Running Head: BELIEFS PAPER

TLT 428: Beliefs Paper

Gaby Montes

Lehigh University
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Beliefs About How Children Learn

Two of the articles posted on CourseSite, as well as the Ted Talk aligned perfectly with

my personal beliefs about how children learn and in what environment they can best do so in.

These are beliefs I am very passionate about and enjoyed reading research articles that aligned

directly with my beliefs. I believe that the most important aspects of children's learning are

equity, motivation, and engagement. These particular vital aspects of children's learning are not

very present within the current mathematics common core standards, yet they are largely

highlighted in the standards for how teachers should go about teaching mathematics to children.

These three aspects are vital for student success and learning.

The equity aspect of learning has to do with ensuring access, normalizing differences in

how each child learns mathematics, providing all children with challenging material, and

drawing upon funds of knowledge. This equity aspect of learning aligns directly with the social

justice priority in mathematics education described in the position statement " Mathematics

Education Through the Lens of Social Justice: Acknowledgment, Actions, and Accountability."

The teacher must ensure that every child has the access they need to succeed in the classroom -

whether it be access to materials to complete assignments, to the language of instruction and

assignments, or to cultural differences that may come up in mathematics problems. To illustrate,

ensuring that for a given homework assignment every student has a pencil to complete it with,

providing additional scaffolds and translations for language learners to ensure the language the

problems are written in is not a barrier, and ensuring that everyone has the prior knowledge of

what a "pizza" is before sending home an assignment using pizza as an example. To further

explain that last illustration, consider if a child is from another culture or country and does not

know what pizza is. As the teacher, it is our job to ensure that cultural difference does not act as
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a barrier to their ability to complete and understand the assignment. Alongside ensuring access,

teachers must create a classroom environment that normalizes the differences in how each child

learns. As educators, we must teach children that everyone is capable of learning mathematics,

yet every individual takes their own unique path of learning. We must normalize the idea that

different children learn at different speeds and in different ways. We must actively dispel the

existing misconceptions about who can learn and how individuals should learn mathematics by

promoting classroom environments that normalize unique differences in how each student learns,

while highlighting that every student can learn mathematics. Additionally, it is vital to ensure

that every child is provided with the same level of challenging mathematics opportunities and

problems. Often marginalized students are seen from a deficit perspective as being less capable

and are thus given less challenging material, negatively impacting their learning. All students

must be provided with the same challenging materials and then provided with the appropriate

scaffolds to enable them to operate within their zone of proximal development, an idea proposed

by Vygotsky that has been researched by numerous other researchers (Stremmel et al., 1993).

Further, instructors must look at students from an asset-based perspective and capitalize upon the

unique funds of knowledge each child brings to the classroom. The presence of these unique

funds of knowledge within each child must be acknowledged and embraced. Such funds of

knowledge, or unique skills and passions of the students, should be integrated into the

mathematics curriculum to increase student motivation to learn and feeling of capability.

The motivational aspect of learning takes many forms, but is vital because it determines

whether a child feels compelled to learn and work to overcome any confusion or obstacles that

may arise during the learning process. It is what determines whether students feel excited about

learning or dread it. First, students must understanding the purpose for their learning to be
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motivated to learn it. Thus, it is important to always provide children with the purpose and

rationale for every lesson they learn and every step of a mathematics problem. Such discussions

should occur as a class so the class can explore the reason together and come to an understanding

of the importance of learning the topic. Additionally, teachers must ensure they are contributing

to student motivation and not decreasing it. It is vital that the teacher ensure that every opinion

and answer feel valued and heard by giving all children the opportunity to answer. Beyond that,

the way a teacher responds to incorrect answers is extremely important. Rather than simply

shutting the child down by responding "no" or "incorrect," teachers should welcome mistakes as

part of the learning process and invite children to work through the problem together and see

what went wrong. In doing so, an environment that normalizes mistakes is created and students

will not feel shut down or embarrassed when they get a problem wrong. Instead, they will feel

empowered to learn what went wrong and feel motivated to get it correct the next time. All of

these aspects of increasing student motivation to learn align with Kalinec-Craig’s (2017) four

rights of the learner in the classroom. These rights are: the right to be confused, the right to claim

a mistake, the right to speak, listen, and be heard, and the right to write, do, and represent only

what makes sense. These four rights are a wonderful framework to cultivate a classroom

environment that promotes student motivation, enables students to feel comfortable enough to

engage, and promotes equity.

Student engagement ties along well with motivation because it makes students excited

about learning and helps to cultivate a lifelong love of learning. Student engagement in

mathematics should include providing students with opportunities to apply the mathematics

concepts they are learning in the classroom to the real-world context around them. The teacher

should provide students with hands on opportunities to go out into the local community and
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further explore mathematics concepts and problems hands on. Meyer's (2010) Ted Talk

highlights this important aspect of mathematics education and the importance of having students

formulate their own problems and encourage students to think more deeply and learn to apply

what they are learning in the classroom to other contexts. Students should be provided with

opportunities to create their own mathematics problems based on their own interests and what

they see in the world around them. This helps students learn to generalize and apply the

knowledge they are learning to the real world and helps ensure they truly understand the concept

(Benson-O'Connor, 2019). Finally, an important aspect of student engagement requires checking

in with students and getting to know them. Teachers should integrate student reflections

throughout the learning process, as well as one on one conversations with the teacher to both

check in and learn about student interests. Such interests can then be integrated into mathematics

classes and the reflections on learning can guide teacher lesson planning on content that requires

more review. These reflections enable students to take an active stance in their learning and to

transform frustration to productive questions (Benson-O'Connor, 2019).

References

Benson-O'Connor, C. D., McDaniel, C., & Carr, J. (2019). Bringing Math to Life: Provide

Students Opportunities to Connect Their Lives to Math. Networks: An Online Journal for

Teacher Research, 21(2), 3. doi: 10.4148/2470-6353.1299

Kalinec-Craig, C. A. (2017). The rights of the learner: A framework for promoting equity

through formative assessment in mathematics education. Democracy and

Education, 25(2), 5.
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“Mathematics Education Through the Lens of Social Justice: Acknowledgment, Actions, and

Accountability.” TODOS Mathematics for ALL Excellence and Equity in Mathematics,

www.todos-math.org/socialjustice.

Meyer, Dan, director. Math Class Needs a Makeover. TED, Mar. 2010,

www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_class_needs_a_makeover.

Stremmel, A. J., & Fu, V. R. (1993, October). Teaching in the zone of proximal development:

Implications for responsive teaching practice. In Child and youth care forum (Vol. 22,

No. 5, pp. 337-350). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Human Sciences Press.