September 24, 2025 • 44 mins
Dr. Jo Boaler shares her groundbreaking work in mathematics education, exploring how beliefs shape learning and how we can transform math instruction to help every student succeed.
• Starting her career in London schools where she discovered anyone can learn math with the right opportunities
• Joining Stanford and later collaborating with Carol Dweck to spread growth mindset ideas through YouCubed.org
• Explaining how neuroscience reveals five brain pathways used in math thinking, with two being visual pathways
• Discussing how beliefs about math physically shape the brain's ability to learn
• Highlighting the damage caused by fixed mindset praise like "you're so smart"
• Describing how math anxiety activates the same fear center in the brain as seeing snakes or spiders
• Advocating for celebrating struggle as essential for brain growth and learning
• Explaining why standards should be organized into big, connected ideas rather than isolated skills
• Sharing how integrated math instruction (rather than separating algebra, geometry, etc.) mirrors real-world math
• Introducing Strugly.com, which rewards persistence and connection-making rather than speed or accuracy
About our guest
Dr. Jo Boaler is a Stanford Professor. Formerly, she was the Marie Curie professor of mathematics education in England, and a mathematics teacher in London comprehensive schools. She is the author of 19 books, numerous articles and a White House presenter on women and girls. Her latest book is: Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity and Meaning in Mathematics. She co-founded www.youcubed.org and www.Struggly.com. She was on the
writing team for the 2023 California Mathematics Framework and was named as one of the 8 educators “changing the face of education” by the BBC.
Connect with Jo
Visit YouCubed.org, Strugly.com, and Mathish.org to learn more about Dr. Boaler's work and access free resources for teaching and learning mathematics.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And really you know we don't do anything important
without struggling, so we haveto have students feel
comfortable with that.
We find that when we share withthem, we want you to struggle,
they're more willing to bepersistent and to keep going.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast.
I'm Katie, your host for today,and in this episode we're
talking to Dr Jo Bowler.
We talk about math, anxiety,neuroplasticity and what we as
parents and educators can do tohelp kids develop a growth
mindset around math.
But before we get to ourconversation, I'll tell you a
little bit more about Dr Bowler.
She's a Stanford professor.
Formerly she was the MarieCurie professor of mathematics
(00:35):
education in England and amathematics teacher in London
Comprehensive Schools.
She's the author of 19 books,numerous articles and a White
House presenter on women andgirls.
In her latest book, math-ishFinding Creativity, diversity
and Meaning in Mathematics, shetalks about lots of the things
that we talked about on thisepisode and I can't wait to get
that book.
She co-founded ucubedorg andstrugglycom and she was on the
(00:57):
writing team for the 2023California Mathematics Framework
and was named as one of theeight educators changing the
face of education by the BBC.
Let's get to our conversationwith Dr Bowler.
Dr Bowler, welcome to theKindle podcast.
We're super excited to have youon today.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So let's go back in time a little bit.
Take me to the beginning ofyour work.
Where did you start?
How did you get to be doingwhat you're doing, and kind of
tell me what your big why is, orlike the change you're seeking
to make in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, well, I started my career in London schools as
a maths teacher and I taught atHaverstock School, where there
were over 40 different languagesspoken.
It's a very diverse school withstudents as you might imagine in
central London lots of studentswho'd only recently come to the
country, and what I found therewas students with a lot of gaps
(01:50):
in their knowledge and withmany of them I worked one-to-one
to catch them up.
And that was when I learned thatreally anybody can catch up and
students can learn anything,and that's really been my North
Star through my career that weknow that every student can
learn maths and it's really justabout the opportunities we give
them.
(02:10):
So I went from teaching inLondon to doing a master's
degree at King's College, londonUniversity, and then a
doctorate, and then waspresenting some of the results
one day in a conference inAthens when people at Stanford
were in the audience and theysaid come to Stanford, come and
be a professor at Stanford, andat first I said no, they started
(02:30):
sending me picture books ofCalifornia and they said just
come for a visit.
