The way you talk to your child about math matters

Parents’ responses to children’s math success, failure linked to motivation, anxiety

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

“You’re so smart!”

This encouraging response may actually do more harm than good to children’s math performance, according to a new study by the University of Georgia.

Co-conducted by Michael Barger, an assistant professor in the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, the study found that encouraging children with responses related to their personal traits or innate abilities may dampen their math motivation and achievement over time.

Parents who make comments linking their children’s performance to personal attributes like intelligence (e.g., “You’re so smart” or “Math just isn’t your thing”) are using what’s referred to as person responses. In contrast, parents who link their children’s actions, such as effort or strategy use, to their performance (e.g., “You worked hard” or “What might be useful next time you have a math test?”) are using process responses.

“Person-focused praise sounds good on its face, but ultimately, it might undermine students’ motivation if they run into challenges,” said Barger. “Because if you run into challenges after being told you’re so smart, you might think, ‘Maybe they were wrong.’ We also know that people tend to think about math as something that some people can do and others can’t, and that language is pretty common, whether it’s among parents or teachers, even with young kids.”

Praising strategy and effort

For the study, researchers asked more than 500 parents to report on how they respond to their children’s math performance and their math beliefs and goals. Students were assessed in two waves across a year to measure their math motivation and achievement.

The results showed that parents who viewed math ability as changeable were more likely to give process responses focused on their children’s strategy use and efforts rather than their intelligence or other personal attributes.

In contrast, parents who believe math ability is unchangeable and that math failure can’t be constructive gave more person-oriented responses. Parents with high expectations for their children gave a combination of both responses.

While responses highlighting strategy and effort were not related to any achievement outcomes, children who received more responses about their personal traits—in particular, related to failure—were more likely to avoid harder math problems, exhibited higher levels of math anxiety, and scored lower on a math achievement test.

“There are a couple possible reasons process messages aren’t necessarily improving math achievement,” said Barger. “It could be that they’re just so frequent now that they just kind of wash over, and that doesn’t have as much of an impact. And it could also be that some of these messages don’t land correctly if they’re not authentic. However, with person responses, we saw clear links to anxiety and less preference for challenging math problems.”

A boost to math motivation

Because person responses predict poor math adjustment in children over time, researchers recommend limiting this type of response at home and in the classroom.

“There’s not necessarily any benefit to talking about whether people are or are not math people because if you’re a student who starts struggling, you’re going to start thinking that maybe you’re not a math person,” said Barger.

The second recommendation for parents is to think about their own beliefs and goals for their kids and examine how these might lead them to respond in person or process ways. Simply telling parents to refrain from talking about math ability may not be enough.

Instead, convincing parents that math performance can improve could go a long way.

Many parents praise their children’s individual characteristics as a form of encouragement, but focusing less on how students perform and more on their strategy and enjoyment of math might be a more effective way to enhance motivation.

This means using responses like “Why do you think that happened?” or “Did you have fun?” in place of responses like “You’re so smart” or “Math just isn’t your thing.”

“We should also be asking whether parents believe that math ability can change and if they view failure as an opportunity to learn, as this seems to be related to less person responses,” said Barger. “This is more effective than just giving a checklist of things to say.”

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JOURNAL

Child Development

DOI

10.1111/cdev.13834 

ARTICLE TITLE

Parents' responses to children's math performance in early elementary school: Links with parents' math beliefs and children's math adjustment

DONALD DUCK IN MATHMAGIC LAND

Two Native Scholars Link Native Culture to Math

Yahoo News
Native Education

Danny Luecke (enrolled member of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), developer/instructor for the bachelor’s degree in Secondary Math Education at Turtle Mountain Community College. Luecke is currently completing his Ph.D. in math and math education at North Dakota State University. (Photo/American Indian College Fund)

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF AUGUST 12, 2023

The focus of tribal colleges’ work is to seek connections between the cultures and heritage of the Indigenous communities they serve and mainstream education curricula.

Danny Luecke (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), a member of the Teacher Education Department at Turtle Mountain Community College, and Dr. David Sanders (Oglala Sioux Tribe), vice president of research at the American Indian College Fund, explored the connections between math content, local culture, and the classroom.

While using an Indigenous research paradigm at Sitting Bull College, located on the Standing Rock Reservation, their work looks at how to connect language and culture in the tribal college math classroom and has contributed to a change in the theory of knowledge incorporated at tribal colleges and universities.

Their resulting co-authored, peer-reviewed research paper titled “Dakota/Lakota Match Connections: an epistemological framework for teaching and learning mathematics with Indigenous communities and students,” was published in Frontiers in Education on July 27, 2023.

“My main thought was how to connect the TCU math classroom with language and culture. Most of us were taught math with the Western value of separation/abstraction (that is removing relationship) as the only and superior way to think mathematically. The myth that Western math is placeless, without culture, and contains all mathematical knowing is very prevalent, but does not align with the SBC mission statement that has D/Lakota language, culture, and values influencing every classroom, including the math class," Luecke said of his research and work at Sitting Bull College as a math teacher partnering with its immersion school,

Through conversations at Sitting Bull College with elders, language instructors, math instructors, and people in the community, Luecke said he found many examples of the connections between the Dakota/Lakota language and math. \

The research methodology Luecke and Sanders used incorporated the voices of community members, elders, Native speakers, and culture bearers. Around the same time, Luecke said he was doing work personally to learn what it means to be a member of the Choctaw Nation.

Luecke is the developer/instructor for the bachelor’s degree in Secondary Math Education at Turtle Mountain Community College. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in math and math education at North Dakota State University. His research focuses on Dakota/Lakota Math Connections at Sitting Bull College. He was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota. In addition to his membership in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Luecke has ancestry from multiple European nations as well. He says he is honoring all his ancestors and the Creator through his life and work with the Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain communities. He has also written other articles about Indigenous math connections, including the forthcoming article "Dakota/Lakota Math Connections: Results from Developing a Community-based Math Resource" submitted for publication in 2024 in the Tribal College and University Research Journal, and “Ojibwe Math at Turtle Mountain Community College,” to be published in the Fall 2023 issue of Tribal College Journal. His forthcoming dissertation (December 2023) is titled “Dakota/Lakota Math Connections: Applying an Indigenous Research Paradigm to Research in Undergraduate Math Education.”

“Danny has taken up an important strand of practical research, applying an Indigenous methodological approach which requires Indigenous communities to be involved throughout the process. In Danny's work, community members have shaped, developed, and drive the connections between Western Mathematics, English, Dakota/Lakota Mathematics and the Dakota/Lakota languages while not privileging one over the other. Stemming from this work is the idea that mathematics can increase Dakota/Lakota language fluency and Dakota/Lakota languages can help increase mathematical conceptual understanding. In essence, the intersection of these four areas helps to demystify the subject of mathematics, with the understanding that all cultures use mathematics," Sanders said, 

Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund says making making cultural connections with teaching students leads to meaningful education for Native students.

“Naming our traditional knowledge and linking that knowledge with teaching and learning in our schools and homes is one of the ways that we ensure quality, meaningful education for our children. When scholars make those connections for us, we honor and appreciate that scholarship and the opportunity to share it with the broader educational community," Crazy Bull said.

Big data tells story of diversity, migration of math's elite

Analysis of nearly 250,000 mathematicians gives a picture of the world of math

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE MIGRATION OF ELITE MATHEMATICIANS BETWEEN FIVE KEY COUNTRIES SINCE 1800. THE FLOW CHART REVEALS MASS FLOWS OF RESEARCHERS DUE TO HISTORICAL EVENTS, SUCH AS WAR. view more 

CREDIT: FIGURE BY HERBERT CHANG.

Math's top prize, the Fields Medal, has succeeded in making mathematics more inclusive but still rewards elitism, according to a Dartmouth study.

Published in Nature's Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, the study analyzed the effectiveness of the Fields Medal to make math at its highest level more representative across nations and identities. The result provides a visual, data-driven history of international migration and social networks among math elites, particularly since World War II.

"With so much recent discussion on equality in academia, we came to this study recognizing that math has a reputation of being egalitarian," says Herbert Chang, a research affiliate in Dartmouth's Fu Lab and lead author of the paper. "Our results provide a complex and rich story about the world of math especially since the establishment of the Fields Medal."

The Fields Medal, widely considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics, is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40. It was first presented in 1936 to honor young mathematicians from groups that were typically underrepresented in top math circles.

According to the Dartmouth mathematicians, the prize has received criticism over its history for rewarding existing power structures rather than making math more inclusive and equitable at the elite level. Against this criticism, the study set out to explore how well the award has lived up to its original promise.

The analysis shows that the Fields Medal has elevated mathematicians of marginalized nationalities, but that the there is also "self-reinforcing behavior," mostly through mentoring relationships among math elites.

