My close friend and colleague shared an experience during her time in high school during the late 80’s. She was sitting outside in the courtyard of an inner city school studying for her sixth period physics test.
A young, attractive man came up to her, obviously interested in her. Intrigued by the large textbook in her lap, and the halter top she was wearing, he inquired, “What are you studying?”
“Physics,” she replied.
“Oh,” he said, his face wincing at hearing her words. And that was…that. He turned and walked away.
I assume you have heard, and know, that as the level of math expertise increases, the number of women in said fields decreases.
While this is an interesting discussion all on its own, I share this story to discuss where identities come from. The reason being, if we are going to improve math identities in our students and help them truly find joy in math, we have to understand how their relationship with math is formed.
The answer to this begins with understanding identity.
What shapes our identities in math?
Our math identities are how we see ourselves in relationship to math. Do we find joy in math? Would we describe ourselves as math people? Do we see ourselves in math, or is just something we have to do for the time being? Are we confident during math?
Just as so much of our identities comes from the inside, our gender, race, culture, family, society, media, and socio-economic status can ALL influence our math identities.
My friend’s story highlights just how the outward pressures of society can impact the development of our identity. It’s not just what we think of ourselves, but what others think of us that can impact who we become. While my friend felt confident in herself as someone who enjoyed science and math, others are worn down by the pressures of others to deny who they truly are.
You can see this in almost every episode of Queer Eye on Netflix. The heroes shy away from who they feel they are on the inside because of who their family, friends, and society tells them they should be. The Fab Five work to release the person imprisoned inside of each hero in a way that is sustainable for that person.
Math identity is no different. Who students see themselves in relationship to math is influenced by their personal experiences and opinions of math, as well as those of the world around them.
While it many seem daunting as teachers to feel that we can have any sort of influence to improve math identity, students DO spend a great deal of time in school with us. Therefore, we CAN 100% influence and improve math identity in our students.
What’s your math identity?
The best place in understanding how to improve math identity in your students, is to reflect on your own personal math identity.
How do you view yourself in math? Are you confident, as both a teacher and student of math? Would you describe yourself as a math person?
Answering these questions, and being honest about your own personal relationship and history with math will help you understand your students’ math identities.
What events, experiences, or situations in your life developed your identity as a mathematician? Were there any situations or experiences that could have changed the outcome of your math identity in school, or your math identity today?
I did not see myself as a math person growing up. Most learning came naturally to me, so when I started to struggle, I didn’t know how to cope. Because I wasn’t naturally good at math, I hated it. It shaped what I pursued in college and what I thought I was capable of.
In trying to heal my relationship with math, I have worked to understand it so that I can teach it well to my students. Choosing my least favorite content area, and making it my passion, transformed the way I viewed myself as a mathematician.
You will do your students a favor by first discovering your own math identity, as well as the positive, or negative experiences that shaped your identity. Coming to terms with your past and present math self will help you move forward positively for your students.
How do we improve math identity when there is so much noise?
Think about ALL that shapes our identities:
Depending on what grade you teach, students spend six hours of their day at school, 180 days a year, for 12 years of their life.
I don’t know about you, but if I spent 6 hours a day preparing healthy meals, exercising, and putting my mental health first, I would be the version of myself that I dream of.
We can accomplish a lot in our classrooms. The thought processes we model to our students regarding math on a day to day basis can break through the noise they hear from friends, family, and the media. Imagine how much more powerful that would be if a school wide positive math culture was adopted? Or a district wide approach?
What most of us have control of are the cultures of our own classrooms. While it is great to dream about the transformative powers of schools in local communities, let’s start with our own classrooms and the math habits and mindsets we instill everyday in our students.
5 Math Habits to Improve Student Math Identity:
1.) Persevering through difficulty
My students seem to know that time is limited. As teachers, we are pressed for time to get through curriculum and concepts before state testing. The result of that is that we rush to rescue students. I loved the analogy I heard about swimming.
If we took our students swimming and saw that one of them was drowning, of course we would rush out to rescue them. However, when learning to swim, we act as a coach supporting them as they gain the confidence they need. Sometimes it looks as though they are sinking, but with a little struggle, they manage to find their stroke and keep their head above the water.
It can hard to figure out if our students need a swimming coach or a lifeguard. Time makes us rush into life guard mode, relying on tricks and procedural based approaches when students may need a moment kick their feet.
Acknowledging students’ struggle and effort without rushing to their side is a great habit to instill in both ourselves and our students. Struggle is a part of the process. The sooner we help our kids experience this and become comfortable with it, the sooner they will realize that making mistakes and struggling is a part of the learning process.
2.) Analyzing Mistakes
To be clear, I do currently assign homework to my students. While I am 100% interested in the research that says homework does not improve positive math mindsets, I feel pressure from families.
But, the way I approach homework is giving my students an opportunity to practice on their own, make mistakes, and learn from them. I have my students correct their own work, and when they make a mistake, I ask them to share their work so we can learn from it. We thank the student for making the mistake and being vulnerable with us.
Making a mistake is a part of learning. While we talk about being precise, taking our time, and checking our work for accuracy, mathematicians persevere when problems are difficult to solve and aren’t afraid to try to solve problems for fear of being wrong.
3.) Be thoughtful in attempts to solve:
Just as engineers research, imagine, plan, create, and test, mathematicians are methodical in their approaches to solving.
We should be modeling and expecting students to collect evidence, visualize a problem, create a plan to solve, and checking their results for reasonableness.
I love putting extra information into word problems that I give to my students. My students come to me with a habit of grabbing numbers from problems. They haven’t been taught to read a word problem closely and look for multiple pieces of evidence. Instead, they go with their first instinct to solve with whatever numbers they find, and the result is often wrong.
This is why part of our daily class routine is numberless word problems. Removing the numbers from word problems focuses student attention on problem structure and context. It takes the pressure off of students to solve, and their desire to do so, and instead drives class math discussion.
From this, students learn to slow down and apply these strategies to new problems, as well as build their knowledge of problem types for future reference.
4.) Precise in calculations, language, and labels:
As mathematicians, students need to be familiar with a number of different concepts. Knowing vocabulary so that they can participate in math discussions is always a necessary skill. I remember when my district adopted its current curriculum. I wasn’t familiar with math properties at that time because they were not stressed to me as a student or in my teacher program.
Likewise, my colleagues were commenting how their students didn’t know what the commutative or associative property was. A way to build that familiarity in ourselves and our students is to use the language and expect the language in our students also. During a math lesson, attending to precision in the way we teach and expect our students to explain are fantastic ways to grow student knowledge of math vocabulary. Of course, games like Gimkit, Blooket, Quizlet, and Kahoot are great ways to build vocabulary.
Another way that we can improve student math identity is through accuracy in the labels we use. This is essential to helping students gain confidence in word problems. Too often we isolate the procedure of solving from what the numbers represent in a word problem. Expecting students to go back to the problem, both in standard algorithms and word problems will improve their math identities as they become confident in solving.
5.) Using evidence to support a claim and expecting evidence from others
When students present their solutions to solve a problem, we should encourage them to support their ideas with evidence. Just as an argument in science is stronger with more evidence, a math solution claim can be supported by problem context, visual models, and equations.
We should support students in developing this math habit so that they feel confident in standing behind their ideas with evidence, and expect the same of others.
Which math habit is your favorite to improve math identity?
