renaissance.
The study of optics, made possible by high-quality glass ground with
extraordinary precision, played a vital part in the profound shift from
accepting traditional knowledge to looking carefully and skeptically into the
world in search of reliable knowledge that could be independently and
repeatedly verified. An irreversible shift away from a mentality of receiving
and accepting knowledge without question, to one of, literally, seeing is
believing followed. Lenses extended our most important reasoning sense,
vision, to let us see things too small or too far away for our unaided eyes
and even to remain intellectually active beyond middle age when
presbyopia (long-sightedness that accompanies advancing age) makes
reading without glasses impossible for so many. Though many factors
contributed to creating the methods and mindsets of modern science, the use
of glass as a thinking tool was vital. Some of the cultures of Western Europe
took this glass-lit path, and they were catapulted to scientific and
technological achievements far beyond all others.
Most Important Thinking Tool of the New Millennium
While there are countless uses for computers, the one with potential
beyond all others is, same as glass, its use as a thinking tool. Integrating
computational approaches and thinking into math curricula can help to
realize this potential. Integrating algorithmic thinking and computation into
math curricula can breathe fresh life into a subject that is entirely dead to
most students and also open their minds to entirely new ways to think about
and solve problems.
It is interesting to speculate about the transformations that might sweep
the cultures that choose to tap the potential of this newest thinking tool and
how it may change their views and understanding of the world. Though it is
fun to speculate about the potential impact of the widespread use of
computers as thinking tools, one cannot make any confident predictions.
Consider the greatest thinking tools we already use. Try to imagine trying to
imagine, before their widespread use, where they would take us. The richest
thinking tool by far is language. With language we can directly affect the
thoughts of others, even as our thoughts are affected by others. Language
allows us to teach and learn not exclusively by direct observation and
imitation but by conjuring images and reconstructing our thoughts in the
minds of others and by the battle of ideas than can only occur in the arena
of language.
After language comes writing as a thinking tool. Writing allows us to
transmit and receive thoughts across space and time and to record
permanent, exquisitely detailed snapshots of them. Writing also lets us
extend working memory and thereby engage in more complex thinking than
is otherwise possible. Imagine trying to do something as simple as
multiplying one three-digit number by another without the aid of any
thinking tools (no paper and pencil, no calculator), much less design bridges
or buildings, specify laws, or track finances.
Writing led naturally to specialized notations like algebra, musical and
choreographic notations, schematic notations for electronic circuits,
architecture, process descriptions, and more. All of these notations are tools
to aid our thinking.
There are also the many thinking tools that are devices. There are optical
ones made with glass lenses, mirrors and prisms that we assemble into
spectacles, microscopes, cameras and telescopes. Also, there are mechanical
and electronic ones for calculating: the abacus, slide rule, and calculator.
Currently, we are experiencing an explosion of specialized and
algorithmically controlled thinking tools: off-the-shelf computer programs.
Each of these tools lets us use algorithms to help us think about and within a
specific problem-domain. There are countless such tools for word
processing and publishing, writing and scoring music, analyzing and
designing electronic circuits, creating and mining databases, performing
translations, aiding in statistical analysis, exploring relationships between
data and geography (GIS), visualizing data, asking what-if questions,
modeling wildly complex interactions (e.g. climate), and more.
The most powerful thinking tools have enhanced the power of our brains
and physically changed them too. Language use appears to have shaped at
least some of the neurological characteristics of the sensory memory we use
to store the words we hear (the phonological loop) while we process them.
The phonological loop is suspected to be an adaptation for improving
language acquisition; there is evidence that people's language ability is
related to their phonological loop capacity.
Writing has both expanded our conceptions of the world and, quite
literally, limited our view of it. Long hours of reading and writing, over
many years, increases rates of myopia (near-sightedness), and the most
finely detailed writing systems have produced significantly higher rates of
myopia than the least detailed ones. Macfarlane and Martin (2001) report
that as many as 80% of adults in Japan may be seriously myopic. That
88 What to do...
rate is about three times higher than the rate in the US and other Western
countries, and in Japan cases of myopia is generally more acute. China,
Singapore, and Taiwan have rates similar to Japan's, and all four countries
use the same detailed Chinese characters. Myopia rates in South Korea,
which uses a writing system (Hangul) less detailed than Chinese and more
so than Western alphabets, are higher than in the West and lower than the
other Asian countries already mentioned. There are certainly many factors
that contribute to myopia, but extended periods of close work, including
reading, is a contributing factor. Macfarlane and Martin explore the effects
widespread, acute myopia, due in part to reading, has had on Japanese art,
theater, customs, living spaces and even color preferences.
Presently, some cultures are on the cusp of widespread adoption of a
new kind of thinking tool. It is possible that the next transformative thinking
tools, on the scale of glass, will not just use algorithms for helping us think
about the problems we want to solve or explore but will use algorithms to
help us think about thinking about the tools we want and build them for us
too. These will be not be problem-solving tools, they will be meta-problem-
solving tools.
Let me be clear. This is not science fiction or pie in the sky speculation.
Such tools exist and have been used in computer science for at least two
generations. Computer languages might be viewed as the very most
primitive of such tools. Some might argue that they don't quite qualify as
tools for thinking about thinking about the tools we want, that they are not
meta-problem-solving tools. In any case, there are other tools widely used
in computer science that certainly qualify as meta-problem-solving tools:
computer programs for designing and building computer language (perhaps
the most famous is the program called yacc, Yet Another Compiler
Compiler).
Of course, two generations is less than a blink of an eye. Recall that
glass was known for 500 6,500 years before its manufacture began to
spread. It took another 2,500 years before the Arab world used it to help
them think and 500 more until the close study of its optical properties,
combined with a perfectbut never inevitablemix of commercial
activities, manufacturing improvements, and cultural phenomena to bear the
fruits of skepticism, the scientific method, and the demand for and
explosion of reliable knowledge that has unfolded over the second half of
the last millennium. The rate of change grows ever faster, but, even so,
transformative change bubbles for a long time before it boils.
Nearing a cusp does not ensure crossing over. Transformative change
does not follow a path, it creates one. Many cultural, economic, political,
and social factors and forces that cannot be predicted must come together in
a perfect storm for great transformations, on the scale produced by glass, to
occur. Still, when one suspects a great opportunity at least one can help to
set the stage.
The cultures that embrace the algorithm and algorithmic thinking, and
learn to understand it too, will be the ones most likely to exploit it in new
ways. It is fine and well that scientists and mathematicians develop and
apply algorithms, but what can happen if we bring this potential-laden
frame of mind into schools and math education? Are quadratic equations so
much more valuable than algorithms and algorithmic thinking that every
last child studies the one but almost none the other?
How Will Math Education be Improved with

Computation?
I am urging that algorithms, algorithmic thinking, and algorithmic

expression, a computational approach, should be integrated with the
traditional analytical approach to math to create a new Computationally
Augmented Approach to Mathematics and Problem Solving (CAAMPSTM).
There are nine particularly important ways that integrating algorithmic
thinking and expression into math education will improve it:
1. many problems can be approached computationally before students

possess the more advanced math skills necessary to solve them
analytically
2. many abstract mathematical concepts, difficult for students to grasp
from an analytical perspective, are readily grasped from a
computational one
3. algebraic relationships are so fundamental and routinely used in
developing and expressing algorithms that students readily
internalize them
4. algorithmic thinking promotes thinking with symbols in ways that
are essential for success in mathematics
5. parametric thinking is so common in computing that it becomes
familiar and comfortable. It also delivers such practical benefits that
students see its value
6. computing can add so much that is practical, useful, and fun to math
curricula that its infusion into math will enliven it
7. developing algorithms, expressing them, and then making them
work correctly on a computer is an iterative and profoundly
metacognitive activity that promotes habits of mind that are
invaluable in mathematics
8. computing can help to level the playing field for math learners
9. computational approaches promote sharing, and teamwork, and
highlight the value of intellectual activity
Let's look at each, but first let me emphasize that I am not pitting the
traditional analytical approach against a computational approach. They are
different, but they complement each other, and they are never at odds.
90 What to do...
Analytical approaches have one kind of power and computational

approaches another. They are not interchangeable. Some problems yield to
both approaches, some to only one, and some to neither. Each can be
beautiful and clever. Developing an understanding of each also informs
understandings of the other.
1. Many Problems Can be Approached Computationally First
In part three, I complained bitterly that so many word problems in the 9 th

grade algebra text I used were deficient in one way or another. In that book,
and every other algebra text, there are several problems of this sort:
Joan found 120 yards of fencing in her barn. She's been wanting to
build a rectangular pen for her dog. She can build a bigger pen if
she builds it alongside her house, letting the house be one wall of
the pen, and fencing only the other three sides. What dimensions
for the pen will maximize its area, and what area will be enclosed?
I love this problem. I can imagine wanting to build a pen, and I'm cheap, so
if I can build a bigger pen with the same amount of fencing by building it
against my house, I would certainly consider it. Here's a diagram of the
situation, and a traditional, algebraic solution:
Given:
(1) area = length width
House
(2) length + 2width = 120 yards
Then, width Pen

length = 120 2width
so, length
area = (120 2width) width
area = 120 width 2width2
Drawing upon the quadratic formula, the axis of symmetry must be at:
b 120
width= = =30 yards
2a 2 (2)
With a width of 30 yards, (2) tells us that:
length + 230 yards = 120 yards

length = 120 yards 230 yards = 60 yards
By (1),
area = length width = 60yards 30 yards = 1800 yards 2
Solving that problem in the traditional way requires a pretty good

understanding of perimeters, areas of rectangles, the nature of parabolas,
and some algebraic skills. All of those understandings and skills are
important and all should be achieved. Solving this problem algebraically

requires much abstract thought. Mistakes made along the way can be very
difficult for students (of the 85%) to discover.
Consider this solution to the problem:
def pen():
width = 1
while width <= 60:
length = 120 2 * width
area = width * length
print ('width: ', width, 'length: ', length, 'area: ', area)
width = width + 1
This seven-line computer program (written in Python) will calculate and

display every possible combination of width and length (in one yard
increments). There are 61 possible combinations, but a computer, equipped
with an appropriate algorithm, can run through all of them in an instant.
This solution requires the same understanding of perimeters and areas as the
traditional solution but requires no knowledge of parabolas. It also requires
no knowledge of algebra, relying on nothing more than arithmetic. Of
course, the computational solution also requires some elementary
knowledge of algorithms and how to express them (using Python in this
case).
Here is the result of running the program (showing only every 5 th line to
save space):
width: 0 length: 120 area: 0

The output from the program provides a solution to

the problem. It is clear that the area is maximized
(1800 yd2) when the width is 30 yards and the
length is 60 yards.
Also, the symmetry of the values for the area
around the maximum value is interesting. If the
students plot the smallest, middle, and largest values
of width against area and connect the dots, they will
see a graphical approximation of the relationship
between the width of the pen and its area.
92 What to do...
If they include another pair of points (equidistant from the middle) the
shape becomes more interesting (below-left). As they include more and
more points a smooth and symmetrical curve emerges (below-right):
This can be a great starting point for exploring the nature of parabolas and
quadratic equations.
It is also clear that the two solutions are not interchangeable, they are
fundamentally different. The algebraic solution is analytical and beautiful
for one kind of simplicity. The program uses the brute force of a computer
yet is beautiful for a different kind of simplicity (less understanding is
required, and at seven lines long it is shorter than the algebraic solution).
Approaching a problem with less sophisticated understandings
(perimeters and areas, but without parabolas or algebra) is a good way to
take ownership of a problem. Solving it using simpler understandings can
help to set the stage for developing new, analytical approaches. Looking at
the very same problem from two entirely different directions enriches
thinking by adding new dimensions and perspectives.
There is another fundamental point to be made: developing the seven-
line program is a great opportunity to explore and experiment. It won't work
the first time (nor the second or third). But, unlike the algebraic solution
that sits passively on the page, the program gets run by the computer. It
comes alive and produces output. Changes to the program change the
output. An experiment is begun. When the program doesn't work, a theory
must be constructed (informally, in the student's mind) to explain its
misbehavior based on differences between the expected and actual output
of the program. Though I've been programming for decades, when I wrote
the program I made some mistakes that caused the program to produce
results I did not expect. I had to study the output and discover the
relationship between the erroneous output, the program I wrote, and the
output I desired.
Wait, there's yet another point to be made. Long after a student finishes
school she might buy a farm and find some yards of fencing material in the
barn. She might have a dog and want to build a pen for it. If, as part of her
math education, she had learned to think with a computer, which do you
think is more likely: she will have forgotten the quadratic formula and be
unable to solve the problem analytically, or she will have forgotten how to
think with the computer to solve the problem computationally?

Finally, please consider that the problem of maximizing the area of the
pen is perfectly approachable from a computational direction early in
middle school, as soon as students understand what is a perimeter and what
is the area of a rectangle. Solving the problem analytically requires algebra.
For that matter, once students understand the nature of functions (early in
high school) it can be interesting to investigate the significance of the area
under the curve of a function. This, of course, is the subject of integral
calculus. It can be readily approached from a computational direction as
soon as students understand what is a function. The traditional analytic
approach to calculus is normally undertaken in the last year of high school
or in college.
2. Abstract Math Concepts Become Concrete in Computing
Mathematics is filled with elegant and powerful, but abstract, concepts.