As example, the study found that the award succeeded in integrating mathematicians from Japan and Germany after WWII. But it also found that two-thirds of 60 medalists emerged from the same math "ancestral tree."

Although the study found diversity among award winners from top math countries, it also found that groups with Arabic, African, and East Asian language identities remain under-represented at the elite level.

The research team defines "elite" as a connection between Fields medalists, rather than other indicators that measure academic productivity and impact.

"It's a privilege for a young mathematician to inherit a powerful network of relationships from an influential academic advisor," says Feng Fu, an assistant professor of mathematics and the senior researcher for the study. "The growing number of doctoral degrees awarded to international mathematicians in the U.S. indicates that mathematics can be a powerful integrative force in our common humanity."

According to the paper, only France exports more elite mathematicians to the United States than it receives from the U.S. "This seems to affirm France as the intellectual capital of mathematics," say the authors.

"A mathematician that is French and attends a top 50 institution means they are 6.4 times more likely to gain membership into the elite circle," the research team says in the study. "On the other hand, being East Asian and attending a top 50 institution only affords you 1.5 times the likelihood of gaining membership into this elite circle."

Among other findings of the study:

- All Fields medalists can be traced to nine "academic family trees"; the largest holds 44 out of 60 medalists.

- Germany has consistently high levels of pluralism in mathematics except for the period of WWII.

- Japan has recently opened to higher levels of non-Japanese elites within the country.

- The number of Russian elite mathematicians decreased significantly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The research team used artificial intelligence techniques to study data on more than 240,000 mathematicians dating as far back as the 16th century. The information was taken from the Mathematics Genealogy database maintained by North Dakota State University.

Researchers organized elite mathematicians by countries and lingo-ethnic categories and then mapped their flow between nations and across ethnic lines. Connections were drawn to show the physical movement, identity and academic relationship of mathematicians.

"There are many sources of inequality in elite-level math and academia. Our goal was to characterize how a single factor--mentorship--plays a role, while telling a comprehensive story about mathematics," says Chang, who was in Dartmouth's Jack Byrne Scholars Program in Math and Society as an undergraduate.

Prior studies of the Fields Medal and elitism in math have focused on how mathematicians cite research. According to the research team, such an approach might miss the structural forces that prevent access to individuals from outside elite math circles.

The research advances past studies by providing a high-level view of the relationship between mentorship, prize giving, and ethnicity.

The research team concludes, as other researchers have in the past, that the Fields Medal should "return to its roots" in order to achieve its original goal of elevating marginalized voices.

###

The research was supported by the Shapiro Visitors Program in the Department of Mathematics and the Neukom Institute.

 

Peers crucial in shaping boys’ confidence in math skills

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

Boys are good at math, girls not so much? A study from the University of Zurich has analyzed the social mechanisms that contribute to the gender gap in math confidence. While peer comparisons seem to play a crucial role for boys, girls’ subjective evaluations are more likely to be based on objective performance.

Research has shown that in Western societies, the average secondary school girl has less confidence in her mathematical abilities than the average boy of the same age. At the same time, no significant difference has been found between girls’ and boys’ performance in mathematics. This phenomenon is often framed as girls not being confident enough in their abilities, or that boys might in fact be overconfident.

This math confidence gap has far-reaching consequences: self-perceived competence influences educational and occupational choices and young people choose university subjects and careers that they believe they are talented in. As a result, women are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects at university level and in high-paying STEM careers.

Peer processes provide nuanced insights into varying self-perceptions

A study from the University of Zurich (UZH) focuses on a previously neglected aspect of the math confidence gap: the role of peer relationships. “Especially in adolescence, peers are the primary social reference for individual development. Peer processes that operate through friendship networks determine a wide range of individual outcomes,” said the study’s lead author Isabel Raabe from the Department of Sociology at UZH. The study analyzed data from 8,812 individuals in 358 classrooms in a longitudinal social network analysis.

As expected, the main predictor of math confidence is individual math grades. While girls translated their grades – more or less directly – into self-assessment, boys with below-average grades nevertheless believed they were good at math.

Boys tend to be overconfident and sensitive to social processes

“In general, boys seem to be more sensitive to social processes in their self-perception – they compare themselves more with others for validation and then adjust their confidence accordingly,” Raabe explains. “When they were confronted with girls’ self-assessments in cross-gender friendships, their math confidence tended to be lower.” Peers’ self-assessment was less relevant to girls’ math confidence. Their subjective evaluation seemed to be driven more by objective performance.