So we thought, well, I guess wecould just go for a visit and
then I ended up taking the jobat Stanford and after some years
there, I met Carol Dweck, whois the creator of Mindset, and
we together agreed that wereally needed to get the ideas
out to teachers and parents andsince then we started a website
(02:55):
called YouCubed that gets theideas of Mindset out and also
how to teach with a growthmindset, lots of free resources,
lessons and videos for studentsand many other things.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, we actually used UQ about Prenda.
We love it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Nice.
Yeah, that's some of my story.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That's great.
Okay, so tell me about your ownrelationship with math, like
why math for you?
Why, personally, do you chooseto focus on that?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, I first.
I guess first interest in mathsreally started, or my first
interest in learning mathstarted when I was in school.
I was pretty good at maths butI didn't enjoy it that much.
It was just answer all theseshort questions, go as fast as
you can, but I did notice that alot of my friends really
(03:45):
struggled with it and I wouldhelp them.
So I think that was my firstlike awakening, of thinking
about learning and why peoplefind maths difficult.
And then in England we choosethree subjects when you're 17
and 18, called A-levels.
I chose maths and that was whenI had my first amazing teacher
of maths who just changedeverything for me.
(04:08):
She had us work in groups,discussing ideas.
It was sort of calculus mainly.
Then everything changed.
I hadn't been planning toreally stay in maths.
I was going, I wanted to be ascientist.
But she changed the way Ithought about maths, changed the
way I thought about myself, andI ended up becoming a maths
teacher in London and from therewhere I am now, I love it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
What about math and math education feels broken to
you.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh, so much.
Unfortunately, there's a lot ofthings we need to change in
maths education.
So one of them is I work withneuroscientists at Stanford and
they have now got this reallyimportant data on the way our
brains process maths, and one ofthe things that they know is we
have five different pathwaysthat we can use when we're
thinking about maths.
(04:58):
Two of them are visual pathways, so at the back of the brain
really important to activatethese different pathways.
So a big message that we alwaysshare is math should be taught
in a multidimensional way wherestudents get to see things
visually, they get to buildthings with their hands, they
get to speak and talk aboutmaths.
It's not just answeringquestions with numbers.
(05:21):
Then, of course, a big thingthat needs to change is this
myth that's out there in thesystem that only some people can
do well at maths, the terribleidea of the maths person.
Laid into that are all sorts ofstereotypes about who it is can
do well in maths.
So if we could change thoseideas people have about maths
(05:41):
and also make it this broadsubject that's taught, honoring
all the different ways we thinkand learn, I think we would have
a wholly different nation ofmaths loving people yeah, tell
me more you know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Some of your research goes into kind of like the link
between beliefs and cognitionand I think this is aligned with
Dweck's work, right, right.
To help us realize that whatyou believe about yourself as a
learner actually influences yourability to learn right.
Go into that.
It's so interesting yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And in my latest book , which is called Mathish, I
share this research in the firstchapter, actually new research
from somebody called Lang Chen,who has shown that not only does
what you believe about mathscorrelate with your maths
achievement, but what youbelieve about maths they see in
the hippocampus, as the brain isworking on maths.
(06:34):
It literally shapes yourability to learn and a lot of
times people have thought youknow you have beliefs over here
and you have knowledge over hereand they're kind of separate.
But now we know they're notseparate and they're very
intertwined.
So we should be spending a lotmore time with learners on
helping them feel good aboutmaths.
(06:55):
It's really neglected in theschool system and we just focus
on knowledge and getting kidsthrough tests and that's such an
important missing piece.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, when I think about math and my own experience
with math, I definitely have afixed mindset.
Around math, I wear the hat ofnot a math person loudly
sometimes and it actually it hasclosed.
I remember being maybe afreshman in high school and
wanting to take this physicsclass that involves some math
and it was for a freshman.
(07:26):
It wasn't a complicated class,but I think my dad said
something to me like that classis for smart people and he
wouldn't sign my card to getinto it and I was like what are
you?
I mean, he did not know anybetter, he was doing the best he
could.
But yeah, just like how weteach kids the language we use
with kids.