It is very difficult for most students to fully understand an abstract concept
unless and until it can be tied down to something concrete. Until a concept
can be put to some use, in a way that is meaningful to an individual, it
remains for that person fuzzy and not well-understood. Computing can help
clarify a great many mathematical concepts that students routinely struggle
with and that many never really come to understand.
Functions
Somewhere, just before or after the beginning of algebra, students are

introduced to the mathematical concept of a function. This is a foundational
concept. Without a solid understanding of what is a function nearly all of
algebra and everything beyond cannot be clear. It is surprisingly difficult to
cook up an explanation of what is a function with an example that is
concrete enough to be meaningful yet does not seem contrived. Once the
concept is well-understood, students can see functions everywhere in their
lives, but it is very hard to find a path from a concrete and meaningful
example to the abstract concept. In a nutshell (and vaguely speaking), a
function converts, translates, or maps each possible value in one set (the
domain) to a specific value in another set (the range). So, for example, this
function f,
f(x) = 2x
maps each possible value of x (within the domain of x) to a value that is two
times the value of x. That is, f(5) is 10, f(2) is 4, f(0) is 0, f(-2) is -4, etc.
There is more that can be said (e.g. the domain and range values can each
be the set of real numbers), but saying more is likely to make the concept
even more abstract and less clear. There is nothing very concrete in what I
94 What to do...
have said about functions, and I will not try to be any more clear as I don't
know how to approach the concept of function in a clear, simple, concrete,
and direct way from a traditional analytical direction. I am not saying that I
can't convey the concept of function from an analytical direction. I can, but
it cannot be done in a way that is simple, straightforward, and easy to
understand for students who do not already understand the concept.
If, however, we approach the concept of function from a computational
direction it becomes surprisingly easy for students to see the practical value
of functions immediately. That initial understanding can be expanded over
time. Approached computationally, confusion is easily avoided, and the
concept is readily recognized to be practical, useful and convenient. Let me
explain.
Part of integrating computation into a math curriculum is to teach the
students the basic elements of some computer language. Every computer
language includes a collection of functions, and all computer languages
allow users to create entirely new functions too. Functions do useful things.
Some of the included functions are mathematical ones like:
log (x) calculate the base-10 logarithm of x

abs (x) calculate the absolute value of x
sqrt (x) calculate the square root of x
In addition to mathematical functions, computer languages include many

non-mathematical functions, ones like:
tone (x) play a tone of frequency x

showimage (x) display the image stored in file x
sleep (x) pause the program for x seconds
There are a few things to notice. First, mathematicians are particularly

fond of the functions f(x), g(x), and h(x). These names convey nothing
concrete and even emphasize the abstract nature of functions, since f, g, and
h are devoid of meaning. In computing, function names are chosen to be
mnemonic, to be meaningful (e.g. tone), and to describe the purpose and
behavior of the function. Also, the non-mathematical functions are included
for purely practical reasons. It is easy and fun to use these functions, and
this helps to make the concept of function more concrete and approachable.
In computing it is easy to think of a function as an entity that does
something for the student. When the student runs her program, at the point
where the function is invoked it forces the computer to calculate a value,
play a tone, display an image, etc. That makes the idea of a function easy to
grasp and valuable to students because they can use functions to do things
they want to do (e.g. display an image) but do not yet know how to do
without using the function.
The situation is entirely different under the traditional analytical
approach to functions. It is hard for students to think that,
f(x) = 2x
is doing something because if the student invokes the function with a value,
say 5, then it still remains for the student to perform the calculation (f(5) =
25 = 10). Also, since the student must perform all of the calculations, the
functions must be simple things the student already understands. That is, the
function doesn't bring anything new to the table. Students can't use
functions to do anything they don't already know how to do. Understanding
the concept of function requires a reformulation of students' thinking but
doesn't give them any new capability (for a good long while). Consequently,
the concept remains abstract and doesn't appear useful, practical, or
valuable. For most students the concept of function remains a fuzzy
abstraction even after years of exposure. When students encounter functions
in a meaningful, concrete setting they don't even recognize them.
From the very beginning, in their very first computer programs and all
that follow, students use functions. They use one function for displaying
messages to the user, another to get input from the user, etc. They don't
struggle in the least with the concept or application of functions because
functions do useful, practical things that students want to do (and don't
know how to do without them). Shortly after they learn to use some of the
functions that come with the computer language they learn to write their
very own functions to perform specialized tasks. Designing and writing new
functions (expressions of algorithms) is a fundamental aspect of writing
programs, and even a small program will use a combination of the functions
included with the language and new functions that students write. At some
point in my introductory computer science classes, after students are
comfortable using and writing functions, I ask them, explicitly, if they can
see any connections between functions as we have been using and writing
them in our computer science class and the notion of functions in their math
classes.
They don't. They didn't notice any connections before I raised the
question, and even with my prompting it's likely nobody will see or make
any connections. If you are a computer science teacher go ask the same
question in your class and you will see. Now, suppose they already know
about and use a function named length that can be used like this:
numletters = length (Hello)
It counts the number of letters in the specified text, so it will map the word
Hello to the number 5 (since there are five letters in Hello), and the
variable numletters will get set to 5. If I prod my students by asking them to
compare these statements,
96 What to do...
y = f(x)
and,
numletters = length (Hello)
most of them still won't see any deep connection. We use the same word,
function, in computer science and math classes. The word is used to
describe the very same conceptthere are no significant distinctions. Yet,
students don't see that they are the same. Why?
Their math classes generally fail to connect their fuzzy, abstract notions
of function to anything concrete, so they don't recognize their mathematical
notion of functions even as they use and write them in their computer
science classes. Fortunately, it is easy to lead them from their concrete
computational understanding of functions to the abstract one of their math
classesand sharpen their mathematical understanding in the process. I
ask, Can we replace the meaningful name numletters with the meaningless
name y instead? Of course:
y = length (Hello)
Can we write and use a function, with the silly name f, that does the same
thing as the function called length? Of course:
y = f(Hello)
Can we invoke the function f on an arbitrary string of text with the

meaningless name x? Of course:
y = f(x)
So, now the students can see that if we abstract away everything meaningful
we can imagine we are in math class. The only reservation that remains for
the students is that the length function does something that doesn't seem
very mathematical: it counts letters in a phrase. I can put that to rest by
returning to our earlier example,
f(x) = 2x
and writing, for the students, a simple expression of that function (here it is
in Python),
def f (x):
return 2*x
and then showing how it can be invoked,

x = 10
y = f(x)
print ('y: ', y)
and asking what output will be produced. Then I can make connections to
other characteristics of functions that students were exposed to in their math
classes: that for each value of x the function returns a single value; that x is
defined over some domain; that values of f(x) vary over some range; etc.
The traditional, analytical perspective on math informs computation too.
Sooner or later students find it will be very convenient if they can write a
function that returns more than one value, but most languages do not
support this in any way that the students will hope for or expect. I will not
trouble you with an example but will share the insight from a traditional
understanding of functions that resolves the matter.
In their math classes they learn that a function maps a value, x, from
some domain to a single value from some range, y:
y = f(x)
Computer languages conform to this notion: functions return a single value.

This, however, imposes no practical limitation if we expand our notion of a
single value to include a single set. In math class the set might be called a
tuple or a vector. In computer science it could go by those names, or be
called an array, or an object depending on which computer language we
choose and the frame of reference we adopt. In any case, it is easy to show
students how to achieve their goal while also reinforcing their traditional,
analytical concept of function and expanding their computational
understanding in a way that further establishes consistency between the two.
There is a great deal more about the nature of functions that can be
explored by looking at them from both the traditional, analytical perspective
and also from a computational one. Both viewpoints yield insights. There is
no conflict, there is synergy. The viewpoints complement and enrich each
other.
Inverse Functions
When students learn about functions in their math classes, eventually the
topic of inverse functions must arise. After studying the idea that a function
maps values from a domain to a range, a question arises: if we have a
function, f(x) that maps x-values from a domain to y-values in a range, is
there another function, g, that will reverse the mapping such that for every
value in the domain of x,
y = f(x)
and,
x = g(y)
98 What to do...
Or, expressed more compactly:
x = g(f(x))
For most students this is all rather abstract. Computing can help make it
more concrete. If I express this function,
f(x) = 2x
for students as:

def f(x):
return 2*x
and then ask them to experiment with the function over a portion of x's
domain, say,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
they will begin to cook up an algorithm, using the computer as a thinking

tool, and gradually express their ideas more or less like this:
for x in range (-5, 6):
y = f(x)
print ('x: ', x, 'f(x): ', y)
If I then ask them: for which values of x will this code (program) snippet
indicate a match,
for x in range (-5, 6)
print ('x: ', x)
if f(x) == f(x):
print (' match')
they will readily see that for all values of x there will be a match because
f(x) always equals itself. Of course, if they have doubts a brief experiment
with the computer will help them understand.
If I next ask them to suppose there is a function g, the inverse of f, and
ask them for which values of x the program will now indicate a match (the
changed line is emboldened),
print ('x: ', x)
if f(x) == g(x):
print (' match')
it is likely that nobody will know. The task is now to create the function g
and conduct an experiment to discover the answer (only when x has the
value zero). Even once discovered, it is likely that few students will
understand why. Perhaps it will be helpful to plot some values for f(x) and
g(x). Again, we can use the computer to help us think by showing us values
for f(x) and g(x):
print ('x: ', x)
print (' f(x): ', f(x),)
print (' g(x): ', g(x))
if f(x) == g(x):
print (' match')
Plotting the points for the two functions, using paper and pencil or chalk on
a board, will likely illuminate why they are only equal when x is zero.
Now the students are ready to see (and verify by thinking with the
computer) that, for all values of x, applying the inverse of a function (g) to
the result of applying the function (f) gets us right back to where we started
(x). That is, x = g(f(x)) for all x:
print ('x: ', x);
if x == g(f(x)):
print (' match')
Let's change the function f from,
f(x) = 2x
to,
f(x) = x2
and have the students try to devise a new function g, the inverse of the new
f. Perhaps they will come up with this:
def g(x):
return sqrt (x)
What will happen when they repeat their previous experiment with the new
f and g:
print ('x: ', x);
if x == g(f(x)):
print (' match')
They will be surprised, at least until they do some experiments. They can
use the computer to help them think their way to the bottom of the new
mystery. Eventually, it will become clear that not every function has an
inverse, and that some functions are inverses of others but only over a
limited domain.
Sets, Arrays, Matrices
Sets, arrays and matrices are important concepts in traditional math

100 What to do...
education. In computing, creating and manipulating sets is so fundamentally

important that every computer language includes specific features for those
purposes. Sets are used so frequently, in so many ways, and beginning so
early in computing that students inevitably develop a good conceptual
understanding and practical skill in applying them to problem solving.
Number Systems
It is very difficult, coming from the traditional analytical approach to

mathematics, to investigate number systems (i.e. bases other than 10)
because it is almost impossible to find interesting and meaningful contexts
for the investigation. Such an investigation comes up naturally, even
unavoidably, from a computational direction.
First, there are basic operators in many computer languages,
>> >>> << | & ^ ~
which cannot be explained or understood from a base-10 perspective.

Second, a simple statement like this (in Python),
print (.1 + .1 + .1)
may display,
.30000000000000004
when it should display .3 exactly. There is no way to explain or

understand the result without investigating bases.
Third, in many computer languages, for each variable a type must be
specified. Integers (positive and negative whole numbers) come in several
sizes, with larger sizes able to hold larger numbers. Exactly how large a
number can be stored in a variable of type byte, char, int or long? To get to
the bottom of this question, again, the concept of base must be explored.
Fourth, while all computer languages allow numbers to be expressed (as
usual) in base 10, many computer languages include specific syntax
(notation) for expressing numbers in other bases (most commonly in base 8
and base 16).
Also, times arise quite naturally in which it is more efficient or
convenient to represent or manipulate numbers using a base other than 10.
For all of these reasons, students exposed to mathematics from both the
traditional, analytical direction and also from a computational direction are
more likely to develop a deep understanding of what is a number system.
Recursion
Recursion is a beautiful concept and a powerful tool. Few students ever

come to understand recursion or find any use for it. There are enormous
classes of very interesting problems that are easy to approach recursively
and much more difficult to approach otherwise. Complex and intricate
arrangements of data are often examined using recursion, and recursive
methods are fundamental in some branches of computing (e.g. artificial
intelligence).
Even from a computational direction, the concept and techniques of
recursion are generally difficult for students to grasp. However, without the
opportunity to experiment and think with a computer, it is very unlikely that
students will develop any but the most superficial conception of recursion.
Multiple Representations
As described in section 5.5 (p. 139), exactly how a problem or situation

is represented can make it easier or harder to understand, think about, and
explore. In the traditional analytical approach to math, students rarely have
opportunities to consider representational alternatives. When an arithmetic,
algebra, or geometry problem is presented numerically or graphically the
representation has already been selected. Students may decide to
reformulate the given representation, but that happens very rarely because
traditional math already has preferred representations. These representations
became the preferred ones because they are well suited to the practices
employed in the traditional approach.
The important exception is, of course, word problems. The very first
step toward the solution of a word problem is to transform the words of the
problem into a mathematical representation. Of course, the student is
strongly cued toward a particular representation by his environment. In an
algebra class, while studying quadratics the appropriate representation is
almost certainly a quadratic equation; while studying trigonometric
functions the appropriate representation is likely to be a right triangle or a
unit circle, etc.
From a computational perspective, choice of representation demands far
more attention on many levels. In the traditional analytical approach, a
variable is just a name. Of course, every variable is from some domain (e.g.
rational numbers), but that often goes unstated and unnoticed. In traditional
math, we know, conceptually, that real numbers and integers have different
properties, but they don't behave in different ways. That is, a student can
violate a mathematical principle by incorrectly treating an integer as a real,
but it is terribly unlikely he will notice. Many computer languages require
that before a variable can be used its type (e.g. integer of a certain size)
must be specified. Thereafter, we notice (the computer complains) every
single time that we (incorrectly) try to use a variable of one type where
102 What to do...
another type is required.

