Posted on 04/05/2024 1:06:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Supporting kids with math homework is a common afterschool activity. But beyond the basics, new curricula and teaching strategies are making it harder for parents to help and it's taking a serious toll on children's confidence and learning.
In a study from the University of South Australia, researchers have found that mathematics homework can sometimes cause more harm than good.
Exploring how homework policies and practices affect families, researchers found that mathematics homework could inadvertently affect a child when it often:
was too difficult for a child to complete independently, and/or with the support of a parent required significant support from parents and seeped into family time resulted in a negative experience for the child and their parent, leading to negative associations with mathematics and potentially students' disengagement from the subject generated feelings of despair, stress, and negativity among parents who were unable to help made students feel inadequate when they struggled with the work. UniSA researcher Associate Professor Lisa O'Keeffe says such negativity around mathematics has broad implications.
"Homework has long been accepted as a practice that reinforces children's learning and improves academic success," Assoc. Prof. O'Keeffe says.
"But when it is too complex for a student to complete even with parent support, it raises the question as to why it was set as a homework task in the first place. We know that parents play a key role in supporting their children with schooling and homework. When children need help, their parents are often the first people they turn to.
"But many parents are unsure of the current mathematics strategies and approaches that their children are learning as these have changed a lot since they were at school. Like many things, mathematics teaching has evolved over time. But when parents realize that their tried-and-true methods are different to those which their children are learning, it can be hard to adapt, and this can add undue pressure. When children see their parents struggle with mathematics homework, or where mathematics homework becomes a shared site of frustration for families, it can lead to negativity across generations.
"For example, we might hear adults saying things like, 'I wasn't very good at math, so my child won't be either.' Negative interactions with mathematics, and negative discourses like these can lead to reduced confidence, reduced self-efficacy, and can negatively affect children's resilience, persistence, and ultimately their inclination to continue with mathematics."
Any decline in STEM subjects such as math can have long-term impacts for Australia's future. Statistics show that fewer than 10% of students are studying a higher level of math, with math capabilities declining more than 25 points (15-year-olds in 2022 scored at a level that would have been expected of 14-year-olds, 20 years earlier).
Co-researcher, UniSA's Dr. Sarah McDonald, says the research also identified gendered biases.
"Our research showed that it was overwhelmingly mothers who were responsible for managing children's homework. And they often experience frustration or despair when they were unable to understand the math problems," Dr. McDonald says. "When mothers find math hard, there is concern that this may demonstrate to their children, especially their girls, that this is not an area in which they would naturally excel.
"The last thing teachers want to do is disadvantage girls in developing potentially strong mathematical identities. We need a greater understanding of homework policies and expectations.
"The experiences of the families in our study do not support the often-quoted claim by researchers that that homework has potential non-academic benefits such as fostering independence, creating positive character traits, developing good organizational skills, or virtues such as self-discipline and responsibility."
More information: Lisa O'Keeffe et al, Mathematics homework and the potential compounding of educational disadvantage, British Journal of Sociology of Education (2023). DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2023.2240530
As a former math teacher, I used methods that I understood and could explain, but I did not expect t parents to know how I presented material. The parents main job was to ensure that the student did the homework, and if they could not finish (or understand) then they could bring questions back to me. I suppose the parents could estimate the length of time that their kid should spend on stuff that they did not understand.
I knew teachers that expected the student to “get” the homework assignment and read the text to figure out how to do the problems. I would not do this. I tried to allow time to begin a homework assignment while in class so that I could “coach” the kids as they got started. BTW, I taught at the high school level.
I did have a student who came to me for help with long division. For him I wrote a program that would allow guessing at the multiple of a divisor that would be subtracted from a number being divided. If the student got a multiple correct, the program would subtract the multiple, give the number of times the divisor was used, and also reduce the number being divided. If the student entered a number that was not a multiple, the computer asked him to try again. (This is not the way long division is done, but this student understood how division worked with this continuous subtraction method and even cut other classes to come in and run the program on the only computer we had in the school. I was happy to see him “like” this process and I never knew any other reason to use this method in a normal class but it was fun to interest one student in math using the school computer, This sounds a little like the math concept discussed on this thread.