Maybe we could talk about that.
(07:47):
Like what are we doing asadults to kind of shape the
beliefs.
How do we influence that?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
can be and should be or how important these ideas are
.
The whole idea of being smartis a very damaging, fixed idea.
Students think of that in avery fixed way and what we know
is that everybody's brains arechanging, growing, adapting.
So, yeah, we know thatstudents' mindsets are formed by
the time they're three years ofage and, of course, they can
(08:27):
change at any time.
And that comes from the praisewe give students and the parents
who are praising their childrenin fixed ways.
That does lead to thedevelopment of a fixed mindset.
Some people are smart, somepeople are not, some people are
gifted, some people are not.
These are all very fixed,damaging ideas and we try and
(08:48):
help people learn to give sortof growth praise.
So, instead of saying to yourchildren, that's great, you're
so smart that you could do that,saying you know, love the way
you approach that problem orthat's a really creative way of
thinking about that, anythingthat values what they're doing
rather than this fixed notion isvery helpful.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, so why can you go into a little bit more like
what is it about that beliefthat limits your ability to
learn?
Like you mentioned thehippocampus a little bit Like
can you dig into that?
I mean?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
one of the damages of those fixed ideas.
What we know is when you praisestudents for being smart, for
example, they feel good.
At first.
They're like, oh great, I'msmart.
But then later on, when theymess up on something which they
will, they start to think, oh,I'm not so smart.
And we know about a lot ofpeople.
(09:40):
So I teach an undergraduateclass at Stanford.
I have a whole host of theseyoung people who've been praised
for being gifted and smart andthey have very fixed mindsets.
And what happens when they cometo Stanford and they take a
class that's difficult and maybethey get a B or a C is they
(10:02):
fall apart and they think it's amajor crisis and they drop out.
So these ideas are importantfor all students.
People think, oh, they're forlow achieving students.
It's not the case and in fact,the biggest group of fixed
mindset students in the schoolsystem is high achieving girls.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Really that's fascinating You've done.
You presented at the WhiteHouse on this right, like about
girls in education.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Tell me about that work that were there were groups
(10:49):
like the Girl Scouts anddifferent groups were there, but
they all were delivering likean outside intervention to help
girls feel good about STEM.
So I was there and I was reallychampioning the importance of
teaching all the time Like it's.
We shouldn't be just thinking,well, we can fix girls, damage
girls and then go off and fixthem in an afterschool program.
We need to do better insideteaching because we know that
(11:12):
those regular teachinginteractions are really
important.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And the people that I mean from the like attachment
theory kind of body ofliterature, like the people that
are closest to the childtypically have the greatest
impact on that child's belief.
So that's the parent.
And if you're attendingtraditional school, like you
spend all day long with yourearly elementary teachers, right
, so you're playing a very heavyrole in that belief development
(11:37):
.
I'm I'm curious around likeokay, we talked about the belief
and then let's shift over totalking about knowledge and
actual like math acquisition.
Because I feel like sometimes,when, when we talk about get,
like you said, like trying toget get kids to feel better
about themselves and about math,that feels a little like fluffy
to people or it's like no, likemath has a right answer.
(11:58):
This isn't like a socraticdiscussion, like there's a right
answer.
We are like speed does oh, inpeople's perceptions around like
speed kind of matters, like thefaster you go, the smarter you
go, you are, the fewer mistakesyou make, the smarter you are
right.
Like these are the kind of ourstereotypes, our beliefs.
What's wrong with those beliefs?
(12:18):
Like why is this not a fluffy,uh, kind of response to math?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
What we're trying to do through YouCubed and the
books I've written is show howyou can teach maths in a way
that students love the subjectand it's really hardcore maths.
It's not that we're saying, oh,let's go off and play and that
will make you feel better aboutmaths, but you can teach algebra
(12:45):
visually by having kids look atpatterns and be wowed by the
beauty of the mathematics, andthey're learning algebra at the
same time.
So this is not a sacrifice wehave to make.
We're going to stop doingproper maths so we can help
students feel good about it.
We can teach in ways thatstudents learn to love and see
(13:07):
the beauty in maths and what'sso great about that is when
teachers start doing that, theystart to love maths more and
love teaching more because theyget such a positive response
from students.
We have a summer camp model andyou can see it on YouCubed where
we develop this summer camp forstudents.
(13:28):
It's typically about four weekslong and we share this
beautiful maths with them andlots of mindset messages and
what we find is a really shorttime in that maths environment
and students' scores and statetests really massively go up.
So we know that this creative,more joyful maths increases
(13:50):
students' mathematical cognition.
We don't need to make maths dryand be encouraging speed the
same.
With that speed message.
I mean we might agree thatthinking quickly is helpful in
some situations not really manybut you don't get kids being
faster by encouraging speed.
In fact, often that makes themslower because it's what brings
(14:13):
anxiety to students.
Actually, the way to be fasterwith maths is to be really
comfortable with numbers andconcepts and then release your
mind from these negative anxietyproducing ideas.
It's a bit like that oldexpression that you know we
don't make kids taller bymeasuring them.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I love that saying.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Completely over again .
And the same with math.
But we don't make them fasterby giving them speed tests.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
That's so true.
There's like biology behindthis right.
Like when you put a child in astress-inducing situation,
they're feeling a lot of anxiety.
Like that activates thesympathetic nervous system.
The prefrontal cortex comesoffline.
Like that is the part of thebrain they need to stay engaged
in that problem, to stay focusedto figure that out to reason.
So you're disconnecting themfrom that part of the brain by
(15:05):
introducing this fear or anxiety.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
One of the neuroscience I work with, binod
Meenan, has shown that whenpeople who are anxious about
math see numbers, a fear centerlights up in the brain.
It's the same fear center thatlights up when we see snakes and
spiders.
So, and exactly as that fearcenter lights up, the problem
solving centers shut down.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I had no idea that.
It's like literally the fearcenter of the brain with numbers
.
That's shocking.
But I can like relate to that.
Like when I think about mathespecially if someone's going to
watch me do math even now, likewe're like building Prendo,
we're leading this company.
You know, like if I have to, ifI'm sharing my screen or
something and I have to do math,I'm like very uncomfortable and
(15:48):
like immediately, you know,like you feel all of the same
feelings like as if like a louddog was barking at you or
something you'd almost get hitby a car.
You feel this like panic in youand then your mind goes blank
and you can't do the math.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
It's true, so many people, even people who are
really comfortable with mathsand so many maths teachers.
When they go out for mealstheir friends are like, oh,
you're the maths teacher, youwork out the tip and they're all
staring at you.
Literally people's brains shutdown, they're like they suddenly
can't do this calculation.
That is the impact of that fearhitting the important part of
(16:21):
the brain so totally true ofeverybody I think everybody
fears being watched doing maths.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, that's yeah something that we get.
So prenda takes a very similarapproach.
Like we won't really want tocreate an environment that is
where kids feel a lot ofinternal safety.
So we have access to theprefrontal cortex, right.
So we do a lot of a lot of thesame mindset work you're talking
about, and when we tell peopleabout this, they say like, oh,
it sounds too easy.
Learning has to be somehowinherently painful for it to be
(16:51):
effective.
And even when you talk to kidsabout their pre and post like
they went to traditional schooland then they came to Prender,
or maybe they had a certainteacher that was able to create
that environment and then acertain teacher that wasn't able
to we ask them how hard are youworking?
They will actually say thatthey are working less hard in
this environment.
That's more conducive tointernal safety.
(17:12):
But they're growing at likelike 1.5 grade levels per year
or something like that.
They're growing way more.
But their perception is, oh,this is easy.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, um, and it's like also yeah, they they're
believing that, like they're,they've internalized this idea
that learning has to be painfulyeah, if you set up that safe
environment and you allowstudents to be successful, they
will say this is easier in thisenvironment, even though it
isn't easier.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
The math isn't easier yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You've allowed them to be successful.
Well, one of our key messages,talking of this sort of pain, is
that struggle is really goodfor the brain.