In computing we are required to make explicit decisions about
representation at every turn, and those decisions have consequences and
impose limitations that must be faced over and over. Just as the
representation for every variable (in many languages) must be explicitly
specified, so must the representation for values calculated by functions.
At a higher level, we must often choose multiple representations for
the same thing. That is, there are frequently three different representations
for the data used by a program:
1. how the data will be represented in the computer while the program
is running
2. how the data will be represented while it is stored (e.g. on a hard
disk) while the program that uses the data is not running
3. how the data will be represented when presented to the user of the
program
All three representations must be decided, and almost every such decision
involves tradeoffs.
Representation is a rich, multifaceted topic and a regular activity in
computing. It is also inescapably mathematical, as a very close study of
many of the tradeoffs (space, speed, efficiency, difficulty, complexity) must
be conducted mathematically. Using CAAMPS will enrich students'
understandings of representation, its importance, its variability, and the
opportunities for creativity it affords.
3. Algebraic Relationships Become Well Understood
A solid understanding of the relationships expressed in equations is

fundamental to reading and writing mathematics. Students can stumble
along with half-baked understandings of this topic for a long time. An
inadequate understanding of these relationships will, however, be an
insurmountable obstacle to success in algebra. Computing will hone
students understanding of algebraic relationships to razor sharpness.
Assignment vs. Relationship
As mentioned earlier (p. 129), many students do not develop a complete

understanding of the meaning of the equal sign (=). In their early math
experience they see the equal sign used like this:
4+2=?
They correctly understand they are being commanded to perform a

calculation (4 + 2). Years of seeing it used in only that way reinforces that
understanding. As they approach algebra they see statements like these:
x=4+2
2x = 8
8=2+x-3
Here, their understanding is still suitable because each of the three
equations is satisfied for only one, specific value of x (6, 4, and 9
respectively), and the student is expected to find that value.
However, as soon as there is more than a single value that satisfies an
equation,
y = 2x
(i.e. for x = 0, y = 0; for x = 1, y = 2, etc.) then the equal sign is not

commanding a calculation, rather it is expressing a relationship of balance
between that which is on its left and on its right. There are infinitely many
values of x for which there is a corresponding value of y that achieves the
specified balance. The equal sign is not commanding, it is demanding: if the
value on one side is modified then the other side must also be modified to
maintain the balance. Here, understanding the equal sign as a command to
perform a calculation is completely inappropriate, and students with that
understanding are lost (Alibali et al., 2007; Asquith, Stephens, Knuth &
Alibali, 2007; Kieren, 1981).
Weaving computation into math education will ensure a good
understanding of the equal sign. In computing the difference between
calculating a value and expressing a relationship is so basic that many
language don't even use the same symbol (=) for both purposes. In many
computer languages the traditional equal sign is used only to command the
computer to perform a calculation and assign the result of that calculation to
a variable. So, in a computer program, this statement,
x=4+2
commands the computer to calculate the sum of 4 and 2, and assign that
result to the variable named x. These statements,
y=1
x=y+4
also perform calculations and assign values. The first calculates the value 1
(not much to calculate there) and assigns the result to the variable named y.
The second one commands the computer to calculate the sum of y (which
already has the value 1) and 4 and assign the result, 5, to the variable x. A
single equal sign does not indicate that a balance exists, rather it commands
the computer to perform a calculation (specified to the right of the equal
sign) and assign the result to a variable (specified to the left of the equal
104 What to do...
sign).
One of the most fundamental actions a computer can perform is to test
and see if a specified relationship exists. So, for example, in a computer
game there might be a test like this,
if energylevel == 0:
print ('You have lost!')
In such a game, the player has some amount of energy and, within the
program, the variable energylevel stores a player's current amount of energy.
Some events in the game add to a player's energy level and some reduce it.
As long as the player has some energy left the game continues, but if her
energy level falls to zero she is finished. This portion of the first line,
energylevel == 0
tells the computer to check and see if the specified relationship is currently
true, or not. Here, the computer will check for equality. In many computer
languages the symbol to specify a test for equality is two equal signs (==),
not one. If the value stored in energylevel is exactly the same as the value
specified on the other side of the equality operator (==) then the expression
(energylevel == 0) is true, otherwise the expression is false.
Assignment statements (using =) and testing for relationships (using ==)
are among the most frequently occurring elements in computer programs.
Students cannot avoid developing a good understanding of both and of the
differences between them.
Relationships of Equality and Inequality
Inequalities arise in the traditional analytical approach to math, but they

generally play a minor role. Examples and problems that require their use
are always included, but they tend to be strained and contrived.
There are endless practical uses and needs for inequalities in computing.
Such relationships make perfect sense, and if they weren't available many
algorithms simply could not be expressed. In addition to the equality
relationship (==), there are many other relationships of inequality:
if speed < 0:
print ('You are driving backwards')
if age >= 16 and age < 21:

print ('You are old enough to drive, but too young to drink')
if letter >= 'a' and letter <= 'z':

print ('It is lower-case')
if today != birthday:
print ('Sorry, today is not your birthday')
In very short order inequalities are well-understood and appreciated.
Operators, Precedence, and Overloading
Even elementary computation makes extensive use of all the arithmetic

operators used in traditional math classes (+ - * /), and also ones that don't
occur much (or at all) in traditional math. Each additional operator adds
additional nuances to understanding.
Operator precedence is as important in computing as in traditional math,
and student errors in this regard can create subtle, difficult to find bugs in
programs. Sorting out these bugs sharpens understanding of precedence and
helps form lasting memories.
In traditional math and computing there are operators that have more
than one meaning. For example, the minus sign (-), in math and computing,
can mean negation or subtraction depending on the context. Such
overloading of operators is even more common in computing. Increased
exposure to overloading helps reinforce the idea that symbols are not
intrinsically meaningful. Rather, meaning is attached to symbols by the
agreement (convention) of the people who use them. Different groups of
people adopt different conventions. All of these symbols (and more),
( ) [ ] { } * + - / % & | ^ ~ ++ - - && || ** //
: . ' " ! ? < <= << > >= >>> <>
are commonly used in computing, and some are used in traditional math.
Within computing, the meaning attached to the symbols varies across
computer languages. Some are meaningful in one language but not another,
and some of the symbols have multiple, context-dependent meanings within
a given language.
4. Thinking with Symbols Becomes Routine
Hung-Hsi Wu, a University of California (at Berkeley) mathematician

and member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, has taken a
special interest in math education. He recognizes, along with many others,
both the fundamental importance of thinking with symbols in mathematics
and the poor results our system of math education produces in this regard.
In an Expert Interview posted on the U.S. Department of Education's
Doing What Works web site, Wu (2008) says:
Fluency and use of symbols is truly foundational and truly basic in the
learning of algebra. We have not done our job in teaching our kids
gradually to learn to use symbols, so that their mind is freed of very
specific numbers, but to think overall. So, if you want to learn algebra, and
106 What to do...
you are stuck on this mode of one number, two numbers, three numbers,
youll never learn it, but this is not something we are emphasizing enough
right now in the whole K-12 curriculum.
Right now, we dont teach them to use symbols, so when they come to
eighth grade, you teach algebra, they have this shock of seeing so many
symbols and in addition to the symbols, of course, the new concepts they
have to learn.
Computing flatly requires students to think with symbols; it is inescapable.

Typically, the very first, tiny program a student writes uses no symbols,
only specific numbers and words. That makes sense: it is important to start
on the most solid footing, with only the simplest and most concrete tasks.
However, a computer is no more useful than a four-function calculator until
we begin to think with symbols. By the second and third programs, students
begin to express their mathematical ideas symbolically. Variables, functions,
and parameterization are all about using symbols, instead of specific
numbers, to think about and express ideas. Symbols are to algorithms and
their expressions as sound is to music; without the one there is no other.
There is no computational thinking unless one thinks with symbols.
Adopting a computational approach to math will not merely introduce
students to thinking with symbols, it will immerse them in it to the point
that it becomes familiar, comfortable, and natural.
5. Parametric Thinking Becomes Routine
Have you ever heard of a student who saves and stockpiles his math
tests and assignments, so that at some future date he can pull out a solution
from his stockpile to solve a new problem? Me neither.
In computing this happens all the time. It is commonplace to create such
stockpiles (unsurprisingly called libraries) to store pieces (e.g. functions)
designed and produced for one program that can be used in other programs
and by other people.
It takes time and effort to devise and produce the pieces for a computer
program, fit them together, and make them work. For any given program,
some of the pieces are so specialized, so carefully tuned to the specific
requirements and idiosyncrasies of the particular program, that they simply
cannot be used in a different program. Many other pieces, however, can be
re-used as parts of other programs, and they are commonly added to
libraries (or stored in other ways) for later reuse. There is an entire sub-field
of computer science, called software engineering, that studies the problems
and challenges of reuse. The goal of achieving reuse on ever-wider scales
has shaped major developments in computer languages (e.g. structured and
object-oriented programming), problem analysis, and even the nature of the
Internet (HTML, XML, and Java address problems of data and application
portability which are elements of reuse).
Students do not have to be prodded or cajoled to reuse pieces of their

earlier programs in later ones. They want to reuse their earlier work
because, well, because it took a lot of work in the first place, and reusing
prior work avoids having to reinvent it.
At the same time, when a student writes a program that does something
she finds interesting, she often wants to enhance it to make it work better or
do more. Both of these desires, to save time and effort by reusing pieces of
one program in another and to improve or expand a program, drive students
in the direction of parametric thinking.
First, consider the case of a simple assignment: each student must write
a function to determine whether or not today is her birthday. Whereas a
mathematician would likely choose to name the function (you guessed it) f,
we will call it isitmybirthday (i.e. is-it-my-birthday). Rather than invoking,
f (x)
students will invoke,
isitmybirthday (today)
This function will, of course, map today (a value in the domain of dates) to
a value in the range of the isitmybirthday function. In this case, however,
the range isn't the set of all integers, or all real numbers, but a tiny little
range with only two element: True or False. Most every computer language
has a pair of values, whatever their names, for indicating that either a
specific condition is met (true) or not met (false). That is perfectly suited to
our situation because either today is the student's birthday or today is not the
student's birthday.
The function isitmybirthday will operate on the value it receives: today.
This variable (in Python) holds a tuple (a set) of 9 elements. Each element
holds one piece of the date. The students are only concerned with two of
those elements:
Element Number Contains

1 month number (from 1 - 12)
2 day number (from 1 31
If Sonia were born on May 3 (month 5, day 3), suffice it to say, with all
necessary support, she will create a function rather like this,
108 What to do...
def isitmybirthday (today):

if today[1] == 5 and today[2] == 3:
result = True
else:
result = False
return result
and then use the function like this:

date = getoday()
if isitmybirthday (date):
print ('Happy birthday Sonia!')
Perhaps the students will learn how to configure their computers so this
program runs automatically, every day. Then the computer can produce a
birthday wish on the student's birthday.
For many students that will be the end of the assignment, but some will
start to get ideas. Imagine it: what a student learns in a CAAMPS math class
gives her an idea that she wants to pursue outside of class! Sonia might be
one of them. She might want to install a copy of the program on her friend's
computer, so her friend can get a birthday wish too. If her friend is also
named Sonia, and was also born on May 3, then the program won't require
any changes for her friend. But suppose her friend is Max, and he was born
on July 27. Well, Sonia can make changes to two lines of the program,
including one to the isitmybirthday function:
def isitmybirthday (today):
if today[1] == 7 and today[2] == 27:
result = True
else:
result = False
return result
Next, perhaps some of her friends and some of Max's friends will start
asking if they can have copies of the program. Eventually, Sonia might get
tired of changing the isitmybirthday function for each friend and decide to
make it more general by removing the information about any particular
person's birthday from the function. To do this, she can modify the function
to work with another piece of information, another parameter:
def isitmybirthday (today, birthdate):
if today[1] == birthdate[1] and today[2] == birthdate[2]:
result = True
else:
result = False
return result
Now, the function works with two tuples: one that contains the elements of
today's date and another containing the elements of someone's birth date. If
both contain the same month and the same day then today is a birthday.
Now, the isitmybirthday function never needs to be changed again. Before
the last change it was very specialized; it was tuned to exactly one person's
birthday. Now it is more generally useful.
Unfortunately, another part of the program still contains someone's
name (Sonia, or Max) and must provide the birth date tuple. Although it is a
bit easier to modify the program for additional friends (no changes to the
isitmybirthday function are required), the program must still be customized
for each friend.
Perhaps, however, it will occur to Sonia that she can generalize the rest
of the program too, so the program itself receives two parameters: the
friend's name and birth information. Once the program is parameterized in
that way, no more program changes will ever be required no matter how
many friends Sonia gives it to. The only adjustments necessary will become
part of the installation process (so the name and birth information are
provided to the program when it gets launched).
Eventually, it may occur to Sonia (or another student) that birthday
wishes are fine and well, but the system can be generalized into an all-
purpose reminder system. There might be some advantage to thinking about
the isitmybirthday function as an isitthedaytodo (i.e. is-it-the-day-to-do)
function. That is, instead of only determining if today is a birthday, it could
determine if today is a birthday, a bath day, an anniversary, the start of
baseball season, the day to go the dentist, etc. Instead of using two
parameters, today and birthdate, it could be generalized to take three,
today (the current date)

date (the date to do something)
message (the message to display if the current date is
the day to do something)
and look like this,

def isitthedaytodo (today, date, message):
if today[1] == date[1] and today[2] == date[2]:
print (message)
The list of dates and messages could be stored in a file (on the computer's
disk drive). The program can be additionally enhanced to manage recurring
events (e.g. every Friday), or events that recur, but on a calendar date, (e.g.
Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday of November). Perhaps someone will
expand the system to allow for sharing events (allow friends to see some of
my events), etc.
The point is that computing promotes expanding upon ideas by thinking
about things parametrically, in terms of variables. Parametric thinking is
useful when we wish to move away from the specific and toward the more
general. It is perfectly normal to begin with the specific, it is simpler and
110 What to do...
more concrete. As our understanding of a problem and possible solutions

deepens, often as a result of developing a working solution, we can see
more general and correspondingly abstract, parametric ways to approach a
problem and generalize the solution to expand its usefulness.
6. An Infusion of the Practical
I have already argued (Pillar 1, p. 38) that the presentation (not the
content) of math is too abstract and decontextualized, but I am not
attempting to dumb-down math by abandoning the abstract in favor of the
practical. Rather, I want to see more kids develop better abstract thinking
skills. The traditional approach to math focuses on the abstract while
trivializing the practical and concrete, and it isn't effective for the
overwhelming majority of students. When I use the word practical, I do
not mean inelegant or unrelated to the abstract. What I mean by practical is
that which can be applied realistically and meaningfully. When a problem or
concept is too abstract it is hard to relate it to one's experience or practice.
When the same fundamental problem or concept can be placed in a practical
context it provokes more thought and facilitates understanding.
There is a famous test of logical reasoning, the Wason Selection Task.
There are many possible forms, but they all go something like this:
Each of four cards has a letter on one side and a number on the other:
U B 6 9
There is one rule for all cards:
when a vowel is on one side, an even number must be on the other
Question: exactly which cards must you turn over to verify that the rule is
not violated?
Wason's test has been conducted zillions of times and only about 10% of
people answer correctly. The story goes that not long after Wason created
the test he presented it to an audience at the IBM Research Center. That
audience did no better than other groups, even though a large portion of
them had advanced degrees in physics or math.
Yet, when the problem is tweaked so that one side of each card shows a
person's age, and the other shows what that person is drinking, beer or soda,
Beer Soda 25 17
and the rule is,
if a person is drinking beer, the person must be 21 or older
then about 3/4 of people select the correct cards. Logically, the two
problems are exactly identical. Several explanations have been proposed to
explain why so many more people solve the problem correctly in the one
form than the other. All of the explanations revolve around the artificial and
contrived nature of the first form, and the very practical and familiar nature
of the second.
Learning new concepts in a realistic context helps learners make
connections. As connection are made and understandings grow deeper it is
perfectly appropriate to reach for greater abstraction. When computation is
integrated into math education, along with it will come countless
opportunities for practical, concrete thinking and doing, relevant to students'
lives, that will help them connect with the abstract.
7. Habits of Mind
Which habits of mind do traditional math curricula instill in students?