Gender stereotypes did not appear to have negative social consequences for either boys or girls. “We found that confidence in mathematics is often associated with better social integration, both in same-sex and cross-sex friendships,” said Raabe. Thus, there was no evidence of harmful peer norms pressuring girls to underestimate their math skills.

The results of the study suggest that math skills are more important to boys, who adjust their self-assessment in peer processes, while math confidence does not seem to be socially relevant for girls.

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JOURNAL

European Societies

DOI

10.1080/14616696.2024.2349217 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The gendered maths confidence gap, social influence, and social integration

U$A
Two Decades of Progress, Nearly Gone: National Math, Reading Scores Hit Historic Lows

By Sarah D. Sparks — October 24, 2022 

Illustration by Gina Tomko/Education Week and iStock/Getty

The pandemic has smacked American students back to the last century in math and reading achievement, according to the tests known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Results for students who took the test in spring 2022—the first main National Assessment of Educational Progress administration for these grades since the pandemic began—show the biggest drop in math performance in 4th and 8th grades since the testing program began in 1990. In reading, 4th and 8th graders likewise are performing on par with students in the 1990s, and about a third of students in both grades can’t read at even the “basic” achievement level—the lowest level on the test.

Academic declines on NAEP were sweeping, spanning low-income and wealthier students, boys and girls, and most racial or ethnic groups in both subjects and grades.

That made for some achievement gaps changing in unusual ways. For example, from 2019 to 2022, reading performance fell significantly for white 8th graders, but not their Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American classmates, leading to smaller racial differences in performance. In 4th grade, Black, Hispanic, white, and Native American students’ average reading scores fell in 2022, while Asian students’ average scores improved, widening the white-Asian performance gap from 7 points in 2019 to 12 points in 2022.

“This is not just nerdy education policy stuff. This is really about the future of young people. The world we’re moving towards is one that requires significantly higher skills to be successful, to live lives of purpose and meaning,” said Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and founder of the education advocacy group Chiefs for Change, in a briefing before the NAEP results were released. “If we allow these learning gaps to grow, and if we allow for the decline in learning to just stand pat ... a lot of dreams are gonna be shattered over the long haul.”

RELATED STORIES

Explaining That Steep Drop in Math Scores on NAEP: 5 Takeaways
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A Closer Look at NAEP Declines: What a Leading Ed. Researcher Finds Surprising (Opinion)

The results come on the heels of NAEP’s long-term trend data released last month, which also showed historically poor performance for 9-year-olds.

Eighth graders saw the steepest drops in both subjects, and high schools will have to significantly ramp up academic support for the students who entered high school this fall, said Beverly Perdue, a former governor of North Carolina and chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the testing program

“Otherwise,” she said, “students will graduate and enter college and the workforce without the skills and knowledge we need to be globally competitive.”

Graduation rates fell in at least 31 states for the class of 2021, and the latest graduating class of 2022 had historically low scores on college placement tests.

In math, pool of struggling learners grows

The average NAEP math score fell 5 points in 4th grade, to 236 out of 500, and in 8th grade fell 8 points, to 274 out of 500. In prior years, the top-performing 10 percent of math students held their ground, while the lowest-achieving students fell. This time, however, math achievement fell across every percentile, even for the highest performers.

“Normally, for a NAEP assessment at the national level, we’re talking about significant differences of 2 and 3 points. So an 8-point decline that we’re seeing in the math data is stark; it is troubling; it is significant,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP.

In both grades 4 and 8, more students cannot meet even the basic level of math achievement, according to the NAEP report. The pool of advanced performers in math has likewise shrunk at both grades, though top readers have held steady.

Roberto Rodríguez, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy, noted that, in a prior NAEP study of districts’ practices during the pandemic, 75 percent of districts reported that they held remedial programs this summer, and more than half of districts in the study reported using intensive tutoring to help catch students up.


RELATED


MATHEMATICS Explaining That Steep Drop in Math Scores on NAEP: 5 Takeaways
Sarah D. Sparks, October 24, 2022

“Kids need more time,” said Patricia Levesque the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd), in a briefing before the NAEP results were released. “They lost time over the last several years, of getting instruction that they need in math, and we need to figure out ways to give them more time.”

Levesque pointed to states like Tennessee, which is requiring high-dosage tutoring for students performing below grade level. However, with large swaths of students now far behind, paying for intensive tutoring may be hard to sustain after federal pandemic recovery funding runs out.

And it’s not clear teachers feel ready to take on the severity of students’ learning loss.

