Sliding student scores spark fresh calls to revisit how we're teaching math

Upper Grand District School Board teacher Kendra Corbett leads her Grade 3 students in a math lesson on Thursday, in Orangeville, Ont. (Deana Sumanac-Johnson/CBC)Social SharingEarlier this week, Kendra Corbett stood at a blackboard breaking down an addition question for her Grade 3s, laying out step by step how to determine the answer and occasionally testing out suggestions her students called out.

A little later, she split her class into groups. Some youngsters played math games while others worked on an assignment using base ten blocks — manipulating the small plastic cubes, bars and squares (denoting units of one, 10 and 100, respectively). Corbett settled in with a handful of kids for a focused lesson on ordering numbers from least to greatest. All the activities allowed for practice learning three-digit numbers.

"We assume kids come in knowing what numbers actually mean. If they can count to 10, that doesn't necessarily mean they understand what 10 represents," said Corbett, a teacher in Upper Grand District School Board in Orangeville, Ont., some 60 kilometres northwest of Toronto.

"If they don't have the foundation of knowing what numbers actually mean and understanding of magnitude, then they're really going to struggle later on."

Knowledge and understanding of math rests on building blocks that students usually start developing in primary school. But with recent international and provincial assessments warning about sluggish and waning math skills among Canadian students — a slide that pre-dates the pandemic — some experts say we should revisit how we teach math and pay numeracy the same attention literacy has received in recent years.

What worries Canadian mathematician John Mighton are the changes happening over time, specifically the growth in students who are slipping to lower levels — where some can only handle basic math or are considered below functional numeracy — and the wider impact of that trend.

"That's a real threat to our country, to our economy, even to our political system. How can you think your way through problems that involve risk or probabilities or science if you can't do the simplest math?" said Mighton.

A Grade 3 student uses base ten blocks to help visualize three-digit numbers. (CBC)"It's a tragedy that we think math is not as important as it as and that we're not doing something about it."

Back in 2002, Mighton founded JUMP Math, an education charity that's grown to work with students and teachers in K-8 schools across Canada and abroad.

Teaching novices a new concept takes a different approach than teaching those already fluent in a topic, he says, yet much math instruction of the past 20 years has treated kids like experts before they're ready.

"From day one, you're given a lot of rich problems … highly contextualized, lots of complexity, lots of language. People don't feel they're really giving kids math unless they're doing that kind of problem," Mighton said.

Mathematician and educator John Mighton, left, seen with colleague Dana El Assi, says some math education tends to confuse the goal with the means to reach it. (Jessica Wong/CBC)"We mistake the end where we want to get kids to — we want them to be great chess players, great problem solvers — with the means to get them there," he said.

"Guide kids more, scaffold more, give more practice, build foundational knowledge, so the kids can become experts …When you do that, kids become much better problem-solvers."

Building a solid foundation and then strong reasoning and problem-solving skills are especially important amid the rise of artificial intelligence, he says.

"It's a dangerous idea that kids are just going to be able to deal with all the challenges that are coming from AI … if they don't have any domain-specific knowledge, particularly in mathematics.

"You're going to be so easily fooled and misled and you'll make disastrous decisions if you don't understand the math."

As with the recent shift toward more explicit, structured and phonics-led literacy teaching, there's a growing call for more systematic, teacher-led, direct instruction in math.

That doesn't mean rote learning, Mighton says, but does mean relying on evidence-based practices. He encourages teachers to use screenings, for instance, and regular low-stakes assessments to help them to make adjustments that propel students' progression.

There's a wealth of research about how children learn — on their attention spans, their ability to absorb information, barriers to that, and more — yet that research doesn't always translate into classrooms nor into the training that aspiring and working teachers receive, says neuroscientist Daniel Ansari, a professor of psychology and education at Western University in London, Ont.

He also advocates breaking up math learning into multiple, simplified steps, because it helps developing minds more readily pick up information.

"Sometimes teaching can assume that children start out as experts and they are required immediately to focus on their understanding, explaining their answers. And these sorts of things can overwhelm their cognitive systems and thereby prevent information making its way into long-term memory," he said.

Ansari says educators can absolutely strike a "balance between explicit instruction and letting children discover things working by themselves," but adds teachers must keep in mind what's developmentally appropriate and what learners are ready for.

Western University professor Daniel Ansari says the wealth of research about how children learn doesn't always reach students or their teachers. (Western University)Take timed practice — a.k.a. those "mad minute" sheets with rows of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division questions to be answered as quickly as possible — as an example.

Introduced too early, it overwhelms cognitive capacity, Ansari says. But once students have some time to learn and a bit of practice, "mad minutes serve as a way of increasing and deepening their fluency — and then it can also become something really fun."

Rather than touting a "back to basics" mentality, Ansari instead suggests we consider "how can we improve things further, pick some things that we maybe discarded too early? Keep some things we're doing right now, but reassess some others."

Back in Orangeville, Upper Grand K-12 math lead Ashley Kozak has overseen a multi-pronged plan to improve early math learning. It includes central math facilitators, creating new teaching resources, employing an early math screener and, for the schools with the greatest need, sending in support teachers to deliver focused tutoring.

Updated math training for Grade 1 and Grade 3 teachers and principals has also boosted educator confidence, Kozak says, adding the board saw improvement in its latest EQAO results.

While she loves seeing kids' "a-ha" moments when visiting math classes, she says it's even better seeing students confidently approach the next questions.

"It's more than memorization. It's about problem-solving. It's about making those connections," she said. "Seeing that ... makes me feel like 'OK, we got this. We can do it.'"

Upper Grand District School Board K-12 math program lead Ashley Kozak, left, seen here with Corbett, has led a multi-year, multi-pronged plan to improve early math instruction at their board. (Keira Mahoney/CBC)ABOUT THE AUTHORJessica WongJournalist

Based in Toronto, Jessica Wong covers stories about Canadian school systems and education for CBC News, with a particular interest in how technology impacts the lives and learning of students. Every so often, she revisits her previous life as a journalist covering the arts, entertainment and pop culture. You can email story tips and ideas to jessica.wong@cbc.ca.

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

Start the day smarter. Get the CBC News Morning Brief, the essential news you need delivered to your inbox.