We've seen that traditional textbooks are frozen in time, focus on procedure
after procedure without any emphasis on understanding, and do not invite
metacognition. A good teacher can, of course, guide students and model
good mathematical thinking, but even good teachers must work in a system
of math education that, again, places little emphasis on understanding and
passes students along, year after year, whether they understand their math or
not.
The Need to Understand
In computing, before one can use or write a function one must

understand, clearly, what it is intended to do, what it requires, and the result
it must produce. Many functions give students capabilities they desire
(making sounds, locating information, performing graphical operations,
doing complex calculations), and this provides some motivation to learn
about them. Students quickly discover that a vague and fuzzy understanding
is not sufficient.
In computing, whether novice or expert, when working with something
new one commonly believes one's understanding is sufficiently deep even
when it is not. The result is that experiments with the new function, or
algorithm, or technique don't seem to work. Beginners routinely blame the
112 What to do...
computer or the computer language. They say things as perfectly absurd as,
The program isn't doing what it is supposed to do.
Or, This computer isn't working right.
Or, This program was working before, but it's not working now, and I
didn't change anything.
Such statements are so perfectly preposterous that they used to make me
laugh. When I would ask, Are you certain you didn't make a mistake in
your program? they would assure me they did nothing wrong. I have been
developing software for decades and I still can't write 10 lines without
making a mistake, but with a few weeks of experience they are certain they
make no mistakes. Eventually, at such times I learned to say, with a
perfectly straight face, There must be a ghost in the computer?
They look at me like I'm nuts and ask, What do you mean?
I tell them the computer can only follow their instructions. If the
instructions are correct and the computer isn't following them there must be
a ghost in there interfering with its operation. When they reject my
hypothesis, I ask them for a better one.
After just a few months, students come to realize that when things are
not working as they expect the reason is invariably the same: there is
something they don't fully understand, and they don't yet know what it is
they don't understand.
The more experienced or industrious students use the computer (as a
thinking tool) to construct and perform some experiments to figure out what
it is they do not understand. This is pure metacognitive activity, and the
result is always deeper understanding.
Even the students who are not yet ready to figure out what it is they
don't understand do realize that there is something they don't understand.
They know to ask for help. As a teacher helps a student zero in on the
problem, many clues to the nature of the student's misunderstanding
emerge. A good teacher will be able to see the thing the student doesn't
understand exactly as the student sees it and help the student correct, clarify
and sharpen his thinking to build a better understanding.
Understanding is the coin of the realm in mathematics and computing.
The problem is that our system of math education allows students to move
along, grade by grade, penniless. Integrating computation into math
education will emphasize the importance of understanding and promote it as
a value.
If I Can't Solve a Problem in 5 or 10 Minutes...
Traditional math education ignores the inestimable importance of

grappling with problems. Textbook examples and homework problems are
so shallow that there is little to think about. First, the students are cued to
use the technique under study, and then they either know how to perform
the trick or they don't. This has little to do with genuine problem solving. It
promotes a mentality of, If I can't solve a problem in 5 or 10 minutes I

can't solve it all. There are no interesting or important problems that can be
solved in 5 or 10 minutes.
No mentality is more corrosive to mathematical thinking. Over a period
of six or more years students come to misunderstand even the premise of
problem solving. Problem solving isn't about taking a bare-bones sentence
or two and trying one trick or another to get an answer that looks like it
might be correct. That is a charade, a formula dressed up to look like a real
problem.
Real problems are rich and require some effort to identify and articulate.
Solutions to real problems typically have several parts, with some
depending upon others and some standing alone. Most real problems don't
have a single solution and can be approached from many possible
directions. Real problemsinteresting onesdraw on a combination of our
past experience and accumulated expertise and also demand some creative
effort. The very best thing about real problem solving is that it deepens our
existing understandings as it presents opportunities to learn and understand
something new. Real problem solving requires considerable metacognitive
activity. Real problem solving is central to mathematical thinking. Habits of
mind that are valuable in mathematics and problem solving are promoted by
computing.
Logic and Reasoning
Intuition is valuable in mathematics and is tied, in some unknown ways,

to understanding. Intuition suggests an approach, but the work of getting
from here to there in math also requires logic and reasoning. Computing
also demands logic and reasoning at every step. Students reason about
which and what kind of variables to use and which functions they should
create to decompose a larger task into smaller and simpler ones.
In mathematical writing, the reasoning is set forth in a linear fashion, top
to bottom, one statement or equation after another. In all of K-12 math,
students undertake no problem that requires more than a dozen or two lines
of mathematical writing. I have mentioned that a computer might perform
thousands or millions of instructions to solve a problem. Of course, no
person can live long enough to write millions of instructions, so where do
all of the instructions come from?
This snippet of code will display the whole numbers from 1 to 3:
print ("1")
print ("2")
print ("3")
I can write another snippet to display all the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000
by adding 999,997 more statements to my program, but that is impractical.
There is, of course, a practical way. All computer languages include
114 What to do...
statements to allow precise control over the sequence in which to perform

statements. One fundamental form of control is repetition, the carefully
controlled, repeated performance of sequences of instructions. This snippet
will also display the number from 1 to 3:
number= 1
while number <= 3:
print (number)
number = number + 1
It is little more complex, but we will see it is also more flexible. The key
here is the while statement. It specifies that while it is true that,
number <= 3
then the indented statements that follow shall be performed. After

performing them, if the while statement remains true (number remains less
than or equal to 3) then the indented statements will be performed again,
etc. Immediately above the while statement the variable named number gets
set to 1. The first indented statement displays the current value of number,
and the last statement increases the value of number by 1. The result is to
display the numbers from 1 to 3.
To display the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000 I no longer need to add
999,997 more statements, I just change the 3 in the while statement to
1,000,000:
number= 1
while number <= 1000000:
print (number)
number = number + 1
None of this is meant to suggest that mathematicians do not express

sequences of values, they do. This,
1,000,000
x= n
n=1
represents the sum of the integers from 1 to 1,000,000. It's just that
computing is pervaded by sequence control.
There are many forms of sequence control in computing. Selecting and
applying them appropriately requires careful reasoning and logical thinking.
The while statement we used includes a bit of logic:
number <= 3
It tests to see if it is true that the value stored in the variable number is less
than or equal to 3. In computing, such things are even called logical
expressions. One inescapable consequence of practicing computing is the
sharpening of ones logical thinking skills. Being able to think very carefully
and logically, when appropriate, is useful far beyond computing.
Noticing Errors
Math students make countless errors that they do not notice. Math
teachers are forever urging students, Check your work! This is excellent
advice. Still, when students do their math homework they are unsupervised
and most never get into the habit of checking their work. Also, checking
ones work won't catch errors of understanding. When a student writes,
(x + y)2 = x2 + y2
it could be that his mind was elsewhere, or it could be that he thinks it is so.
If he thinks it is so then checking his work is unlikely to uncover his error.
Also, it's pretty easy not to notice mistakes when we check our own
work (as evidence I offer every typo and most of the punctuation errors in
this essay). It is always more fruitful to have work checked by someone
who isn't the author, but that is impractical for math homework.
In computing, a great many (though certainly not all) errors are
automatically identified by the computer. I won't bore you examples. Also,
in computing the student is confronted by her work. When she runs her
program it does something, and it is difficult to ignore the results. This
provides another opportunity to recognize errors.
Iterative, Metacognitive Activity
By its nature, computing requires students to develop and express ideas,

study the results, and refine their thinking. It is an inescapably iterative
process: taking a first idea, roughing it out, thinking it into something to try,
implementing it, running it and finding some simple, careless errors, along
with some misunderstandings and thinking through them to something that
works. That itself is a process of multiple iterations as understandings are
developed. Along the way, or afterward, the original idea gets expanded or
refined. A new feature or a better way comes to mind, and another round of
iteration begins. And so it continues, round after round, until the original
idea or project is complete enough for now.
Each iteration requires the kind of intensive metacognitive activity that
promotes understanding and learning. There are so many students who
believe that if they cannot solve a problem in 5 or 10 minutes they cannot
solve it at all, that the experience of creating and refining simple computer
programs through even a few iteration helps students realize that most
solutions take time and effort to develop, that ideas are usually born in the
rough, and that continued application of effort improves them. They learn,
first hand, that grappling with problems deepens understandings and
116 What to do...
produces incremental progress. They have the Aha! moments that signal
real understanding. They learn that problem solving is an iterative process
that demands creativity, rewards effort, and allows for an infinite number of
possible solutions.
8. A Less Uneven Playing Field
Introducing computation into math education will, obviously, require

introducing kids to computing. I have no plans to do this before middle
school, but if kids are introduced to computing in middle school it will be
new to themall of them. Even the most advantaged kids, who will have
logged many more hours of screen time than the least advantaged, will be
new to computing. The habits of mind and the Discourse of computing will
be entirely new to nearly all of the students. The social capital that
mainstream kids bring with them to school will still be with them, but the
absence of that capital will be less disadvantageous because the subject is
new to all.
It is vitally important that the instructional materials used to introduce
computing into math curricula be created in accord with the points raised
regarding Pillar 4 (Sociolinguistic Obstacles to Success in Mathematics, p.
65). Computation provides a great opportunity for kids who have not met
with academic success to succeed at something that is widely perceived as
important and challenging. If such kids can be helped to succeed in
computing it can change their relationship to intellectual activity.
An immensely important aspect of computing is communication.
Mathematics comes to life in a human mind, but, if it is well-written, it is
perfectly clear on a piece of paper. There is a relationship between
mathematicians and written math that has evolved over thousands of years.
Mathematicians use a thinking tool (paper and pencil, blackboard, or book)
to overcome the limitations of working and long-term memory. The tool is
perfectly effective for storage and explanation. Paper stores math so humans
can transfer it through their eyes to their minds (or from their minds to
paper). The relationship is complete; it is all between the human mind and
the storage device. That storage device and its contents connect equally well
to every human mind that knows mathematics. Mathematicians can
communicate silently because written mathematics speaks for itself.
The relationship between the human mind and the thinking tools of
computing is less perfect. All math students learn the same standard
notation for expressing mathematics. There is highly standardized notation
for arithmetic, geometry, calculus, probability and statistics, etc. Partly
because computing is still so young and rapidly evolving, notations have
not been well standardized. Also, there are many specialized areas of
computing (algorithm design and analysis and implementation, problem
analysis, program design, data management, human interface design,
networking and communications, etc.), and people working in those areas
may have very different backgrounds and cultures. This is true in

mathematics too, but in mathematics there is a common base. Virtually all
mathematicians study the same mathematics from the time they start school
until they are finishing their undergraduate studies. At present, people
cannot communicate about computation silently because the written
artifacts of computation do not speak sufficiently clearly for themselves.
Therefore, an important classroom activity is explaining one's
computational thinking. Again, students start on a relatively level playing
field because the concepts and lexicon they need are new and unfamiliar. It
is difficult at first but becomes easier as students develop deeper
understandings, a shared vocabulary, and practice explaining.
9. Work can be Divided and Shared
Computational solutions are made of parts, developed individually, and

integrated to work as one. Thus, if group work is appropriate, the individual
parts of a solution can be identified and then divided among participants.
The same kind of collaboration found in real-world software development
can be brought into the classroom.
Also, it is not unusual for a student to find herself in need of a function
(one that is not a standard part of the language being used) that another
student has already written. Students are generally pleased to share such
work, and it is always greatly appreciated. The function one student has
written has significant value to another. Can you imagine students sharing
some math they wrote (for any purpose beyond cheating)?
Pedagogy and Content or Approach with Goals
The Math Wars
One of the great, practical obstacles to improving math education is a

long-running battle between the math reformers and the traditionalists: the
math wars. It is a tug of war over pedagogy (a set of beliefs, practices,
and attitudes about teaching and learning). the reformers are sometimes
called the constructivists, and the traditionalists area sometimes referred
to as instructivists. The constructivists base their educational approaches
on a theory of learning, constructivism, developed by Jean Piaget.
Constructivist approaches to learning and teaching are markedly different
from the traditional approaches that predominate in schools (and are
favored by the instructivists). Applying constructivism requires such
fundamental changes to classroom order, structure and activity that there is
no possibility of blending the two approaches. The debate has been
118 What to do...
simmering for generations and periodically boils over. It consumes nearly