You want to be struggling.
You don't want to find workeasy, because that's not good
for your brain.
And when your brain isstruggling, that's when it's
really making those importantconnections and growth.
(18:03):
And so we do a lot of work tohelp kids feel good about
struggle.
When I teach students, whetherthey're young students or
Stanford students, I will say tothem I want you to struggle.
I'm going to give you work thatwill cause you to struggle,
because that's really good foryou, that's really good for your
brain.
And we use James Nottingham'smetaphor of the pit of struggle
(18:25):
the learning pit.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Tell me about that.
I haven't heard about that.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, teach me that it's a really good one and lots
of teachers find it reallyhelpful.
Yeah, it's a really good oneand lots of teachers find it
really helpful.
And there's some teachers and Ihave visuals of these in my
books.
They get kids to draw their ownpit.
So you want to go down into thepit of struggle and in these
drawings you see kids on the waydown going oh I'm not good at
maths, I'm terrible.
But then, as they're coming out, they're saying I can just use
(18:49):
these tools, I can keep going.
And the teachers I work withsay to students you know, I
could take your hand and wecould jump over the pit together
, but that's not what we want.
You need to be in the pit.
And when we run workshops withteachers we hear them going oh
(19:12):
I'm really in the pit when wegive them these hard concepts,
hard tasks.
So just celebrating those timesof struggle, I find that to be
extremely liberating message forstudents.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I was just thinking, like we have so much fear, right
, and where's this fear comefrom?
It's like, oh, I'm lessvaluable if I'm not good at math
.
I'm less smart.
My parents would bedisappointed that all of these
very emotionally driven beliefsare in there.
And when you, when younormalize that and then you
celebrate it, it's like you gota d on your math test.
(19:39):
This is going on therefrigerator.
This is excellent, because whatdo we struggle in our family or
in our class?
Like we celebrate how long youstayed with this problem, or
like how, how diligent you werein yeah, persisting, right,
right and then next time they'relike oh, my mom feels proud of
me when I work my butt off right.
it's like, okay, then, thenthat's my behavior and that's
(20:01):
actually going to engender muchmore long-term success of in
that child's life.
Then I usually get lucky.
I'm feeling this lucky, smartfeeling and I don't actually
have any of those.
You know, all of the pits in mypath so far have been easy for
me to skip over and I haven'tspent a lot of time developing
Like think about just themuscles and ingenuity and all of
(20:21):
the skills you would develop ifyou actually were in a pit and
you had to get yourself outRight Like that's a much
stronger brain on the other sideof that pit.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And really you know we don't do anything important
without struggling and reallyyou know we don't do anything
important without struggling.
So you're not going to get tothat really good knowledge and
creativity and everything thatwe know to be important.
So we have to have studentsfeel comfortable with that.
We find that when we share withthem we want you to struggle,
they're more willing to bepersistent and to keep going.
(20:50):
And although this is a messagewe share in all of our work, I
don't hear teachers doing itvery often.
I think it's a hard one forteachers to, because now our
education system has for so longjust been all about correctness
, so it's a harder one forteachers, I think, to take on.
(21:11):
But when they do take it on,it's really transformative.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
What are some of the other blockers to like really
changing this in society?
What's getting in the way?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, well, first of all there's resistance to these
ideas, and I've faced a lot ofit in my career.
There are some people who don'twant to believe that they're
not especially gifted or youknow that they've really
absorbed these fixed ideas andthey want to keep them.
That can be hard for somepeople to take on that idea that
(21:44):
everybody can learn and grow.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
OK, I'm having, like sorry, like a major epiphany
here, because I've never appliedfixed mindset to, like, say, an
administrator or someone who'slike making decisions.
It's like I was special, I wasgifted and if I allow everyone
to, if we let go of these labels, then I am now less valuable
and I as an adult am stillfeeling like I'm fighting for my
(22:08):
value and using these thingsand my credentials and things
like that to substantiate myself.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Wow, never really thought about that A lot of high
school maths teachers inparticular have built their
whole identity around this ideathat they were the special one
who could learn maths, and sothey as a group tend to be more
resistant to the idea that wecan all learn.
