building. All sorts of things develop a strong mathematical brain,” Boaler says. “But I don’t see that information impacting on maths teaching. We are not helping teachers use that information, or allowing them the time to adapt or change their teaching.” Boaler recounts work she did with a rural education district in California where only eight per cent of fifth graders (Year 6) were deemed proficient in maths. She and her team at youcubed – the spin-off


organisation she runs at Stanford Graduate School of Education which offers education and practical support to maths teachers, students and parents – worked with the authority and the teachers who, she stresses, were paid to meet out of school hours and discuss new approaches to teaching maths. “If you look at countries like China, teachers spend a lot of time on teacher learning,” she says. “We tend not to build in enough time for teachers to continue their own learning.” More controversially, Boaler believes that significant numbers of teachers, not just in maths, have fixed mindsets about their students’ and, crucially, their own potential. “In general, where I think we’ve gone wrong with teaching teachers is thinking that all that needs to be done is to teach them teaching ideas,” she says. “We also need to change their own beliefs about themselves, and about learning and about potential.” Boaler takes this approach in her own teaching on Stanford’s teacher education programme. However, she is under no illusions that the education systems in which most teachers work in the US and the UK tend to support a fixed-mind approach, for instance by encouraging very supportive, even protective, learning environments. “Teachers have been trained to save students from struggle, to jump in and help students whenever they are struggling,” she says. “Yet the importance of struggle in learning is very clear from neuroscience. Our brains are most active and developing fastest when we are struggling. When we share these messages with students it’s liberating for them. It’s OK to be wrong. It’s OK to think differently.” Boaler also believes some approaches to testing,


particularly timed tests, are detrimental to building growth mindsets. “We know that the top mathematical thinkers, for example, are very slow, deep thinkers. But the students valued in testing are the fast memorisers.” Boaler says that it takes a “special teacher” to go with what they know to be good and “not be constrained by the pressures” of what they may be being told by management and others. “I do think there is a lot that teachers can do if they


are willing to go with what they know to be right,” Boaler says. “And for that it really helps if they are not alone.


Together with other teachers, it is possible to take a positive path that really helps. “If you are the lone teacher and the lone voice,


that’s hard.”


Alan Thomson is editor of inTuition.


inTUITION ISSUE 39 • SPRING 2020 11


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