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An evidence-based, developmental perspective on math education
Numbers play an important role in our everyday lives. We constantly use numbers and perform calculations to guide our actions and decisions. It has been shown that school-entry numerical skills are a more important predictor of subsequent academic achievement than early reading and socio-emotional skills. Furthermore, there are many reports linking numerical skills to economic outcomes, such as evidence showing that early math skills predict adult socio-economic status.
It is critical that education systems find the best ways to teach math and thereby equip learners with the skills necessary to succeed not only in school but also in life more generally. Unfortunately, for decades there have been ongoing, fierce, partisan debates over how to teach math that have, for the most part, not been informed by the wealth of knowledge about how children learn math. This article discusses a central debate in math education and draws attention to the importance of taking an evidence-based and developmental perspective on how to teach math.
The Math Wars
Perhaps the most prominent debate raging in math education for decades is whether children should be taught to calculate by rehearsing (also referred to as "drilling" or "rote learning") arithmetic facts, such as learnDaniel ing the times tables, or whether they should be taught to learn arithmetic and other math skills by discovering the principles that underlie it, through being encouraged to use handson materials, invent their own strategies, solve open-ended problems, and describe their problem-solving strategies without having to memorize answers (often referred to as "discoverybased learning" or "problem solving").
Another characterization of the debate is that one side advocates for greater attention to teaching students procedural knowledge for mathematical problem solving (such as explicit teaching of strategies) and encouraging them to memorize facts, while the other emphasizes the students' construction of rich conceptual knowledge, allowing them insights into how they solve problems.
These two approaches are frequently painted as being completely distinct and diametrically opposed to one another, creating the perception that there is a need to side with one particular view of best practice in math education. Indeed, math education curricula align themselves with one "side" or the other. History suggests that the pendulum swings between the two supposed...