BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH

Using brain science to foster a growth mindset in maths

mathletics.com
 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

Contents

Introduction 3

Where does the “maths brain” idea come from? 3

No such thing as a maths brain 5

The perils of maths memorisation 6

To group or not to group? 8

Changing messages in maths class 9

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

Introduction

How many times have you heard someone say, "Oh I’m not a maths person" or
"I don’t have a maths brain." The notion that someone is either logical, creative,
sporty, academic, practical (the list goes on) is inextricably linked with how we
perceive ourselves and in what we believe we can excel. As adults, we don’t take
these personality types too seriously and understand that we exhibit a mixture of
these traits. Children are different. As they seek to understand who they are and
their place in the world, in school and at home, these labels tend to carry a lot
more weight. The impact of labelling people as a type is that psychologically the
message we convey is that we’re good at something and by default not so good
at something else. In fact, we can all achieve in a variety of subjects if we put in
the effort to learn and challenge ourselves.
In this eBook you will learn the brain science behind learning and how new
research in this field can positively impact on the way in which maths is taught.

Where does the “maths brain” idea

come from?
In education, we accept that history or physics are subjects
we must learn, whereas, maths is perceived as a subject
that you are either good at or not. The idea of a “maths
person” stems from many places, but parents’ own belief in
themselves about whether they can “do” maths significantly
influences children. Why do parents believe in the maths
person idea?

When children are younger they show excitement at

learning maths but this changes as they progress onto
high school. Research by Tom Loveless of the Brookings
Institution, suggests that as children get older their belief in
being able to perform well tends to decline (Loveless 2006).
Over the years, maths curricula around the world have
favoured a procedural approach to teaching maths over
a conceptual approach. This has resulted in a generation
of learners becoming fearful of maths because they can’t
make sense of it and find it difficult to memorise all of
the methods – a fruitless exercise as brain science has
revealed. Fortunately, maths teaching has changed for the
better and includes strategies to help nurture conceptual

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

understanding. Nevertheless, parents’ own negative experience of maths can filter down to the next
generation of learners.

Jo Boaler (2016) is a Stanford professor and author of the critically acclaimed book, Mathematical
Mindsets. In her book she suggests, “Mathematics, more than any other subject, has the power to crush
students’ spirits, and many adults do not move on from mathematics experiences in school if they are
negative. When students get the idea they cannot do math, they often maintain a negative relationship
with mathematics throughout the rest of their lives” (Boaler 2016, p. x).

The maths brain is also a result of parents being exposed to the self-esteem movement of the 80s which
advised teachers and parents to praise children for their intelligence.

The outcome of this advice led to a generation of people with fixed mindsets. As these children grew up
and became parents themselves, they believed they were not good at maths and that you had to have
a natural talent to succeed. At parents evenings across the globe, teachers have heard time and time
again “I was never any good at maths either”. The message this conveys to children is that it’s okay not to
be good at maths, after all “My parents weren't any good at it and they’re doing alright, aren’t they?” This
only perpetuates the myth that you are either good or not good at maths and you don’t have to try hard
at maths to succeed in life. Unfortunately, this belief feeds into the psychological trap of fixed mindsets.
The pattern repeats generation after generation.

Carol Dweck explains, “When people think that some kids just can’t do math, that success is reserved
for only certain kids, thought of as ‘smart’, or that it’s just too late for kids who haven’t had the right
background, then they can easily accept that many students fail math and hate math. In fact, we have
found that many teachers console their students by telling them not to worry about doing poorly in math
because not everyone can excel in it. These adult enablers – parents and teachers alike – allow kids to
give up on math before they’ve barely gotten started. No wonder more than a few students dismiss their
own poor performance by declaring: ‘I’m not a math person’” (Boaler 2016, p. vii).

Dweck goes on to say, “Where do parents, teachers and students get the idea that math is just for some
people? New research shows that this idea is deeply embedded in the field of mathematics. Researchers
polled scholars (at American universities) in a range of disciplines. They asked them how much they
thought that success in their field depended on fixed, innate ability that cannot be taught, as opposed
to hard work, dedication, and learning. Of all the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and
math), math scholars were the most extreme in emphasizing fixed, innate ability (Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer
& Freeland, 2015). If this message is passed down from generation to generation, no wonder students
are afraid of math. And no wonder they conclude they’re not math people when it doesn’t come easily.”
(Boaler 2016, p. vii) Schools have recognised that to change children’s fixed mindsets about maths, they
must also work with parents to help them change their mindsets too. More and more schools are seeing
the value in hosting parent maths workshops to help dispel the maths brain myth and build parents’
confidence in maths so they can support their children with their learning.