all of the oxygen in the debate about how to improve math education. Each
side has, at least once, enjoyed the upper-hand and neither has succeeded in
improving math education. Each has become the loyal opposition of the
other. The discussion is no longer academic or even civil, with the war now
waged politically through legislative bodies and textbook selection
committees. They are both right (about some things) and they are both
wrong (about some things). It is a fruitless, self-sustaining war without
winners, and 55 million children every year are losing.
Among the instructivists there is a chorus, loudest from a group of well-
credentialed, academic mathematicians who blame the failure of math
education mostly on the poor mathematical preparation of K-12 math
teachers. They believe the traditional, chalk-and-talk practices of math
education are best. They believe the fundamental problem is that K-12 math
teachers don't know enough advanced mathematics. Their argument is
intuitive; who can object to the idea of teachers learning more about the
subjects they teach? Still, they present no evidence. In fact, the research
indicates that advanced mathematical training doesn't helpand even
hindersmathematics teaching in elementary and middle school (Rowan,
Correnti & Miller, 2002). Rather, very specialized training (of the sort
formally-trained elementary school math teachers in China receive (Ma,
1999) seems to be helpful, but the traditionalists are not calling for this.
They believe the current content, coupled with traditional methods of
instruction, are ideal. They offer no insights, no larger perspective, no solid
research to support their advice, only a simple prescription: our society
must increase the advanced mathematical knowledge of math teachers.
Unfortunately, theirs is a magic wand approach. We won't get to test their
prescription because they have no actual plan or resources for re-educating
over 200,000 math teachers.
The constructivists write much more interesting papers, conduct serious-
minded research, and include some brilliant academics. They really do
know exactly what is wrong: math education focuses on procedures when it
should be focusing on understanding. Of course, knowing what is wrong is
different from knowing what to do about it.
Both sides correctly understand that pedagogy is important even though
their preferred pedagogies are incompatible. They also agree on basic
content. The problem is that it is generally agreed that learning takes longer
using constructivist approaches, so content must be reduced at the high
school level, and the instructivists frown deeply on any reduction in content.
Neither side recognizes (or at least refuses to acknowledges) the extent to
which each of their curricula close the minds of children to mathematics
and, by extension, to every endeavor that requires mathematics.
The factors considered in the debate about math education have been too
few. The math education debate has, for decades, been limited to the
struggle over constructivism/instructivism and the ideal volume of content.
The result is stalemate. The only way to end this dysfunctional debate is
through disruptive change. Both positions must be swept away by a new,
transforming, and more effective approach.
What Students Do is Vital
The math wars revolve around pedagogy and content. Pedagogy and
content get all of the attention, but what students do is a third, vital element
that is generally ignored in discussions of math education. The things
students do aren't intentionally or explicitly ignored, rather they are
generally folded into pedagogy. It's not that this folding is inappropriate, but
rather that the constructivist/instructivist conflict so dominates the arena of
pedagogy that what students do goes largely unnoticed. I'm not saying that
each side is unclear about what they want students to do, rather the
importance of what students do does not receive enough attention.
I don't like to think of a math curriculum as a set of content decisions
supported by a textbook and employing a pedagogy. I believe it is more
fruitful to think of a math curriculum as an approach with goals. Goals
include mastery of certain content, helping students absorb the Discourse of
mathematics, developing students' abilities to think symbolically and
abstractly while always keeping mathematics connected to their worlds and
lives, and opening ever-widerrather than closingtheir minds to math.
Approach includes things that teachers believe (theories of learning,
teaching and knowing) and things that students do. The reality is that
approaches (e.g. constructivist/instructivist beliefs) are incredibly resistant
to change. This must always be kept in mind while designing curricula and
is why what students do is so important.
Assume, for a moment, that a curriculum is designed and constructed in
such a way that the things students do promote the goals of the curriculum
and advance students in the direction of those goals. An ideal classroom
situation will arise when the skills and beliefs of a talented teacher align
well with what students do. That seems obvious. What is more interesting to
consider is what will happen when the teacher's skills and beliefs don't align
especially well with what the students do. This can happen because the
teacher never studied much math (common in K-8), or doesn't know how
best to teach it to children (very common in K-16), or because the teacher is
math phobic (also common in K-8), or because the teacher's instructional
beliefs are out-of-sync with the curriculum, or because the teacher simply
lacks classroom management or teaching competence. In this case, the
students will likely learn less and less well. Still, if what the students do
really does promote the goals of the curriculum, and advance students in the
direction of those goals, then doing those things will be helpful, even in the
presence of a minimally effective teacher. The work of a teacher is to
promote (more or less effectively) the students' journey toward the goals.
What students do, even when the teacher is not ideal, can still advance them
120 What to do...
toward the curricular goals.

What is it that students do presently in their math classes and for
homework? We have already seen that they labor for years in a
metacognitive desert practicing mindless procedures by doing thousands of
overly abstract, decontextualized, and often meaningless arithmetic problem
on their way to high school, where they get more of the same in algebra,
geometry, and beyond. Even if the kids are lucky and get a really good
teacher, popular curricula work to numb and close their minds as they
promote a focus on procedures without understanding, calculating without
thinking, and working problems without learning problem solving.
If a primary goal of a curriculum is to teach and promote metacognitive
skills then student activities should provoke metacognitive activity, as this
will help students become more metacognitively aware and skillful. A
computationally augmented approach to mathematics seems likely to help
in this regard.
Implementing a CAAMPS Curriculum
This essay is about improving math education by adopting a

Computationally Augmented Approach to Math and Problem Solving
(CAAMPS). CAAMPS is an approach, not a curriculum. It includes a set of
10 general curricular requirements (p. 73), and five goals (p. 79), but doesn't
specify what students should learn or do. This is not a drawback, but
essential for its general application.
Starting in Middle School
CAAMPS must be wedded to specific content, for a particular audience,

to construct a curriculum. It seems to me that CAAMPS can be fruitfully
applied at the middle school (MS) and high school (HS) levels. Though it
can certainly extend beyond HS, my focus will remain on K-12. I am so
troubled by what I see in HS math that I think it is vital to intervene earlier.
I am not confident that a computational approach is developmentally
appropriate for primary school children, so I am not comfortable starting
before MS. Though it is possible that a computational approach might be
appropriate for many kids a year earlier, straddling the primary/MS
boundary presents additional obstacles I prefer to avoid.
Also, there is much research indicating that MS is a time when kids are
under many pressures and make ill-informed decisions of consequence
(Juvonen, 2007). It seems that if kids don't make connections between
themselves and academic activity before they leave MS they are in jeopardy
of never making them at all.
One more essential point about MS math: the volume of content is
manageable. MS math, unlike 9th grade algebra, is not jam-packed with
disconnected content. If kids finish MS with,
good number sense

solid understanding of fractions, the decimal point, and percentages
(and moving between those representations)
fluency in basic arithmetic facts and calculations
good 2-D geometrical sense
deep understanding of area and perimeter
they will be in pretty good shape. Adopting a CAAMPS curriculum will

facilitate developing such sense, understanding, and skills and also ensure a
good foundation for algebra. Three years (generally 6 8) is, I think, plenty
of time.
Which Middle Schools?
Math, without any conspiracy or even awareness, has become a

gatekeeper to post-secondary education. Math education doesn't produce
good outcomes, but it serves the middle-class and affluent very well exactly
as it is. Kids from these families and with well-educated parents slog
through math because everyone (family, friends, teachers, society) expects
them to go to college. Most disadvantaged kids don't have that support. A
great many colleges are presently burdened by the need to offer remedial
math to kids who slogged through math (but didn't develop any
understandings). Math has become a gatekeeper: those who drop out of
math won't even be considered by selective colleges, while those who slog
through but don't learn anything will. At selective four-year colleges and
universities (those without open enrollment policies) 14% of students take
remedial classes, and even at highly selective four-year institutions 2% of
students take remedial classes (Attwell, Lavin, Domina & Levey, 2006).
It will be especially hard to change math education at schools with more
affluent parents because the current system (while achieving poor math
outcomes) produces good college admission outcomes for their kids.
Parents don't generally know or care whether their kids understand math,
they just want their kids to take math all the way through K-12 (so their
applications will be considered) and get good grades (to increase the
probability of admission), so they can go to good colleges. Huge numbers
of disadvantaged kids are doing so poorly in math (the black/white math
achievement gap is large and persistent (NAEP-a, 2009, p. 10)), while there
is such pressure on schools and teachers to raise scores on high-stakes tests,
that perhaps the schools these students attend will be more open to change.
122 What to do...
Measuring Efficacy
It is very important to measure the results of using CAAMPS curricula

to learn whether they are effective. For better or worse, high-stakes test
scores are the benchmark du jour, so in order to argue that CAAMPS is
effective it is necessary to show that it improves those scores. Good
experimental design will be important to manage, among other things,
student and teacher selection biases during the initial pilot.
Curricular Materials and Teacher Support for CAAMPS
Curricular materials must be provided. These will take the form of short
units. Each unit will focus on one concept or technique but will rely on and
make explicit connections to one or more prior units. Each unit will include
a lab in which students use the computer to help them think about,
discover, or explore the concept or techniques of the unit. Some units will
depend on others and this will impose some constraints on unit sequence,
but there will still be many possible sequences and teachers will have some
latitude in sequence selection. Some units will have more than one
associated lab so that students with different levels of interest, and/or deeper
understandings, and/or richer skill sets can approach the content at
somewhat greater or lesser depth. Also, some units may be rich enough to
merit a revisit for various reasons.
It has been well-documented that for classroom interventions to be
happily adopted by teachers (absolutely necessary for wide-scale use) the
teachers must be allowed to customize them (Fishman, 2005). At the same
time, excessive customization (distortion) of an intervention will diminish
its effectiveness. Therefore, it is important to create a Community of
Practice, from the very first pilot, a network for the teachers to plug into
for support, feedback, and help.
Such a network can be readily supported with web-based technologies.
This network will also support the refinement of each CAAMPS curriculum
in many ways: identifying the units that work well and ones that don't,
identifying labs that are most helpful, determining optimal unit sequences,
and discovering concepts that present consistent difficulties to students.
Keeping close tabs on customizations teachers want to make will provide
insights into the need for additional units. Taking a unit approach
encourages the recurring question: should this unit be customized or is this
customization really a cry for a new unit?
Using a unit approach makes it easy to determine whether the content
requirements for a state or school curriculum are covered, by simply
matching units to a set of curricular requirements. If not, then one or more
additional units must be developed. Deciding exactly which units are
needed and where (approximately) they will fit into the sequence will
inform the development of those units. Also, using a collection of units,
rather than a big, fat textbook, will encourage revision (it's inexpensive to
replace a unit) and help convey the notion that math education is an
exploration rather than a linear march from the front of a textbook to its
back.
Preparing Teachers for CAAMPS
In preparation for the first pilot, teachers should be provided with ample
support to learn the principles of CAAMPS and to contribute insights from
their own practical experience into the particular CAAMPS curriculum they
will teach. Again, a unit approach will be helpful, as most any teacher can
imagine (and undertake) writing a new unit (within the constraints of
CAAMPS). The experience of team-writing a unit should be part of
preparing to teach with CAAMPS because it will encourage and require
exactly the kind of metacognitive activity that will help teachers deepen
their own understandings of CAAMPS. The development of each unit must
be done within the constraints of the 10 curricular guidelines and 5 goals of
CAAMPS. Each new unit will be accompanied by a brief, written unit
walk that guides the reader (a math teacher) through the unit and explains
how and where it fits with CAAMPS. The collected units and unit walks
can serve as a kind of teacher's edition for the curriculum. The process of
creating a unit (with all necessary support) is likely to advance teachers'
understanding of CAAMPS and make them better users of other CAAMPS
units too.
The Next Step
So you see, the problems of math education are clear. As I wrote at the
beginning of this essay (p. 4):
It is simple to fix math education in our schools. Not easy, but simple. I
don't want to close any schools. I don't want to restaff them. I don't want to
run them like businesses. I don't want to eliminate any of their many
functions. I don't care to do those things because... the fundamental
problems lie elsewhere.
In this essay I have tried to show where the problems lie and propose an
approach, CAAMPS, to solve them. Writing this essay was easy because the
only help I needed was the research of others, and the only resources I
needed were time and effort.
The next step is difficult because I cannot take it alone. I need help. I
need to find a superintendent who wants to improve math education in his
or her schools and is willing to undertake a CAAMPS pilot. I will also need
math teachers in those schools who want to participate in, and contribute to,
124 What to do...
this pilot. I am prepared and look forward to participating in the pilot with
them. If you believe CAAMPS may improve math education, and you can
help connect me with such a superintendent, I will be most grateful.
5
Numbers are like people;
torture them enough and they will tell you anything.
Anonymous
5. Research Findings
Research Findings
The research findings set forth in this section are not controversial but
are well established. I include nothing controversial because I refer to these
findings often in parts three and four of this essay. Following many of these
findings, I offer a significance for math education section. These are my
own conclusions and recommendations, and any objections to these should
cast no doubt on the findings themselves
5.1 - Memory
There cannot be learning without memory. Facts, concepts,

understandings, and all of their interrelationships are stored in our
memories. If an experience does not alter any existing memories, and does
not create any new ones, then no learning has occurred. Learning, memory
creation, and memory access are inseparable, so it will be profitable to
highlight some of what is known about the mechanisms and behaviors of
memory, factors influencing memory creation, associations among
memories, and recall.
We obtain information from the outside world through our senses. Our
eyes and ears play the largest role in learning, so visual and aural cognitive
mechanisms and processes have received greatest attention. Sensory input
from our eyes and ears is temporarily stored in sensory memory (see bottom
portion of Figure 5.1).
Unless attention is quickly focused on this sensory information it is lost.
Experiments indicate that visual sensory memory may persist for as long as
5 seconds, and aural sensory memory for up to 10 seconds. Information in
125
126 Research Findings
sensory memory that receives attention moves into short-term memory.