The teaching method I used was the same used at UCSD when I was a physics and chemistry tutor as an undergrad. My behavioral psychology classes used a similar pattern. For me it was a great way to blast through all of the material in the first 2 weeks of a quarter leaving more time for the other courses that were not self-paced.
Where are kids in school 8 hours a day?
It’s been going on for decades now - the way even simple math, mul/div, is taught is confusing and not ‘easier’ than what I was taught. Then you can’t help them either.
It has to be by design. If Latisha can’t do calculus then NOBODY gets to do calculus. Lower all the boats - communism in action.
Or the math teacher was a drunk and didn’t know how to work the problems, either. This was the problem some 15 years ago with kiddo and the kids had to teach themselves.
I realize that most parents, even here, REFUSE to accept the fact that school curricula are intended to FAIL, particularly math Curricula, which is why I don’t even bother commenting on most ‘education’ related articles, as I always get some nutcase convinced that the school he sends his kids to is in the 1% that hasn’t been corrupted. LOL!
The reason why math was taught ONE WAY from counting to calculus for 99% of recorded history was that ONE WAY worked best. The Leftists who took over education FULLY understand that, which is why they changed it. It’s THAT SIMPLE.
“I was a rebel. I taught them real math and told them to solve that way and pretend to use new math if teacher asked.”
I did EXACTLY the same - the idea is to teach the kid CORRECTLY (which means no calculators or computers) WELL BEFORE their ‘teachers’ can mess them up. Then, when the ‘teachers’ get to work on my kids, it’s just a game to them, like a puzzle, but IN NO WAY would they get their brains messed up, as they already know how to do things correctly.
Except that that isnt true either. Not even vaguely.
My kids come home with math that is quite easy, its the bizarre methods that they are supposed to use that is not explained anywhere.
They dont have books, there is not handout, there is no website.
“Mess them up at the basic level and you have ruined their best chance of rising up the social ladder.”
Bingo.
I believe that the new ways of doing math are primarily there so people with PhDs in math education can write papers of dubious quality about them and new textbooks can be published. Without the new techniques, the old books can serve until they fall apart and new editions need only be published to remove dated references every couple of decades (what’s a record and why do I need to calculate how many times it would spin in five minutes?)
Self-paced is a great way to teach. Everyone understands things in their own time. Once something “clicks” it usually paves the way for better learning down the road.
You sound like you were an awesome teacher!
“PhDs in math education”
You NAILED it. For you others, these are people with ‘EDUCATION’ Degrees, not MATH DEGREES, but they get to pose as ‘experts in math’ and they are the ones who write the textbooks that prevent your kids from learning math. REAL Math Majors would NEVER write this garbage as they’re as disgusted by it as actual parent are.
I had one particularly challenging student who seemed to have trouble grasping a topic between classes. I asked him to bring a small notebook where we could crystallize the concept and he could review until it "clicked". At the end of the semester, I was invited to join some of the students at the Archway Inn (a small bar/grill) along the road back to town. It turns out that the student having the problem grasping concepts was an ex-con who had volunteered to be a drug testing subject. The drugs used damaged his short term memory. The notebook substituted for that damaged short term memory. He successfully completed my course and obtained employment with the new skill set. I was beyond surprised.
That’s amazing and a great way to fine tune learning for someone. I’m so happy that you were able to help this person who truly wanted to turn his life around. Kudos!
“But when it is too complex for a student to complete even with parent support,
My kids were in ‘new math’.
they would come home with an ‘average’ problem, an ‘area’ problem, a ‘fractions’ problem.
I would try to help, starting with the theory of average, area, ...
The kid would say, just give me the answer.
It turns out that the real lesson was some other level of math that they only got at school.
The parent (me, college level math) did not know what they were trying to teach or what concept.
I can still add, but I use my fingers.
They did the same with reading and phonics. They started using “whole language” and kids learned the first thousand most common words by sight. They tried that when my kids were in school.
Fortunately I had been teaching my children phonics since they were two and able to discern letters. They could read by the time they got to kindergarten.
Another way they do this is by introducing too many concepts too early, as if that's a good thing ("hey, our 1st graders are learning fractions!) the result being that children are never made to MASTER a concept before moving on to the next thing.
The old math got us to the moon, somehow.
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