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

No such thing as a maths brain

Boaler believes passionately that one of the most important ways to dispel the maths brain myth is to
teach the science behind how you learn. Technology has been instrumental in unlocking the mystery
of how our brains learn. Neuroscientists have only very recently been able to watch brain activity in a
way that shows us connections between learning and our emotions. What’s more, research into brain
plasticity has astounded the scientific community. It was believed that your capacity to learn was set
and once people reached maturity your brain didn’t grow any more. This theory has been disproved
and in fact your brain can grow and change in a very short space of time. Research into brain
changes among London Black Cab drivers (who must go through years of training to learn thousands
of routes and roads in London) stunned scientists when, at the end of the training period, they found
that in the drivers’ hippocampus had grown significantly (Boaler 2011). The hippocampus is the area of
the brain that is primarily associated with memory and spatial navigation.
This shift in our understanding of how the brain changes when we learn had wide-reaching
implications. As a result, more research into brain plasticity is underway to answer fundamental
questions that affect many aspects of society. “In one study that I believe to be highly significant
for those of us in education, researchers at the National Institute for Mental Health gave people a
10-minute exercise to work on each day for three weeks. The researchers compared the brains of
those receiving the training with those who did not. The results showed that the people who worked
on an exercise for a few minutes a day experienced structural brain changes. The participants’ brains
‘rewired’ and grew in response to a 10-minute mental task performed daily over 15 week-days. Such
results should prompt educators to abandon the traditional fixed ideas of the brain and learning that
currently fill schools – ideas that children are smart or dumb, quick or slow. If brains can change in
three weeks, imagine what can happen in a year of math class if students are given the right math
materials and they receive positive messages about their potential and ability.” (Boaler 2016, p. 5)
A study by Jason Moser (2011) and his colleagues revealed that when your brain makes mistakes, it
fires synapses which are electrical signals that move between parts of the brain where learning is
done (Moser 2011). According to Moser’s study, the brain sparks even when we are not aware of our
mistake. Boaler explains it like this, “When teachers ask me how this can be possible, I tell them that the
best thinking we have on this now is that the brain sparks and grows when we make a mistake, even
if we are not aware of it, because it is a time of struggle; the brain is challenged, and this is the time
when the brain grows the most.” (Boaler 2016, p. 11)

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

Getting recent neurological research into schools and informing teachers about its significance can
be powerful in halting, or even preventing, the next generation of people with fixed mindsets. Teaching
children that mistakes are good as it grows your brain takes the fear factor out of attempting a
challenging task and shows children that mistakes are part of everyone’s learning.
By explaining the results from brain science to students, as well as discussing mistakes and praising
effort over results, teachers can help nurture growth mindsets in their classrooms.

The perils of maths memorisation

Education authorities across the globe rely on timed tests to
measure performance in maths. The underlying message that
timed tests convey is one that feeds directly into the psychology
of a fixed mindset. To work something out slowly is failure and
to avoid failure, children place a higher value on getting the
answer right rather than focusing on the learning journey itself.
Of course, there are some children that will be fine under timed
conditions but for those that aren’t, the temptation to memorise
facts, to get the answers right, is overwhelming. “Mathematics is a
conceptual domain. It is not, as many people think, a list of facts
and methods to be remembered” (Boaler 2016, p. 36).
To help create mathematical mindsets it is important to
recognise the need to work flexibly and conceptually with
numbers. Research into students with varying levels of ability has
revealed that children engage in maths in diverse ways. Students
aged between 7 and 13 were studied by Eddie Gray and David Tall
(Boaler, 2016), and ranged between low, middle or high achieving.
Each group was given number problems. The researchers found
that the low achievers stuck to recall and using a standard
method even when it was problematic to do so. Whereas the
high achievers took a different approach. The strategies they
employed allowed them to work flexibly and conceptually with
numbers. “After extensive study of the different strategies that
the students used, the researchers concluded that the difference
between the high- and low-achieving students was not that the
low-achieving students knew less mathematics, but that they
were interacting with the mathematics differently. Instead of
approaching numbers with flexibility and number sense, they
seemed to cling to formal procedures they had learned ... The
low-achievers did not know less, they just did not use maths
flexibly – probably because they had been set on the wrong
pathway, from an early age, of trying to memorize methods and
number facts ... ” (Boaler 2016, p. 35).