Short-term memory, like sensory memory, can only hold information
briefly. Intentional mental effort can extend the duration of short-term
memory by refreshing it, as when a person repeats a phone number while
looking for a pencil to write it down (see middle portion of Figure 5.1).
Long-Term Memory
(with processing)
Working Memory
Short -Term Memory Refresh
(with attention)
Aural Visual
Sensory Memory Sensory Memory
Figure 5.1 - Sensory / Short-Term / Working / Long-Term Memory
5.1.1 - Working Memory
Working memory has emerged as a central element in studying and

explaining conscious thought process (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). The
attention necessary to move information from sensory memory into short-
term memory is applied by working memory. Working memory can hold
only a small number of elements (generally estimated at 7 2), and only for
a short time. These elements are sometimes called chunks. A chunk can
be a simple thing like a word, or a digit in a phone number, or (as we will
see) something as complex as an entire concept.
Processing information in working memory may result in changes to
long-term memory. Long-term memory has virtually unlimited capacity and
can persist indefinitely. Working memory can also summon information
previously stored in long-term memory, though everyone who has ever
forgotten something knows that not all information stored in long-term
memory can always be retrieved.

Countless experiments have been conducted to uncover the
characteristics of working memory. Subjects have included normal children
and adults, but many of the most revealing experiments include victims of
brain injury or disease that resulted in identifiable cognitive or sensory
impairments. The recent development of Functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI) technology has made it possible to see activity throughout
the brain as a person performs physical and/or mental activities. This
technology has revealed, as never before, sequences of brain activity that
occur while performing specific physical and cognitive tasks.
5.1.2 - Importance of Meaning
There is a wealth of research showing that people remember meaning

better than details. This is true for visual information (pictures, images and
diagrams) and also for textual information (whether heard or read). When
shown a picture, for example, a person sees its details and also interprets it.
The details remain in (short-term) memory only briefly, but the
interpretation, the meaning of the picture (correct or not), can be transferred
to long-term memory and remain indefinitely. Similarly, when reading or
listening to text, the words and sentences are scoured, and the listener
constructs (accurately or inaccurately) meanings from them. The meanings
can remain in long-term memory long after stylistic details, like word
choice and sequence, vanish from short-term memory.
When information holds no meaning
for a person, it can be made easier to
remember by attaching some meaning
to it. When learning to read music, the
notes that sit on the lines of the treble
clef are: E G B D F. To help beginners
remember that meaningless sequence
they learn a phrase like: Every Good
Bird Does Fly.
There are other effective strategies for remembering things without
apparent meaning, and virtually all amount to inventing meaning in the
form of words, or images, or creating simple stories that integrate the
elements to remember.
5.1.3 - Importance of Processing
While repeating some information over-and-over (refreshing working

memory) can move it into long-term memory, this is not a very effective
technique for long-term storage. Long-term memory is more effectively
promoted when the information is processed more deeply, as when the
information is scoured for meaning, or when connections are made between
the new information and other information already in long-term memory.

For example, Kapur et al. (1994) showed that memory for word sequences
improved when subjects were asked to judge whether the words describe
living things (deeper processing), than when asked to judge whether each
word contained a particular letter (shallower processing). Brain imaging
studies reveal that deeper processing increases brain activity and involves
different regions than shallower processing.
It does not, it appears, matter whether a person wants to remember
something or not. Identical mental processing results in identical memory
performance. Carefully controlled experiments show that intention and
motivation do not affect memorization, only the methods and degree of
processing (Nelson, 1976). Better memory is promoted by elaborative
processing: embellishing information to be remembered with additional
information (Anderson, 2005). And it has been shown that subject-created
elaborations are more effective than experimenter-supplied ones (Stein &
Bransford, 1979).
Elaborate processing is effective because long-term memory is highly
associative; information is stored and connected to other memories.
Summoning information from memory activates memories of associated
information too. There is a saying from neurobiology: Neurons that fire
together wire together. While learning math certainly requires some
memorization, the storage and retrieval of mere facts is insufficient. For
students to be successful in math they must understand the information they
store in their long-term memories. Individual facts have many more
possible associations when there is an overarching web of understanding, an
integration of facts, procedures and concepts, for them to fit into. The richer
this web of understanding, the better for math education.
Significance for math education: memory is strengthened by a

combination of practice and the associations that arise from understanding.
Without a framework of understanding, fewer associations will develop.
Also, when there is practice without corrective feedback, errors can
interfere with understanding as well as strengthen memories of incorrectly
formed concepts and procedures.
5.1.4 - Abstracting Experience into Schemas
Okay, information and associations between information are stored in

long-term memory. But how is it arranged? Nobody knows for sure, but
Rumelhart and Ortony (1976) proposed representing general knowledge in a
structure called a schema. A single schema may be very simple or
fantastically rich and complex. Imagine the first time a child sees a
feathered creature and asks, What's that?
An adult or sibling might respond, That's a bird, and might also
explain that a bird is a kind of animal, as they watch it hop about and fly. A
new schema for bird will likely be constructed by the child and stored in
long-term memory. This schema will be simple and may not be completely
correct. If, for example, the bird is a cardinal, the new bird schema might
include red coloration for birds, even though not all birds are red. It is likely
the child already has a schema for animal. The bird schema will become
associated with the animal schema because a bird is a kind of animal, and
is-a-kind-of relationships are central to structural relationships among
schemas. Perhaps the child already has a schema for fly based only on the
experience of visiting an airport. The child's fly schema will be expanded.
At this stage, the bird schema will not encompass the full range of birds
from hummingbird, to ostrich, to owl, to penguin, to condor. Future
experiences with birds will likely cause the child to produce new schemas
and also to refine her bird schema. An adult has a richer and more detailed
bird schema than a child, and an ornithologist's bird schema is richer still.
One aspect of this schema theory is its great predictive power. For
example, when we see a serious automobile accident occur on a highway,
the schemas we have accumulated tell us much about what to expect:
people may be injured and need help urgently; the site of the accident is
dangerous (the road may be obstructed and there could be an explosion);
participants will be stranded; police, fire fighters, emergency medical
personnel, good Samaritans, tow trucks and road flares are likely to appear
and behave in certain ways. All of this helps others navigate the situation
safely and provide assistance without having to engage in complex problem
solving.
The general nature of schemas can also get in the way. They can lead us
to see what a schema predicts we should observe, whether the schema
matches reality or not. In a well-known experiment, each subject was taken
into an office, and asked to wait while a necessary person was located.
After spending 35 seconds in the office, the subject was led to another room
and asked questions about the contents of the office in which he had waited.
The researchers found that items likely to be found in a typical office were
reported even if absent (e.g. books), and elements not usually found in an
office often went unreported even when present. Participants' memories of
the actual office were distorted by their office schemas, and the new
memories they formed were a combination of what they actually saw and
what their schemas predicted they would see (Brewer & Treyens, 1981).
Significance for math education: inaccurately constructed schemas

(incorrect understandings) can lead students in the wrong directions.
There is, for example, considerable evidence that many middle school
students misunderstand the meaning of the equal (=) sign (Alibali et al.,
2007; Asquith, Stephens, Knuth & Alibali, 2007; Kieren, 1981). While
learning arithmetic in primary school, they became accustomed to seeing
mathematical language like this,
4+3=
and developed the understanding that the equal sign indicates that a
calculation must be performed (adding 4 and 3 above). In later middle
school, as they approach algebra they see language like this:
x=4+3
and the equal sign again signals to them that the value of x should be
determined by calculating a sum. Before long, however, they see language
like this,
x+3=4
with the same symbols in a somewhat different order (the + 3 follows x

instead of 4). Here it is very helpful to understand that the equal sign is not
signaling a computation, but expressing a relationship: the value of the
expression on the left side of the equal sign (x + 3) will always have exactly
the same value as the one on the right side of the equal sign (4). For large
numbers of middle and high school students the schema for equals remains
the one developed in primary school. Many can use their outdated schema
and work through a solution to x + 3 = 4, but what will they do when they
are presented with a general equation for a line,
y = mx + b
and their schema for equals still tells them to perform a sum?
5.1.5 - Another View
The theory that experience is abstracted into schemas is not a perfect

one. It is one of a group called abstraction theories. Another group of
theories holds that we do not store a single, generalized form of the various
instances of a category we have encountered. Instead, they suppose that
each individual instance is stored, and that new experiences are compared to
the complete store of prior instances and evaluated for similarities and
differences. Such theories are called instance theories. Though abstraction
and instance theories are based on fundamentally different assumptions,
they make surprisingly similar predictions (Anderson, 2005).
Significance for math education: with respect to abstraction theories, it

is important for students to see a broad range of specific instances of
various categories of concepts and problems, both very typical and less so,
to promote development of rich abstractions that cover the full range. With
respect to instance theories, again it is important for students to see a broad
range of specific instances of a category to increase the likelihood that

future experience will closely match a prior instance. Explicitly pointing out
similarities and differences between an instance under consideration and
others already examined can only help.
5.1.6 - Effects of Practice on Performance
The relationship between practice and speed of recall are both large and
predictable. Many studies show that speed of recall improves with practice.
The rate of improvement is high at first but decreases rapidly (i.e. T = a P -b,
where T is recall time, P is amount of practice, and a and b are constants),
as shown in Figure 5.2:
Figure 5.2 Figure 5.3
Experiments also show that memories fade away similarly (Figure 5.3);
retention falls off rapidly early on, and then much more slowly over a long
period. Such relationships are sometimes called power laws because they
are described mathematically by power functions and they are universal.
Figure 5.2 represents the Power Law of Learning, and Figure 5.3 represents
the Power Law of Forgetting.
Whether practice makes perfect or not, a great deal of it is required to
achieve high levels of proficiency. Across many fields, from playing chess
or the violin, to rolling cigars, studies show that truly outstanding levels of
performance are never achieved with less than 10 years of dedicated
practice (Hayes, 1985). Practice is most effective when it is effortful, when
the learner:
1. is highly motivated to improve

2. receives detailed feedback on performance
3. closely monitors her efforts while focusing on aligning them with a
well understood model of ideal performance
Effortful practice proves to be far more important than ability in

developing proficiency, even to a very high level. Passive practice provides
little benefit, just as shallow processing results in poor memory
performance. And, of course, though the speed of performance improves
with practice, increasing the speed of an incorrect performance may not
qualify as an improvement.
Significance for math education: the quality of feedback (to questions,

homework, and tests) is very important. Students should be directed to
models of excellent performance for them to emulate. These could be
completed works by experts or other students. Effortful practice is
impossible without understanding and unlikely when student curiosity and
interest are untapped.
5.1.7 - How the Volume of Information Affects Memory
New memories can interfere with old ones (Keppel, 1968), especially
when the information stands alone, without fitting into some web of
understanding. On the other hand, when information fits together recall is
improved, even when the volume of information increases (Anderson, 2005,
pp. 215-216).
Significance for math education: Emphasis on understanding is vital. A

vast quantity of information that is not well understood is unlikely to be
recalled or invoked by questions related to this information. Nor can it be
used to make logical inferences. Information, carefully presented and
constructed into a coherent wholethat is understoodis likely to remain
more readily available. Of course, the logical extension of this is to
construct entire math courses to be coherent wholes, rather than the typical
grab-bag of disconnected parts.
5.1.8 - Inference
Memory is a combination of actual recall and inference. When asked to

recall some information, a person may recall exactly what is sought. When
that memory is inaccessible, related information is frequently recalled. Also,
inferences are frequently made and recalled as memories, even though the
inferred information was never actually learned, and sometimes when it is
not even correct (Dooling & Christiaansen, 1977; Sulin and Dooling 1974).
Other experiments show that when subjects are provided with a sentence
and later presented with a slightly different sentence and asked if the
presented sentence exactly matches the original one, they are more likely to
believe it's an exact match if the second sentence can be logically inferred
from the first (Bransford, Barclay & Franks, 1972).
Significance for math education: recall is influenced by a person's

relevant, accumulated knowledge and also by inferences that can logically
follow from her knowledge. Whether information is recalled in direct
response to a question about a specific experience, or is extracted from a
relevant association, or is an inference that logically follows from
accumulated knowledge doesn't matter. What is important is not the source

of the recall but its relevance and applicability. Of course, when a
mathematical question or problem comes under consideration, it is possible
to directly recall a math fact or summon an important formula or procedure,
but there can be no relevant association or logical inferences without
understanding. A student must first understand the question or problem at
hand. Even then, prior knowledge that is understood is more likely to be
usefully summoned by association. And, certainly, no logical inferences can
follow from information that is stored in memory but not understood.
5.1.9 - Memory Errors or Signs of Intelligence?
When we try to recall specific information and instead recall

associations and inferences, are these errors of recollection? Arguably,
they are not errors in any practical sense. Rather, they indicate intelligent
use of the full range of a person's knowledge. When a person reads a book
or thinks about people and events, she uses exact memories but also draws
on understandings and related experience to make inferences and evaluate
the plausibility of various actions and events in the past and future.
Experiments show (Figure 5.4) that people engage in different mental
processing when asked to recall a memory
specifically (exact retrieval) than when asked to
judge the plausibility of such a memory
(plausibility judgment). The time required for
exact retrieval is lowest immediately after reading
a paragraph and then increases, while the time
required for a plausibility judgment is highest
right after the paragraph is read and then
decreases (Reder, 1982).
It is not surprising that recall time increases over time for exact retrieval
because it is well known that memory traces grow weaker with time.
Somewhat surprising is the decrease in time needed for plausible
judgments. This suggests that plausibility judgments do not depend on any
specific memories and that, as time passes, people do not even try to use
exact retrieval. Furthermore, experiments show that exact retrieval time
increases as the number of learned facts increases, while time needed for a
plausibility judgment actually decreases when more facts are learned. This
further suggests that with more facts there are more ways to judge
plausibility. Plausibility judgments don't generally depend on retrieval of
any one particular fact, so the fading of any particular memory trace doesn't
interrupt plausibility judgments.
5.2 - Problem Solving
Problem solving is effortful activity directed at achieving a not-yet-