More than a third of 4th graders and 21 percent of 8th graders who participated in NAEP had a teacher who reported spending nearly every day on remedial material in math. But less than half of students in either grade had teachers who were confident in their ability to address knowledge and skill gaps in math.

“We’ve known for decades that many teachers, especially in high-poverty areas, are not as mathematically confident,” said Zalman Usiskin, a professor emeritus and director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. “They tend to focus more on memorization and the most basic of basic skills, not on problem-solving. ... and the prediction has to be that it’s going to get worse, because teachers now are trying to catch up students who are behind because of pandemic-related disruptions.”

Reading drops are smaller but hit low-achievers hard

Nationwide, the average reading score on NAEP fell 3 points from 2019 to 2022, to 217 in grade 4 and 260 in grade 8. While not as large a drop as math, it represented a significant decline in reading skills for both grades for all but the top 10 percent of 4th graders.

While experts have urged schools to accelerate students’ learning in order to help them make up lost academic ground, more than half of 8th graders had teachers who reported using remedial measures at least once or twice a week, and 20 percent had teachers who did so nearly every day. Among 4th graders, 70 percent of teachers reported using remedial measures a couple times a week. Moreover, about 1 in 3 students who took NAEP in 2022 had a teacher who reported covering the previous year’s material and using remedial instruction every day or nearly every da

When it comes to acceleration, “it just seems as if we expect teachers to know how to do that,” said Kymyona Burk, the policy director for early literacy at ExcelinEd, and a former literacy director for the state of Mississippi. “We have to invest in people, we have to invest in their knowledge.”

In both grades 4 and 8, larger numbers of students cannot read at even the basic academic level than was the case in 2019, according to the 2022 NAEP report. Top readers have held steady, but gained little ground.

Burk said states need to bolster the use of science-based reading instruction to help students who started school during the pandemic and may struggle more with foundational reading skills.


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READING & LITERACY WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS5 Things to Know About the Slide in Reading Achievement on NAEP
Sarah D. Sparks, October 24, 2022

Looking ahead, there are some signs of recovery in reading at least. One study by the testing group Amplify looked at more than 300,000 K-3 students in 43 states who took the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, assessment, this fall—which would be the most recent, available testing data. That study found that while students in all grades remain below their pre-pandemic reading achievement, the share of students who started school this fall on track to read on grade level by the end of the academic year ticked up in every grade, ranging from 33 percent of kindergarteners to 55 percent of 3rd graders.

“The news may be still a bit grim, although the positive side is that, directionally, we are seeing that students at the beginning of this year are more prepared for school than they were at the beginning of last year,” said Paul Gazzero, the director of data analysis for Amplify.

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READING & LITERACYPROJECT Why Putting the 'Science of Reading' Into Practice Is So Challenging
Sarah Schwartz, July 20, 2022


Still, the Amplify study suggests large shares of students—ranging from half of kindergartners to 30 percent of 3rd graders—won’t read on grade level by the end of this school year without significant, intensive interventions.
Political fallout?

Well before NAEP results were made public, some education pundits predicted students in states that reopened their schools earlier in the pandemic would have better scores than students in states with longer pandemic-related spans of virtual schooling. Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggested that differences in the performance between states that reopened school buildings for in-person learning earlier in the pandemic could become fodder in midterm elections.

But Carr, the NCES commissioner, strongly disagreed with interpreting the results in that way.

“There’s nothing in this data that says we can draw a straight line between the time spent in remote learning, in and of itself, and student achievement,” Carr said. “And let’s not forget that remote learning looked very different all across the United States. ... We have massive comprehensive decline everywhere, whether some were in remote learning longer or shorter than others.”

By the start of 2020-21, the first full school year of the pandemic, an Education Week analysis found that several states had mandated full-time, in-person learning, (Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North and South Carolinas, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia) but nearly three-quarters of the 100 largest school districts (representing 9 million students) opened that fall only with virtual instruction.
In reading, 8th graders lost ground in all but two of those states; Iowa and Texas had flat scores, but so did several late-opening states like California, New York, and New Jersey. Performance was more mixed at 4th grade, with seven early-opening states and at least one late-opening one, California, seeing no change in reading achievement during the pandemic.

The other six early-opening states saw drops in 4th grade reading in 2022. In math, only South Carolina and Iowa among the early-opening states held steady in 4th grade. The rest saw drops in math achievement from 2019 to 2022. And Utah, the only state that saw no decline in 8th grade math, had no mandate on schools reopening at the start of 2020-21.