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

Unfortunately, students that are deemed as underperforming are given more practice to consolidate
their learning. It’s this misdiagnosis and incorrect guidance on how to tackle the “problem” that further
cements children’s “beliefs that math success means memorizing methods, not understanding and
making sense of situations” (Boaler 2016, p. 35).
Another aspect of brain science that is not fully appreciated or understood in education is that of
brain compression. “When you learn a new area of mathematics that you know nothing about, it takes
up a large space in your brain, as you need to think hard about how it works and how the ideas relate
to other ideas.
But the mathematics you learned before and know well, such as addition, takes up a small, compact
space in your brain. You can use it easily without thinking about it. The process of compression
happens because the brain is a highly complex organ with many things to control, and it can focus
on only a few uncompressed ideas at any one time. Ideas that are well known are compressed and
filed away... Many students do not describe mathematics as a ‘real joy’ – in part because they are not
engaging in compression. Notably, the brain can only compress concepts; it cannot compress rules
and methods. Therefore, students who do not engage in conceptual thinking and instead approach
mathematics as a list of rules to remember are not engaging in the critical process of compression,
so their brain is unable to organize and file away ideas; instead, it struggles to hold onto long lists of
methods and rules.” (Boaler, 2016, p. 37-38)
Teachers can ensure compression happens by helping their students to approach mathematics
conceptually and encouraging children to be flexible when making sense of numbers. As Boaler
explains, “Research has shown definitively the importance of a growth mindset - the belief that
intelligence grows the more you learn, the smarter you get. But to erase math failure we need students
to have growth beliefs about themselves and accompany them with growth beliefs about the nature
of mathematics and their relation to it. Children need to see math as a conceptual, growth subject
that they should think about and make sense of. ... When students see math as a broad landscape
of unexplored puzzles in which they can wander around, asking questions and thinking about
relationships and their role as one of thinking about ideas, and making sense of them, they have
mathematical mindset” (Boaler 2016, p. 33-34).

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

To group or not to group?

Many schools rely on ability grouping to help teachers focus and adjust
the pace of instruction to suit the needs of students with similar abilities.
Grouping allows teachers to provide more positive re-enforcement
to children who are struggling, whereas middle to higher achievers
may get more opportunities to explore the theory and apply their
skills freely. Supporters of ability grouping believe that it not only helps
teachers deliver the best teaching for their students but that it does not
compromise students’ ability to achieve.
But is ability grouping fair? One of the main concerns about ability
grouping is that teachers take on an idea about the type of learner
within those groups, which creates different expectations of children’s
learning potential. This can lead to students not being given the chance
to use numbers flexibly, relying more on procedural maths learning
and practice, rather than providing an environment where they learn
conceptually and make mistakes freely, helping to grow their brains.
Boaler suggests, “The most productive classrooms are those in which
students work on complex problems, are encouraged to take risks, and
can struggle and fail and still feel good about working on hard problems”
(Boaler 2016, p. 176).
Whilst a lot is done within schools to keep grouping anonymous from
students, such as naming groups colours, rather than lower, middle and
upper, eventually children realise they are different to others within their
class and as they get older they accept they are given different work to
do, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Research by Dixon in
2002 suggests that in England 88% of students placed in ability groups (or
sets) at the age of 4 remained in the same sets for the rest of their school
lives (Boaler 2016, p. 111).
A 2004 United Kingdom study by William and Bartholomew analysed data
from the General Certificate of Secondary Education and Key Stage 3
tests. “The data analysis provided the basis for measuring achievement
which is independent of the individual’s ability. William and Bartholomew
noted that grouping by ability level had little impacton overall
Mathematics achievement. Moreover, the group placement produced
increments in academic achievement for high-achieving students at
the loss of these gains among the low-ability students. Also noted is that
performance in mathematics did not vary across school type and ability
group placement” (UK Essays, 2015).
However, there are also studies that contradict William and
Bartholomew’s research that ability grouping does not lead to greater
levels of achievement. In fact, ability grouping is one of the most
researched topics in education, which suggests how dividing a subject it
is within the education community.

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

Changing messages in maths classes

Boaler strongly believes that the key to creating mathematical mindsets is to change the messages
in our classrooms (Boaler 2015). She suggests that it’s difficult to create a growth mindset in maths
when children are given short, closed, right or wrong questions which play into the notion that maths
is a fixed, procedural subject that lacks creativity. Perhaps giving children questions that have space
to learn and explore maths conceptually is a better way forward. Combining this with positive,
inspirational messages that encourage self-belief and teaching the science behind learning can help
nurture growth mindsets in maths.

Mistakes are
valuable

Everyone can
learn maths to the
highest level
Maths class is
about learning,
not performing
Maths is about
creativity and
making sense

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 BUSTING THE "MATHS BRAIN" MYTH
Using brain science to foster a growth
mindset in maths

References
Boaler, J. 2015. How you can be good at math, and other surprising facts about learning. TEDxStanford.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icoSeGqQtY.

Boaler, J. 2016. Mathematical mindsets: Unleashing students’ potential through creative math,
inspiring messages and innovative teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dweck, C. 2016. Foreword. In Jo Boaler, Mathematical mindsets: Unleashing students’ potential

through creative math, inspiring messages and innovative teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Essays, UK. (November 2013). Advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping. Retrieved from
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/education/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-ability-grouping-
education-essay.php?vref=1

Loveless, T. 2006. “The happiness factor in student earning,” The 2006 Brown Center Report on
American Education: How Well are American Students Learning? Washington, D.C.: The Brookings
Institution.

Moser, J. S., Schroder, H. S., Heeter, C., Moran, T. P., & Lee, Y. H. 2011. Mind your errors: Evidence
for a neural mechanism linking growth mind-set to adaptive posterror adjustments. Psychological
Science, 0956797611419520.

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