Building Math Mindsets

It is important that parents, guardians and educators help students build a math mindset. This can encourage students to develop a desire to learn and improve their skills through hard work and persistence. At the Greater Essex County District School Board, we've collected resources for families and educators to assist with this process.

How to build a math mindset

Educators, including parents and guardians, play a central role in demonstrating to children that everyone can learn, and that learning is the result of effort and application, not an inherent intelligence that some have, and others do not. Check out these tips to build a math mindset.

Praise

Every word and action sends a message. It tells children how to think about themselves. When you offer praise, make sure to praise the student's effort, resilience and hard work – not their intelligence.

Here are some examples of positive praise that can help build a math mindset:

  • I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.
  • I like how you tried to solve the math problem, showed your work and asked for help instead of giving up.

Feedback

A growth mindset means that a child will be open to feedback and welcome it. We can use feedback to help students focus on improving their own performance, in small achievable steps. When providing feedback, we should:

  • Remind students that if the work is not hard, they are not learning
  • Stress that intelligence is improved by effort and hard work
  • Explain that we all learn in different ways and at different rates

Learning from mistakes

It is important that students learn to find value in mistakes. Let students know that you appreciate mistakes and it's through mistakes that our brains grow.

Thomas Edison said,

“You must learn to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails forward to success.”

Developing productive beliefs about teaching math

Math lessons should centre on engaging students in tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving. This includes:

  • Encouraging student interactions
  • Teaching students how to understand math concepts and procedures

It is important that teachers have productive beliefs about math to be able to teach in an engaging way.

Productive beliefs

Here are some productive beliefs about math that will help improve your teaching:

  • Learning math should focus on developing an understanding of concepts and procedures through problem solving, reasoning and discourse
  • All students need to have a range of strategies for problem solving, including but not limited to, general methods, standard algorithms and procedures
  • Students can learn math through exploring and solving contextual and math problems
  • Engage students in tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving
  • Provide students with appropriate challenges, encourage perseverance in solving problems and support productive struggle in learning math

Students should be actively involved in making sense of math tasks by using:

  • Varied strategies and representations
  • Justifying solutions
  • Making connections to prior knowledge or familiar experiences
  • Considering the reasoning of others

Unproductive beliefs

Here are some unproductive beliefs that can prevent your students from learning math and developing a positive relationship with math:

  • Teaching math shouldn't focus on practicing procedures and memorizing basic number combinations
  • Students shouldn't just learn and use the same standard algorithms and prescribed methods to solve algebra problems
  • Students don't need to master basic math skills before they can begin applying mathematics
  • Teachers shouldn't tell students exactly what definitions, formulas and rules they should know and demonstrate how to use them to solve math problems
  • Students should not memorize information and then use it to solve problems in their homework, quizzes and tests

Tips for developing a growth mindset

Here are some tips you can follow to help you develop a growth mindset that will lead to a fuller understanding and appreciation for math:

  • Instead of thinking “I'm not good at this,” try thinking “What am I missing?”
  • Instead of thinking “I give up,” try thinking “I'll use a different strategy”
  • Instead of thinking “it's good enough,” try thinking “Is this really my best work?”
  • Instead of thinking “I can't make this any better,” try thinking “I can always improve”
  • Instead of thinking “This is too hard,” try thinking “This may take some time”
  • Instead of thinking “I made a mistake,” try thinking “Mistakes help me learn”
  • Instead of thinking “I just can't do this,” try thinking “I am going to train my brain”
  • Instead of thinking “I'll never be that smart,” try thinking “I will learn how to do this”
  • Instead of thinking “My friend can do it,” try thinking “I will learn from my friend”

Build a growth mindset not a fixed mindset

A student with a fixed mindset believes their basic abilities, their intelligence, and their talents are fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the times. A student with a growth mindset understands that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. Here are some common characteristics of each.

Growth mindset

A growth mindset leads to a desire to learn and a tendency to:

  • Embrace challenges
  • Persist in the face of setbacks
  • See effort as the path to mastery
  • Learn from criticism
  • Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others

As a result, they reach even higher levels of achievement.

Fixed mindset

A fixed mindset leads to a desire to look smart and a tendency to:

  • Avoid challenges
  • Get defensive and give up easily
  • See effort as fruitless
  • Ignore useful feedback
  • Feel threatened by the success of others

As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential.