What's Math Got to Do with It? Helping Children Learn to Love Their Most Hated Subject--And Why It's Important for America.

Watson, Jane

What's Math Got to Do with It? Helping Children Learn to Love Their Most Hated Subject--And Why It's Important for America

Author: Jo Boaler

Published: Viking, New York, 2008

ISBN 978-0-670-01952-6

273 pp.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Given the title of this book, I it is clear that Jo Boaler is a woman with a mission. She is one of the most famous mathematics educators in the world today, having worked in England before taking a prestigious professorship at Stanford University in California for nine years. She has now returned to the University of Sussex in England. Her parting blow in the US, however, is this book, taking on the conservatives in the "Math Wars", which were particularly nasty in the state of California. Boaler pulls no punches in blaming the traditional quiet, rows-of-desks, chalk-and-talk, drill-and-practice, teacher-centred mathematics classroom for turning off students by the millions, as well as for the poor US mathematics outcomes on international comparison tests such as TIMSS. She then goes on to describe the preferred "reform" mathematics classroom environment, where students work in groups on extended tasks, share their understanding, and feel free to question the teacher, who is seen as a facilitator rather than a dictator. Instead of pages of drill-and-practice, these classrooms work on meaningful problems that excite the students. Boaler produces many examples of these classrooms from her research in England and California. She also provides a chapter on how girls are "kept out" of mathematics and science and what to do about it.

Boaler then goes on to make recommendations for how to produce change on the US scene. Besides her specific suggestions for classrooms, she has many suggestions for parents, the US-version of which are notorious in wishing their children to succeed. She suggests playing number games and solving puzzles as family groups with young children, followed by an activist approach where parents go to schools to talk with teachers, heads of departments, and principals, as well as mobilising the PTA (parent teacher association). Many books are suggested for parents to read, resources to use, and strategies to employ to assist children to love mathematics. Boaler knows she is up against some negative perceptions from the previous experiences of parents but she even tries to convert them by suggesting the setting up of Family Math groups. If professional development of teachers is required to implement the reform curriculum, then she suggests the PTA take on fundraising activities to help pay for it!

The book is an easy read, especially if you agree with Boaler's point of view, although one fears the conservative side of the Math Wars will not even open the book. The reform experiences of the students Boaler describes and the problems they solve are heartening. What is sad are the descriptions of the regression to failure of some of her subjects when they return to traditional classrooms. These anecdotes are planned, however, to create the drama that will make believers out of US readers.

Most mathematics educators and many teachers are already familiar with Boaler's arguments and her sources (she includes notes with references to back her claims). The fact that she is fighting a war in the US does not detract from her message for other countries with similar teaching environments surviving from the past. Is Australia one?

To give Boaler credit, she does not blame most "traditional" teachers themselves, who are forced to work in traditional classrooms, and acknowledges that there are "good" and "bad" teachers in both traditional and reform environments. The questions most readers would have in relation to moving to a reform world are: how long will it take, how much will it cost, and where will the teachers come from with the mathematics background and understanding to cope with the reform curriculum?

Although many of the mathematics problems suggested in the book will be familiar to readers, here is one Boaler uses to illustrate how adults go astray when they think they need to remember the many rules they practiced over the years and they abandon their common sense in order to follow those rules.

A woman is on a diet and goes into a shop to buy some turkey slices. She is given 3 slices which together weigh 1/3 of a pound, but her diet says that she is only allowed to eat 1/4 of a pound. How much of the 3 slices she bought can she eat while staying true to her diet?

She goes through various rule-based incorrect solutions, shows how to solve the problem with "x", and then shows two clever solutions without "x" based on intuition about fractions by Grade 4 children. Try it.

Reviewed by Jane Watson, University of Tasmania