realized goal. It may require decomposing the primary goal into subgoals
that must be achieved en route to achieving the primary goal. Efforts to
solve a problem can be viewed as a sequence of one or more steps, each of
which transforms the current situation, or state, into another state. Each step
is taken by performing an operation. The initial situation is the starting
state, and the problem is solved when an operation transforms the current
state into an ending or solution state. That is, we start in a known situation
facing a known problem (starting state) and take steps (apply operators)
toward an identifiable solution (solution state).
5.2.1 - Instruction and Examples
Numerous experiments have shown that learning is more effective when

students are given only examples of how to solve problems than when they
are given only abstract instructions. Learning is even more effective when
students receive both examples and abstract instructions.
Math textbooks are long, but the individual sections are short. Each
section typically ends with problems, and there is good evidence that when
students work these problems they assume (correctly) the problems will
require only the solution techniques studied in the section. Yet, practical
problem solving is as much about selecting an appropriate solution
technique as it is about performing the selected technique. Also, part of
practical problem solving is heading in wrong directions, recognizing dead
ends, and changing direction. When problems consistently require only the
one or two techniques most recently presented, students are deprived of
opportunities to develop experience in technique selection and identifying
false starts, and they don't develop the important understandings and
judgment such experiences help to develop. When students face problems
outside of an artificially structured textbook environment they have no such
cues for technique selection and are likely to flounder.
Significance for math education: students should always be provided with

both a clear explanation of each problem solving technique and also several
examples. Problem sets should contain a mix of problems, some of which
require only the most recently learned solution techniques along with others
that make use of prior techniques. In this way the student builds, maintains,
and expands a repertoire of problem solving techniques and also gains
experience selecting, applying, and misapplying them.
5.2.2 - Mental Blocks
A variety of mental blocks can occur during problem solving. A mental

block is an obstacle to problem solving that is not due to lack of necessary
knowledge but rather to a psychological factor that impedes appropriate
application of necessary knowledge. It is well-established that people
develop biases in operator selection. This happens most often when certain
sequences of operations are used repeatedly to solve a series of similar
problems. Such biases are called set effects. When the set effect involves an
appropriate sequence of operations then problem solving is aided, but when
the sequence is inappropriate the set effect impedes problem solving.
Often, when unsuccessful in solving a problem, people find that after
setting the problem aside for a while (an incubation period) they can return
to the problem and solve it. Among more than 50 studies of this
phenomenon, the great majority have identified such incubation effects.
Some researchers believe the incubation effect is due to unconscious
thought applied to the problem during the incubation period. Even more
researchers offer a different explanation: when a person undertakes a
problem she may find a solution and be done with it. If, however, she can't
solve the problem it means she is bringing the wrong knowledge to bear on
the problem. Focusing on an inappropriate strategy establishes a set effect
that interferes with selecting more appropriate ones. Abandoning the
problem for a time allows the set effect to dissipate. Later, returning to the
problem, the details of prior efforts are frequently forgotten. The problem is
approached with a mind more open to strategies and techniques not
previously applied. Experiments show significant incubation effects even
with incubation periods as short as 30 minutes.
Significance for math education: When possible, multiple techniques

for solving a class of problems should be presented, and homework
problems should be grouped to include sufficiently dissimilar problems that
set effects are less likely to develop. Incubation effects appear to be quite
real, so we should teach students about them and encourage their use.
5.3 - Proficiency
Proficiency develops in three stages:
cognitive: learn facts about how to perform relevant operations

associative:misunderstandings are corrected and basic procedural
competence is developed
autonomous: procedures become increasingly automatic and
efficient
In the cognitive stage much attention is required. Facts and sequences are
consciously recalled, often verbally, to work through operations. One must
think carefully about exactly what is going on. In the associative stage
operational fluency begins to develop. In the autonomous stage operations
become increasingly automatic, fast, and efficient and do not require much
(if any) conscious thought.
As a learner moves from the cognitive, through the associative, and into
the autonomous states, procedural facts no longer need to be summoned to
working memory, and recalling verbal procedures becomes unnecessary.
Instead, the learner recognizes patterns in the situation at hand and just does
what is appropriate. Replacing factual recall and conscious application of
operations by automatic application of procedural knowledge is called
procedurization.
As with learning (Figure 5.2), proficiency in performing complex skills
improves with practice according to a power function. In many studies
across many domains, it has been repeatedly found that performance
improves rapidly with initial practice and then continues to improve but at a
slower and slower rate: the Power Law of Proficiency.
It is also well demonstrated that once proficiency advances into the
autonomous stage, suspension of practice causes only modest declines in
proficiency, even over long periods. Furthermore, renewed practice results
in quickly regaining near-peak levels of proficiency. Whether riding a
bicycle, driving a car, programming a computer, speaking a language, or
most anything else, once proficiency is developed it is slowly lost and
quickly regained.
Much practice is required to achieve arithmetic proficiency. Research
shows that regular, spaced practice over a long period is more effective than
intensive, compressed study for achieving automaticity in performing
procedures and recalling facts. Also, practice in recall, as through quizzes,
coupled with corrective feedback is more effective then study alone.
Corrective feedback is important, all along the way, to ensure that tasks are
performed correctly as they are procedurized.
5.4 - Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)
This topic is so important that you should take a break and approach it
only when your mind is refreshed and clear.
Cognitive load theory (CLT) is important because it provides a useful
framework for thinking about and designing instructional material. It is
widely known and there is so much experimental evidence supporting its
main elements that it is widely accepted. It assumes some of the ideas we
have already discussed. Here are its main elements (Sweller & Chandler,
1991):
1. our cognitive system includes a long-term memory with a virtually

unlimited capacity for storing facts, concepts, procedures, and
experience in schemas (p. 128)
2. our cognitive system includes a working memory that processes
newly acquired information (from the senses). Working memory
can hold only a small number of elements, for a brief period of
time, that interact with each other very modestly
3. working memory limitations only apply to newly acquired, novel,
information and not to schemas
4. all schemas are constructed by purposeful, mental effort, when
novel information gets processed in working memory while
(possibly) making use of schemas already stored in long-term
memory.
5. the cognitive demand placed on working memory by,
quantity of novel elements
complexity of relationships and interactivity among the elements
effort required for schema construction
taken together are total cognitive load. The higher the total
cognitive load, the more difficult is the learning. Learning becomes
impossible when total cognitive load exceeds the capacity of
working memory
In addition to holding novel information, working memory can summon

schemas from long-term memory effortlessly and without any limitations on
duration, quantity or complexity. Within working memory, a schema (no
matter how complex) is treated as a single element, like a digit in a phone
number. A schema may contain a small amount of simple data or a complex
and highly structured web of information, and it may include processes for
manipulating information in the schema or for processing information
outside of the schema (e.g. elements in working memory).
As schemas are constructed, refined, and practiced they can become
highly automated, summoned from long-term memory and performed
automatically, placing little or no demand on working memory. Full
automation of a schema requires a great deal of practice.
5.4.1 - Means-end Analysis
Solving novel problems, ones with which we have little or no

experience, requires purposeful effort using working memory to hold a
handful of elements and manipulate two or three at a time. Typically, for
novel problems strategies are employed to close the gap between the
problem situation and its solution by working variously from each end
searching for a path that connects the two. This approach is called means-
end analysis and it is cognitively demanding. Means-end analysis is a
messy mental journey full of obstacles, sidetracks that go off in wrong
directions, dead ends, and sometimes difficult and complex travel. Schemas
already in long-term memory are called upon for help, and in the course of
solving the problem new ones may be created.
It is worth underscoring that means-end analysis is employed when a
novel problem is encountered. When solving a routine problem, of a
familiar sort, a forward problem solving approach is adopted. Here, the
problem is worked by moving forward, step-by-step, from beginning to end.
Forward problem solving imposes a low cognitive load on working memory
and may impose a negligible load if an automated schema can be invoked
for the solution.
Of course, a problem that is novel to me may be routine for you. When
an expert solves a problem that requires expertise, but is not novel, the
expert doesn't analyze it in working memory and doesn't use means-end
analysis at all. Instead, she adopts a forward problem solving approach and
draws upon her enormous collection of schemas, sifting through them
effortlessly, without conscious thought, and instantaneously, classifying the
problem at hand not by its surface characteristics but by its underlying
nature and structure, zeroing in on a schema that matches the problem state
perfectly. Progress from problem to solution isn't a struggle working from
both ends to a middle but a direct path from problem to solution through a
sequence of perfect schema selections. Developing expertise takes a long
time, long enough to gain vast experience with myriad problems and their
variations and solutions. The main point, however, is that the difference
between an expert and someone less expert is not a matter of who has better
problem solving strategies, or greater working memory capacity or
efficiency but rather who has accumulated more relevant schemas in long-
term memory and how effectively individual schemas are structured.
Consider what happens, from the perspective of CLT, as one first learns
to drive and gradually becomes an experienced driver. Typically, on the day
of the first driving lesson the new driver's long-term memory already
contains schemas for motor vehicles and their behavior and operation.
These have been constructed from experience as a passenger, from
observing other drivers, from crossing streets, and from operating
unmotorized vehicles (e.g. bicycles). Try to imagine how much more
difficult learning to drive would be for someone who has never seen any
sort of vehicle or road, who has never steered a bicycle or applied its
brakes, and lacks these schemas.
A brand new driver must keep track of current speed, the ever changing
distance to the vehicle ahead, braking and lane change behaviors of nearby
vehicles, and traffic signs and lights, all while controlling speed and
direction with various pedals and the steering wheel, planning and
following a route, signaling lane changes, and trying desperately to avoid a
collision. Driving requires the full attention of a new driver, and traffic
accidents are far more common among inexperienced drivers (as they
develop their driving schemas) than experienced ones.
For the beginner, virtually every aspect of driving requires conscious

thought and effort. The cognitive load is high, and every distraction, from
tuning the radio to avoiding a pothole, invites calamity. In contrast, a well-
seasoned driver has such a rich and automated set of driving schemas that it
is an effortless and largely unconscious activity that, for long periods, places
little or no cognitive load on working memory. An experienced driver
readily converses or finds himself deep in thought as mile after mile passes
without notice. I know of one individual for whom driving has become so
automatic that he is able to read a newspaper while driving and (so far)
without incident.
CLT decomposes total cognitive load into three part:
intrinsic cognitive load

extraneous cognitive load
germane cognitive load
Intrinsic cognitive load is that part which is in the nature of the material to
be learned and may be irreducible. Extraneous cognitive load is the load
imposed on working memory by the method of presentation of the material
to be learned. Germane cognitive load is the load placed on working
memory by schema construction. A great deal of research has been devoted
to the study of extraneous cognitive load, and many effects have been
identified that are useful in reducing cognitive load and promoting schema
construction through careful design of instructional materials.
Cognitive load theory is important for two main reasons:
1. it has led to improved design of instructional material

2. it is valuable to keep cognitive load theory in mind when
considering the likely efficacy of a pedagogical approach. Some
approaches are likely to place higher cognitive loads on learners
than others. And, consistent with (1), after a pedagogy is selected
the design of any specific implementation (curriculum and
materials) will benefit from consideration of CLT
I will draw on cognitive load theory often.
5.5 - Representation
How we choose or prefer to represent things can have a profound impact

on our ability to process them. Consider this game:
There are two players and nine tokens numbered from 1 to 9:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Players take turns, and at each turn a player takes one token. She
wins if the sum of the numbers on any three of her tokens is 15.
You are, no doubt, already familiar with this game

but using a different representation. As you can see,
if we number the squares in a tic-tac-toe board
appropriately (creating a magic square), the sum
of the numbers in each row, column, and corner-to-
corner diagonal is 15. The standard tic-tac-toe
representation is not just more familiar, it is more
concrete and easier to play because it requires no
arithmetic. Young children can play tic-tac-toe in
the standard form long before they have the arithmetic skills to play it in
number form. Strategizing is much easier using the standard graphical
representation because the cognitive load is so much lower.
Beyond our choice of representations for problems, in our minds we
form representations as we read, listen, or imagine. People have long been
categorized as visual or verbal thinkers. More recently it has been
discovered that the imagery of visual thinking takes two rather different
forms, object imagery and spatial imagery (Blajenkova, Kozhevnikov &
Motes, 2006). Some visual thinkers visualize objects realistically. Such
object imagery is true to life in size, color, shape and form. Others use
spatial imagery and represent things more abstractly and schematically.
They focus on spatial relationships, relative positions, components, and
subcomponents.
Object Imagery
Visual
Thinking Style Spatial Imagery
Verbal Baby Doll

Figure 5.5
Object images are fuller, more detailed, and realistic. Object image
processing tasks include recognizing colors, geometric shapes, letters, and
numerals. Spatial representations are more symbolic, skeletal, and stripped
of extraneous detail. Numerical judgment is closely associated with spatial
processing. Spatial processing tasks include judging sizes, angles, shapes,
dimension, distance, etc., as well as performing mental rotations. Of course,
many tasks require both spatial and object processing.
When I ask you to think of a baby doll (object image) or a stick figure
(spatial image) you can easily do what I ask. What happens, however, when
you are listening to a description and forming your own mental image or
representation? In general, some people are predisposed toward object
imagery while others prefer the spatial sort. This distinction between spatial
and object imagery is not merely a metaphorical one but is supported by
much clinical evidence. Brain lesion and imaging studies show that our
brains process spatial information in regions anatomically distinct from
those used to process object information. It is not clear whether we are born
with such predispositions or if we develop them.
Our brains process information the same way whether it is new
information arriving to the brain through our sensory systems or
information conjured from memory. So, the same brain regions become
active when, for example, we watch an object being rotated before us, as
when we merely rotate it in our minds. Experiments in which brain imaging
is performed during actual problem solving reveal that the same problem
elicits more brain activity in spatial regions for some people, and more in
object regions for others, indicating that people take different cognitive
approaches to problem solving. This is a point worth underscoring: it is not
the problem itself that determines whether a person uses spatial or object
imagery but rather the problem solving strategy an individual adopts.
Studies show that among people who prefer to process information visually,
the object/spatial preference does not correlate with measures of
intelligence. There is, however, evidence that people who self-report as
consistent visualizers tend to excel in one of the two forms of imagery
processing while performing poorly on the other. People who prefer verbal
analysis and reasoning over image-based processing tend to perform at a
middle level when tested on imagery processing tasks:
Object Visualizers Verbal Thinkers Spatial Visualizers
Baby Doll
( lower) Spatial Processing Performance ( higher)