And then other factors thatwork against change.
(22:35):
I think there's too much in thestandards that are given to
teachers every year just way toomuch in there.
So when we teach, say to themyou know, let students work in
depth and think deeply aboutthings and make connections that
they think.
I don't have time.
I've got to get through all ofthis in the book, these massive
(22:55):
maths books that are in the USthat kids can hardly carry.
So we have one of the things wedid in California working out
the new California framework isrearrange standards into bigger
ideas so teachers don't have somany to get through and they can
think well, this is a big idea.
There's like eight in eachgrade level.
(23:15):
I'm really going to go intodepth on that big idea.
I'm really going to give kidsrich experiences and so, um,
yeah, teachers, everything feelstoo rushed in the school system
and they feel that they have toget through so much right and
that I mean they are under a lotof professional pressure to
perform right those, those statetests.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Like their schools are judged on that, they're
judged on that and a lot of it'sout of their hands.
Kind of like it's the districtsaying like this is the
curriculum schedule for all ofthe kids that are nine in your
care.
You know, like you have toexpose them to fill in the blank
, and it's a thousand thingslong.
So it's like there's thisimmense amount of pressure and
so it's like you really need,like a system wide change to
(23:57):
really it's not just like, oh,teachers do a better job, be
more creative.
It's like, well, the teacher isacting a certain way because of
, like you know, I don't want tokick the can off the road, but
it really is like a very highlevel problem that's trickling
down and damaging, damaging thestudent's education that's
trickling down and damaging thestudents' education.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
That's right.
And then we have these booksthat are written to teach kids
maths, that really don't drawfrom research or what we know
about learning.
They're written very quickly bypublishing companies to get
them out there and they don'tteach maths in a creative,
visual way.
It's just lots and lots ofshort, uninteresting questions.
(24:36):
Yeah, yeah, teachers, if theyreally are under that kind of
pressure, here's this book toteach from.
Here's your district pacingguide.
Here are all the tests.
It's hard for them to reallyimplement the ideas.
So we need leaders.
We need change at theleadership level as well.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Tell me a little bit more about standards, Like how
did standards become the way wedo education and what is?
You've mentioned kind of bigideas like go into a little bit
more about like maybe analternate view on that, because
we don't want to let go of likethere are right answers in math
and we do want to have highexpectations.
It's not about making it easier, and I think standards have
(25:18):
become kind of synonymous withlike excellence or like a high
degree of rigor or somethinglike that.
So talk to me about that idea alittle bit.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, when I was working with the Department of
Education in California, one ofthe things I learned in that
process was the standards werenever intended to be a guide for
teaching.
They were never written to bethe guide of what teachers teach
.
They were more written as asetting out somewhere what is
(25:46):
everything.
But they have become this guidefor teaching, and textbooks
have taken all these smalllittle standards and turned them
into small little questions forkids.
So, as I mentioned, one of thework we did in California was to
really think about what are thebig concepts in each grade
level.
That is what is reallyimportant.
That is what will underpineverything students do, and so
(26:10):
we combine standards into thosebigger concepts.
It's exactly the samemathematics If you teach to
those big ideas, kids arelearning a number of standards
at once.
We don't have to go one by one,by one.
I mean, if you teach that thestandards what's happening is
you might be teaching fractionsfor some weeks of the year and
(26:30):
then six months later, you'reteaching shape, but actually
kids can learn fractions throughshapes.
Why aren't they combined?
Why do we separate everythingand make it disconnected?
So, yeah, any work that we cando to bring back the connections
in maths.
Maths is a very connectedsubject.
Anybody who works inmathematics knows that it's
(26:53):
actually a subject of a few bigideas and a lot of rich
connections between them.
So having kids see and knowthose connections is important.
In our system the teachersdon't even know the mathematical
connections.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, because you're like, you're a geometry teacher,
right, like we've even takenmath and we've made it into
subjects.
