Math can be beautiful. Within the process of solving a problem the solution can emerge and a sense of accomplishment shine forth. Unfortunately, the antithesis is also true, and frustration and anxiety can shade the experience.

I recently listened to Dr. Rachel Lambert during an interview about the principles of UDL Math (universal design learning). Dr. Lambert is Assistant Professor at UCSB (University of California Santa Barbara), who specializes in inclusive math classrooms. One note of relevance, to me, was her exploration of math and the branding or messaging associated with decades-long stigma about the discipline. Anxiety among students and teachers remains the relative constant. She suggests that by connecting mathematics to play and redefining the problem-solving process math can reinvent itself.

Math’s reputation among learners of the last couple of generations is to put it mildly, not great. It is by many seen as something to be endured. I recently spoke with superintendents about the concept of complexity and its often-misaligned connection to something being complicated – Math can be beautifully complex without complicating the experience for students.

According to Lambert, math instruction has remained stuck in the past too, revolving around a “you learn how I learned” model. If the mantle of learning math is to be passed down and remain relevant to our modern age, it needs to be made relevant for our learners - I believe that meaningful use of technology is a great vehicle for just that.

Lambert explains that Math Anxiety is a very real issue and seemingly unique to math in education. “Math is the only subject that has its own anxiety, and so there's a real reason that it frightens people. It's not just that it's boring, it's also very stressful.” Expecting all children to equally ‘get’ math, without knowing their individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as the whole child and what each student is going through on a social, emotional, and economic level, adds unnecessary pressure from the expectation of quick answers without inquiry.

Dr. Lambert found through her own research that students felt teachers became upset when they got answers wrong. Add to that the stress of communicating their solution in class after getting immediate negative feedback, there’s no wonder our kids are stressed and traumatized in the math classroom. For children, feeling ashamed in front of their peers could lead to catastrophic social repercussions. A student presented with a problem they can’t solve shouldn’t be expected to raise their hand in front of their entire social network and risk humiliation. If we are serious about Social Emotional Learning (SEL), this surely is where we can start. But how do you remove the concept of failure when there is a single correct and definable answer, yet an infinite number of wrong answers?

Amanda Jenson, author of Rough Draft Math (Stenhouse Publishers, 2020), suggests an alternative that resonated. She explains that by focusing on the journey towards a math solution we can create a more inclusive classroom culture. “Students will feel more comfortable expressing their partial understandings and in-process thinking, and then continually revising that thinking as they build a deep, conceptual understanding of mathematics,” she explains. The journey, it appears, is as important as the destination, and by making the journey towards the problem the objective, not the solution, stress is removed, and a new way of experiencing math can emerge.

The teachers’ role can shift from an evaluator to a facilitator of collaboration, a helpful advisor working through the problem alongside the class. Students feel their involvement changes also, becoming a team member, unafraid of coming to the front, playing the game of math, and enjoying the process all the while.

Enjoyment isn’t always associated with math, yet when math is seen as a fun puzzle, to be worked on and worked with, instead of a problem that needs an immediate correct answer, students engage.  Puzzle-based learning has long been shown to increase engagement of math students (ref), and as Lambert found, if you take away the risk of failure, students respond.

Combining greater engagement with reduced anxiety allows for the classroom to become, as Jenson puts it, a place for exploration. This promotes the inclusion, or indeed focus, of the journey within math, while permitting students to participate in class without feeling their individual path took a wrong turn.

Giving more students a chance to contribute to collective problem-solving and communal understanding of mathematical concepts, Jensen suggests, is key. “When everyone’s ideas have strengths in them and the teacher points out what’s valuable about the drafts, and [students’] peers start to point out what’s valuable, then everyone is seeing each other as having some mathematical strengths.”

When all students within a class are provided the freedom to explore problems, without fear of failure, and supported by the class group mentality, greater outcomes of equality can be achieved. Students’ who may have previously been left behind are thrust forward, renewed confident and competent learners, but also equipped with important life goals.

Rough draft thinking could therefore bring the equality to the classroom that we’re all searching for. Our current one-size-fits-all approach, Lambert notes, isn’t set up to support students, “If you don't fit into that box, for whatever reason, then you don't fit into that box, the box stays the same, you have to change.”  With so much conversation around UDL and equity, this concept has real appeal. “Universal Design for Learning is a shift in perspective, so we change math class so that it works for the broadest range of kids,” continues Lambert.

I am encouraged by not just the national, but global discourse surrounding the power of math and the role it plays in developing the ‘next’ for innovation and communities at-large. It is imperative that those of us working at the juncture of mathematics education and innovation lean into the process as much as we do the result.

- Henrik