Figure 5.6
There is much research indicating that spatial thinking is important in

mathematics (Blajenkova et al., 2006), and that students' spatial thinking
ability is a good predictor of math performance. Perhaps it is the nature of
spacial imagery, stripped down to only the essentials, that allows it to be
more readily analyzed, manipulated, and modified than object imagery and,
therefore, more effective than object imagery for mathematical processing.
Or maybe the abundance of detail in object imagery presents an obstacle to
analysis. In any case, it appears that spatial processing is fundamentally
important in mathematical thinking.
It is interesting to note that imagery preferences correlate with
professions: scientists self-report stronger spatial imagery preferences than
visual artists and humanities professionals, while visual artists report
stronger object imagery preferences than scientist or humanities
professionals (Blajenkova et al., 2006).
Significance for math education: while it is not known whether a

predisposition toward spatial imagery is innate, there can be no doubt that
teachers can explicitly teach and encourage the use of schematic
representations for exploring and solving problems. By explicitly presenting
examples of spatial and object imagery, teachers can help students become
consciously aware of their own preferences. Object imagery should be
highlighted and appreciated for its great value in artistic endeavors, but
encouraging spatial imagery in math education will be helpful to students,
and there is indirect evidence for this position.
Mental rotation of objects is among the most complex and cognitively
demanding spatial processing tasks. Across cultures and ability ranges, and
through all developmental stages, males show an advantage in mental
rotation ability. Brain imaging studies reveal gender differences in brain
region activity during mental rotation. It is interesting to note that for tasks
that require spatial processing strategies, both genders perform similarly,
while on tasks that do not require a spatial processing strategybut where
such a strategy is most effectivemales are more likely to use them. So, it
seems likely that students not predisposed toward spatial imagery will
benefit if they can be taught to consciously choose spatial representations
and strategies in appropriate problem solving situations.
5.6 - Language
Mathematics, when well-written, is spare, concise, and unambiguous. It

uses few symbols and imposes strict rules on their appropriate
arrangements. Depending on how and what one chooses to count, there are
likely between 250,000 and 750,000 words in the English language. There
are countless ways to express an idea in written English (or any other
natural language). At the other extreme, all of mathematics is expressed
using a tiny number of mathematical words. Mathematics certainly places

no limitations on richness of thought, but its highly standardized forms
reduce the number of ways to write mathematics. Speaking about math,
however, is a different matter.
Learning math requires much speaking about it. Teachers and textbooks
use words to explain concepts and procedures. Students use words to
explain their efforts and to pose and answer questions. The lexicon of the
math classroom is large and can be a confusing obstacle to learning. Some
words used in the math classroom (e.g. numerator) have no common use
outside of mathematics. Many words have common meanings that are
unrelated in any way to their math meanings including: argument, dividend,
exponent, factor, improper (fraction), irrational, leg, minus, obtuse, odd,
power, prime, product, proper (fraction), radical, rational, right (angle),
root, term.
In writing mathematics there is rarely a choice of symbols to use
(beyond variable names). Yet, in math class there are many different words
used to describe the same thing. For addition there are: add, altogether,
combine, grow, increase, more, plus, sum. For subtraction: difference,
differs, from, less, minus, reduce, subtract, take away. Students must learn
to map all of these words (along with words for other operations) to the
correct operation. Many technical terms for arithmetic operands are
encountered too: augend, addend, difference, dividend, divisor, minuend,
multiplicand, multiplier, product, quotient, subtrahend, sum.
There are many opportunities for confusion: reducing a fraction does not
change its value; five taken four times makes linguistic sense, but five times
four only makes sense as a transliteration of 5 x 4; times is used when
multiplying whole number, but of is used when multiplying fractions; by is
used to indicate a quantitative relationship (5 is bigger than 4 by 1), and also
for transformations (6 divided by 3); an ingredient goes into a cake, and a
person goes into a store, but how is it that one number goes into another one
(several times)? What will a child do when he hears, What is the sum? as
What is the some?, especially given that some and sum are both quantity
words?
This seemingly simple problem,
There are five birds and three worms. How many more birds are
there than worms?
and others of the how many more... than type cause much difficulty. Those
four words are well understood by preschoolers, yet only 17% of preschool
and 64% of first grade children answered the question correctly, even when
students were shown a visual representation. Rephrased as,
There are five birds and three worms. Suppose the birds all race
over and each one tries to get a worm! How many birds won't get
a worm?
83% of preschool and 100% of first grade students answered correctly

(Hudson, 1983).
Language is processed sequentially in verbal working memory. The
level of cognitive load a word problem places on working memory depends
in part on its textual form. That is, the essential nature of the problem
imposes some intrinsic cognitive load, and the textual form (whether read or
heard) may add an additional extraneous (unnecessary) cognitive load.
Problems like this,
Mary has 4 glazed donuts, 3 jelly donuts, and 7 chocolate donuts.

She gives half of the glazed to Sidney, and all but 5 of the
chocolate donuts to Sam. How many donuts does she have left?
are simply impossible to answer when read or heard once because working
memory gets filled up with numbers, the calculation of half of the glazed
donuts, calculating the difference between 7 and 5, and of the irrelevant
names. Also, the actual question doesn't arise until the end, so there is
nothing around which to organize the information as it is encountered.
Consider the same problem in this form:
You have a bunch of donuts and you decide to give some of them to
your friends. You must determine how many donuts you will have
left after you give some of them away. You give away half of your 4
glazed donuts. You keep all 3 of your jelly donuts. You keep 5 of
the 7 chocolate donuts. How many donuts do you have left?
This problem produces a lower cognitive load because:
you know what you are trying to do before you encounter any details
you can calculate a running sum and discard donut counts along the
way
there is no extraneous information to analyze
the sequence of statements and instructions corresponds very closely
to a solution sequence
It is also known that the use of dependent clauses increases cognitive

load:
Mary, a friend of Sidney and Sam, has some donuts: 4 glazed, of

which she will give half to Sidney; 3, of jelly, that she will not
share; and 7 chocolate she will, keeping 5 for herself, share with
Sam. How many donuts, after giving some to Sidney and Sam, will
Mary have left?
Each such clause (e.g. a friend of Sidney and Sam) requires the reader to
keep track of information leading up to the clause, while the dependent
clause is comprehended, and then connect the text before the clause with the
text that follows it. When listening or reading, each word occurs within a
grammatical structure. Each not-yet-completed structure must be
maintained in working memory and adds to the cognitive load. The count of
the number of not-yet-completed structures when a word is encountered is
called its depth. Greater depth imposes greater cognitive load.
Significance for math education: enumerating the many mathematical

words that are interchangeable can help students recognize them as such.
Consistently using only one of the possible word choices, at least while
students are developing basic proficiency, can help students to map natural
language to mathematics. After proficiency is developed, more language
choices can be introduced, explained, and added to the classroom lexicon.
Explicit discussion about alternatives, how they might be confusing, and
how to avoid confusion can aid students in creating correct associations. It
may be helpful to sometimes pose the same question in several forms to let
students see which different words can map to the same mathematics.
There are two parts to solving a problem. First, one must make sense of
the problem being posed, and then one many seek to solve it. Linguistic
elements of the problem can get in the way of understanding the problem.
Cognitive load is affected by:
the order in which information is presented

amount of extraneous information included
complexity of the language used
the depth of the words
Obviously, if the problem is not understood (or understood incorrectly)

there is no hope of developing a correct solution. It is important to decide
with intentionwhether a word problem or presentation is intended to test,
illuminate, or exercise only the relevant mathematics or to draw on
linguistic skills too.
My point is not that all problems must be presented in simplest possible
form. No, part of problem solving includes making sense of ambiguous
problems. However, one should be clear when crafting a problem whether
the challenge presented to students is intended to be only mathematical,
only linguistic, or both. Most importantly, we should be careful not to
confuse linguistic difficulties with mathematical failures.
5.7 - Problem Solving vs. Worked Examples
The presentation of example problems, from start to finish, showing

students exactly how to work through them can effectively promote

learning. Generally, math textbooks introduce a new topic with a bit of
explanation and then a worked example or two, followed by a large number
of homework problems for students to solve. Thus, students spend little
time on worked examples and much time on problem solving. Cognitive
load theory predicts that for novices the reverse will be more effective. That
is, when a new topic is explored much more time should be spent, initially,
on worked examples and less on problem solving. As expertise develops,
additional worked examples lose value, and problem solving promotes
further learning (Sweller & Cooper, 1985).
When one doesn't immediately know how to solve a problem much
cognitive activity ensues: long-term memory is searched for relevant
schemas and the suitability of those schemas evaluated, available
information is sifted and evaluated for relevance, means-end analysis is
undertaken, and various interactions between problem elements are
explored. All of this places a high load on working memory. Of course,
when a student is working a new kind of problem, the educational goal is
often to learn how to solve this new type of problem rather than merely to
solve the problem at hand. In this case, it is desirable for the student to
construct one or more new schemas that will persist in long-term memory
for use in future problem solving. Constructing new schemas places an
additional load on working memory (germane cognitive load), at the very
time that problem solving already places high demands on it.
There are several benefits to studying worked problems, especially
when presented by a good teacher. First, since the student doesn't attempt to
solve the problem there's no need for means-end analysis and no need to
search for relevant schemas. By pointing out the relevant knowledge that
students already possess, a teacher can help them locate relevant existing
schemas and make valuable new associations. Irrelevant information can be
pointed out as such or ignored entirely. A forward problem solving approach
can be taken, working the problem from beginning to end, with clear
justification provided for each step. Overall cognitive load is minimized by
reducing or eliminating extraneous load, avoiding means-end analysis, and
minimizing element interactivity in working memory through thoughtful
presentation. Some intrinsic cognitive load remains, but the reduction in
total cognitive load frees some working memory resources for use in
schema construction, which can be further facilitated by thoughtful
presentation.
Of course, it is common practice for teachers to introduce new concepts
and techniques with a worked example. Research shows that more time
should be spent on worked problems to learn new concepts and techniques.
As additional worked problems are presented (or studied) commonalities
and differences can be highlighted to help identify different flavors of a
general type of problem to promote construction of useful schemas. As
expertise develops, the value of worked problems disappears, and problem
solving becomes increasingly valuable.
Significance for math education: there is good research showing that when
students are learning new concepts and techniques they will benefit when
more time is spent on worked examples and less on problem solving. This is
an important finding because its application in the classroom doesn't require
additional time or resources.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Mark Twain
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The Four Pillars

Upon Which the Failure

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons

Rev. 6.7 (7/20/2011)

CAAMPSTM is a trademark of Matthew A. Brenner

For information contact: mbrenner@k12math.org

Electronic copies of this executive summary are freely available from:

Why this essay?

1. to set forth the fundamental problems of math education and a new

I hope some innovative superintendent, disappointed with the outcomes of

1. Math Education: It Isn't Working

single time. Education doesn't guarantee success or happiness but it does

Increasing Importance of Math Education

No doubt, math education should develop numeracy and basic

journalism is in a state of collapse

think clearly, critically and abstractly

mathematical and other contexts too.

I taught computer science (CS) at Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH)

From the moment I met my math students I was struck by something

Teaching Computer Science vs. Teaching Math

When I arrived at Exeter, CS classes were entirely elective. Every

momentum, and it is momentumnot reasoned thought, or educational

The momentum of math education makes it awfully difficult to change.

1. teachers teaching the way they were taught

Teachers Teach as They Were Taught

It is my assertion that 15% of humans are just good at math. Math

The Bar is Never Set

Setting a bar is a risky business if you have a stake in the outcome. In

Diagram 1.3 Diagram 1.4

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE)

The second paragraph begins with this well-known call to action:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the

No Child Left Behind

narrowing of curricula; dropping (or reducing time on) art, history,

Is the Progress Real?

improvement in educational outcomes it would be truly miraculous

National Assessment of Educational Progress

Presently, each of our 50 states (and the District of Columbia) gets to

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest

From the same web page:

1 a large, well-conducted 2009 study of 2,043 charter schools in 15 states (and

The National Assessment Governing Board, appointed by the Secretary of

NAEP assesses students in grades four, eight and twelve.

Va. Dept. of Ed. NAEP

No Child Left Behind Cannot Work

The architects of NCLB brought a pure market mentality to the

goods or services are commodities

markets work their magic. Consumer electronics, restaurants, automobiles,

administrators and schools on nothing more. If we really want to know how

Race to the Top (more of the same)

Barack Obama's contribution to educational improvement is called Race

Aren't Teachers Responsible for Educational Outcomes?

etc.) shows a statistically significant and moderately strong, positive

Among industrialized nations, our math students perform very poorly.

1. are U.S. students intrinsically less intelligent or capable than those

Let's consider each:

(3) In war-torn or poor countries children are often unable to attend

tools and methods of mathematics to find patterns around them, to discern

What Do Other Nations Do?

Our system of math education produces some of the worst outcomes in

Chart 1.5 Class Time Spent on New Content and Review

The problems in the making connections category explore relationships

Chart 1.6 Percentage of Problem by Type