MULTIMEDIA GRAPHS

Sarah D. Sparks
Assistant Editor, Education Week
Sarah D. Sparks covers education research, data, and the science of learning for Education Week.

This Girl Asked Some Very Valid Questions About Math And A Mathematician Was Kind Enough To Respond

"I hope you will continue to ask probing questions. I hope that more math classes address those probing questions and help everyone to see how important they are."

Ade OnibadaBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on September 10, 2020

When high school student Gracie Cunningham created her now-viral TikTok where she questioned the existence of math, she never anticipated it would invoke such a strong reaction and create major debate online.

“I feel like half the people are with me and half are against [me] so it’s confusing trying to figure out which to focus on," she told BuzzFeed News.


In the original TikTok, Cunningham mused over the discovery of math as she did her everyday makeup routine while getting ready for work.

“I know it’s real because we all learned it in school or whatever. But who came up with this concept?” she asked.


The teenager questioned what events would have led to or called for the use of mathematical concepts like algebra.

“I get, like, addition. Like hey, if you take two apples and add three, it's five. But how would you come up with the concept of, like, algebra? What would you need it for?” said Cunningham.


Days after posting it on her TikTok, the video was shared on Twitter by another user with the caption: “this is the dumbest video ive ever seen.”

It was viewed more than 25 million times, and the 16-year-old told BuzzFeed News the onslaught of comments left her feeling anxious.

“Honestly it’s just an awful reminder that the internet hates teenage girls for anything they do," she said.



Dr Eugenia Cheng@DrEugeniaCheng
These are really good questions about what math *is* in a very deeply probing way. Unfortunately the haters are piling in... I have transcribed the questions and typed up my instant answers here. https://t.co/KdKX7enCMh https://t.co/Ds4VqecAlu

04:56 PM - 27 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite


Cunningham attempted to clarify by creating a follow-up TikTok.

“Hi, folks, I'd like to redo my TikTok about how math is not real and I’d like to be smart this time because I didn't know that one was going to go viral,” she joked in the video.

The teen said if her detractors “think that’s stupid that’s on them — it’s just curiosity.”

“Also, the literal mathematicians and astrophysicists that were replying to me — that was wild because they were all on my side," she added.

Among those who defended Cunningham was Chicago-based mathematician Eugenia Cheng, who responded to her burning questions with a detailed two-page reply.


Roundturnerphotography.com


In an email to BuzzFeed News, Cheng wrote: “I felt compelled to answer the questions because I think they're really good questions that are not typically addressed in normal math education. And I think they should be! But they are difficult to answer well, as they are, in a way, deep research-level questions."

Cheng, who is the author of x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, described Cunningham's line of questioning as “profound.”

She said: “Her thoughts and questions are the kinds of things that research mathematicians think about all the time, and I believe it's what drives us to do research: we are not satisfied with basic answers and we keep wanting to ask why, more and more, to get deeper and deeper into the root of a question. The detractors might be proud of themselves for being able to do, say, 63 x 17 in their head, but research mathematicians ask why — why is the answer 1,071? That's a profound question, and comes down to definitions in the foundations of math which took mathematicians thousands of years to arrive at.”

In response to Cheng’s attempt to better explain the concept of math, Cunningham said: “I thought it was nice that she answered them. I mean, I still don’t get how someone sat down and was like ‘lemme discover math’ 'cause that’s insane to me.”

The academic shared that she would be open to having “further discussion” with the curious teenager about math or "anything else, if she ever wanted to.”



Ade Onibada is a junior reporter at BuzzFeed and is based in London.

High achievement cultures may kill students' interest in math -- especially for girls

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

A new study in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that high national math achievement combined with societal pressures may contribute to how well girls and boys like math. Past research has shown that achievement-driven cultures frequently correlate with less enthusiasm for learning subjects like math. This study of over 500,000 eighth graders from 50 countries is the first to show that girls appear even more susceptible to this effect, providing insights into how to close this gender gap.

"I think we need to look more critically at the idea that we can judge a country's school system mainly on the achievement level its pupils attain--other important aspects, such as pupils feeling interested in their schoolwork, may get lost in the process," says the author, Prof Kimmo Eriksson of Mälardalen University College and Stockholm University in Sweden. "It seems that cultures that promote high achievement in math may also tend to kill many pupils' interest in math schoolwork and I found that this negative effect of high-achievement culture was stronger among girls than among boys."

Eriksson used the results from the multinational Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) from 2011 and 2015 to look at trends between math performance and students' interest levels. Although the survey had been performed in prior years, 2011 and 2015 were the first years when the survey included both a math test as well as a questionnaire about the students' interest in what they were learning.

The results showed that girls were significantly less interested in math in countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Sweden and New Zealand. But, surprisingly, the roles were reversed in countries like Oman, Malaysia, Palestine and Kazakhstan, where girls were far more engaged in the subject.

One particularly striking result was that whichever way national interest levels trended, the effect was more pronounced among girls. Eriksson named this effect 'female amplification' and suggests that this may be due to girls' stronger tendency to conform to peer influence.

It is important to note that these findings only imply correlation. Additional research is needed to better understand the underlying factors that cause these differences. But these observations may provide useful guidance for how to promote both math interest as well as achievement for girls and boys. Countries such as Singapore have also shown that it is possible to have both high interest and high performance, and further study of these school systems may help improve teaching methods elsewhere.

"By highlighting how girls' interest in schoolwork is especially sensitive to high-achievement culture, perhaps my work can make researchers and policy-makers recognize and address this challenge: How can schools promote high achievement in mathematics without killing pupils' interest in their schoolwork?" says Eriksson.

###

 

On Vivekananda’s 160th birthday, female monastics venerate the ‘mother’ of his movement

The female monks at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India, celebrated Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, in accordance with the Hindu auspicious calendar.

Hindu devotees, primarily women, celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a special ceremony at Sri Sarada Math, or ashram, in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

January 12, 2024

By 

Richa Karmarkar

PUNE, India (RNS) — The revered guru Swami Vivekananda, whose spiritual writings have inspired Hindus and non-Hindus of all ages from the East to the West, would have turned 160 years old on Friday (Jan. 12).

But while many celebrate him on his birth anniversary, also called National Youth Day in India, some fervent believers pay homage to the woman behind his movement, a wife, mother and teacher named Sarada Devi.

Vivekananda, born in Kolkata, India, in 1863, is often credited with raising Hinduism to the status of a major world religion with his address to the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, in which he talked about his Vedanta tradition. An instant celebrity, he went on to deliver hundreds more talks across the United States and Europe.

Returning to India, he opened a Vedanta institute named for his guru, Ramakrishna, and the Ramakrishna Mission, delivering spiritual training, charity and social welfare services to generations of devotees. His speeches and writings are still widely read throughout the world.

Sarada Devi, circa 1890. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Sarada Devi, whom devotees call Holy Mother, was the wife of Vivekananda’s own guru, Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Her life, simplistic and uneventful compared to Vivekananda’s, has a powerful message for the women who follow her, highlighting the transformative power of inner character.

“She was so simple, there’s no glamour around her,” said Sandhya “didi,” or sister, a monk at Sri Sarada Math, the monastery devoted to Sarada. “One of the greatest blessings we had was to come to know her.”

Born to a poor village family in West Bengal in 1853, Saradamani Devi was betrothed to 23-year-old Ramakrishna when she was just six. She had no formal education but developed a powerful inner spirituality. It is said that she offered “japa,” a form of sacred chanting, 1,000 times per day. 

This is one of the great lessons her followers take from her life. “Whatever the circumstance, you cannot change anything around you, but you can change yourself,” said Sandhya didi. “By changing yourself only can you see things change.”

And despite her lack of schooling, she became a champion of education for other women, inspiring numerous schools and study centers in her name across the country.

The female monastics at Sri Sarada Math celebrated Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, in accordance with the Hindu auspicious calendar. A group of devotees, mostly women dressed in plain saris, came to meditate and chant her name. They bowed their heads as the monastics, wearing orange robes and shaved heads, lit a fire “havan” ritual in Sarada Devi’s honor on the math’s “biggest day of the year.”

Female Hindu monastics celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a ceremonial fire at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

Sandhya didi felt called to live under one of the many monastic sects based on Vivekananda’s teachings. It was a “revelation,” she said, for her to learn about this type of life, where one forgoes a marriage and family to further their spiritual discipline.

Yet Sandhya didi admits she did not think much about Sarada Devi until she read that Vivekananda had called Sarada Devi the “mother of the universe.” Then she began to feel an unbreakable bond. 

“What she is still, we can’t fathom,” she said. “She’s so deep. But still, she is Ma. If your Ma is a princess, if your Ma is a doctor, for a child it doesn’t matter. She’s mother, and that’s all.”

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Some 15 women stay in the ashram, starting their days at 4 a.m., raising and cooking homegrown vegetables and fruit, studying Hindu Scriptures, learning Sanskrit and performing rituals, all in service to their central figure. Some even read the Quran, considering Ramakrishna’s teaching that “each religion is true,” said Sandhya didi. 

The color of their robes is determined by the stage of their ascetic journey. The newer they are, the less likely they speak to outsiders, lest their concentration falter. Some women come in their early 20s, after studying fields like dentistry or commerce. But here they are equals, working in whichever job suits the community. 

The Sri Sarada Math, or ashram, in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

“The old monasticism, with its severity, is not there. We function like any middle-class family,” said Sandhya didi, adding that personality clashes between women with different upbringings are inevitable. 

But the monk credits the math’s volunteers with being more blessed. Despite family obligations, they devote their time, some walking a kilometer in each direction to work at the center. “For us, it is our duty,” Sandya didi said. “They are coming for the love of it.”

Shreeda Bhagwat, a longtime volunteer, sells biographies of Sarada Devi, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda outside the math’s main temple. It is through tears only, she says, that she can talk about the role the holy mother plays in her life.

“I live alone, because all of my relatives live in the United States,” she said, “and now my parents have also expired. So, who will I speak to? Everything I tell to Holy Mother. She is my mother, that’s it.”

And though women run the ashram, Sagar Dhanurkar, a male software engineer, often frequents the Sri Sarada Math. His own mother, a teacher at the adjacent Swami Vivekananda School, taught him the value of recognizing the Holy Mother’s importance. 

Hindus, primarily women, celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a special ceremony at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

“She is the mother of not only the pious, but also the wicked,” said Dhanurkar. “That draws me over here. I say ‘Ma, I have committed some sins,’ or ‘Ma, I have done this good thing.’ Whatever we do in our life, we commit that to her.”

As the sun sets on Holy Mother’s birthday, Sandhya didi reflects on the lasting power of Swami Vivekananda, whose books she has read countless times.

“Those books are published everywhere,” she said. “They are meant for all. This sangha (community) is meant for laypeople and monastics. What is true for us is true for you also.”

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Math Teachers in Virtual Classes Tend To View Girls and Black Students as Less Capable

In virtual classrooms, math teachers deem Black students as less capable than white students.

December 9, 2022 

by The Conversation US

By Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, University of Southern California; 

Ian Thacker, The University of Texas at San Antonio, 

and Joseph Cimpian, New York University

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

In virtual classrooms, math teachers deem Black students as less capable than white students. They also view girls as less capable than boys. That’s what we found after we conducted an experiment with 1,000 teachers in schools throughout the United States.

For our experiment, we had teachers evaluate student answers to various math problems. Those answers were accompanied by images of different students online. We asked them to tell us how correct the students’ answers were. We also asked them to tell us how capable they thought the student was and how likely they would be to refer the student to be tested for a special education program to get extra help, or a gifted program, which would enable them to do more advanced work. We randomly changed the images of students presenting their solutions in Zoom classes to show Black and white girls and boys. However, the solutions stayed the same.

We found that teachers more often thought the student needed to be tested for special education when they saw a screenshot of a Black student explaining their answer rather than a white student. The teachers more often thought the student was gifted if the screenshot showed a boy rather than a girl.

Furthermore, our study showed that when teachers work in schools that serve higher concentrations of Black students, they often assumed that Black students had less math ability than white students. They also considered them more in need of instructional support. But in schools with virtually no Black students, teachers were more likely to say that white boys should be tested for a gifted and talented program than white girls.

Why it matters

Our experiment suggests teachers are identifying Black students as potentially having disabilities more often than white students who produced the same answers to math problems. Further, girls are not being given equal chances to be placed in gifted programs even when they give answers identical to those given by boys.

As virtual instruction is expected to become more commonplace than before the pandemic, our study warns that virtual classrooms may perpetuate the same biases that exist in traditional school settings.
What other research is being done

Researchers are still trying to understand whether the overrepresentation of minority students in special education is the result of systematic racial bias.

As we found in this study and in our prior work, teachers assumed boys had a higher ability than girls when both gave answers that were not fully correct. Such blind trust in boys’ math ability can boost their confidence and may embolden them to pursue math-intensive fields at a higher rate than girls, who are not seen by teachers as having as high a math ability.


Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Associate Professor of Education, University of Southern California; I

an Thacker, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, The University of Texas at San Antonio,

 and Joseph Cimpian, Professor of Economics and Education Policy, New York University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.