So it's like, hey, I'm onlythinking about geometry, I'm
only thinking about algebra.
So it's like the way we've setit up makes it impossible for
even well-educated people to seethose connections high school
maths into different courses.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, in fact, the US is one of very few countries in
the world that do that.
Most countries teach maths andthat was what I learned in
school.
So when I was doing high school, we would do problems that
involved algebra and geometry,because that is the maths of the
(27:46):
world.
And when I first got here I waslike wow, I don't even know
where I would put this problem.
It has algebra and geometryinside.
Is that a geometry?
Not allowed, not allowed.
So, yeah, any moves we can haveto integrate mathematics in the
high school levels is alsoreally helpful.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So what you're saying here is reminding me, actually
bringing me back to high school,because I grew up in California
and I remember my math actuallybeing more integrated like this
.
Now that I think about it, I'velived in Arizona and done other
education things, so now mybrain is like more segmented
thing, like that.
There was like a few.
It wasn't totallyinterconnected, but it was.
It was algebra and geometry andall like all.
(28:36):
You got everything in that year, you know, and then you'd build
on that and all of thosedifferent, but it wasn't super
connected or visual like you'retalking about, but maybe that
was.
Maybe that's what they weretrying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, and there was a move in the is and nice to
teach more integrated maths andit was being really pushed out
by people who love thetraditional ways and want things
to stay the same.
But some states have madetremendous progress.
In Utah there is onlyintegrated maths.
That was made as a decision atthe state level and everybody
(29:09):
teaches integrated maths in Utahand they also have pathways in
data science.
They can choose in high schoolwhether they're focusing on data
or you know more calculus routeand they get really great
results.
You know their results havereally gone up since they've
moved maths more into the 21stcentury.
Yet still we fight about it.
You know in California there'shuge battles about it.
(29:30):
We don't look at the evidenceand look at, for example, the
data from Utah.
We just fight about it.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
There's this analogy that my back.
I'm a speech languagepathologist and I'm very into
early literacy instruction, sothe whole reading wars back and
forth is it's sounding?
It kind of smacks of the samething where it's like, is it
this way?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Is it this way it's like you know where it's like.
Is it this way?
Is it this way?
It's like you know.
It's very similar.
We have the math wars that thatare like the reading wars and
are so unproductive becausethat's not helpful if people are
at war with each other.
Same with reading, I mean.
Of course we had the wholelanguage approach.
So how I learned to read?
Then we had phonics and noweverybody's saying it's all
(30:13):
about phonics.
Of course kids need both.
It doesn't make sense that youjust isolate the sounds and
learn in that way.
It's meaningless for kids andof course you need some of that.
Both are important.
But now we're pivoting.
We're going to go all one way.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I just love fighting, I think.
But there's an analogy that Ilearned early on in my literacy
education about chocolate cake.
If I was like, hey, joe, youwant to come over and I'll make
you, we'll have a snack together, we'll have a treat, and then I
sat you down and I gave you aquarter cup of cocoa and some
vinegar and some salt and someflour and made you eat them, you
(30:51):
would not want to come back tomy house to eat my treat, right?
You would hate this.
And then you'd be like, oh, Idon't think I'm a cake person,
like you know, but if you mixall of those things together and
make it delicious, that's astory in the literacy analogy,
right, and it's like I can helpyou fall in love with this story
.
And then eventually you'll wantto know how to make it yourself
.
And I feel like you're doing asimilar thing in math with like
(31:12):
tell me a little bit more aboutU-Cubed.
And like visual math, like themoves you're trying to make
there, because it seems, itseems analogous, where it's like
if we can help kids experiencemath and like an awe, inspiring,
like, like fun and engaging way, then they'll be more
interested and like the, thethings that they discover.
The concepts will be morerelevant.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Exactly.
You know we love to have unitsfor kids where they're really
engaging with something.
One of the things I'm most proudof and you cued at the moment,
that is one of our most recentthings is we developed a
partnership with StanfordWomen's Basketball Team because
we know that sport has a lot ofdata and mathematics inside it,
and we said we'd like to developa unit on basketball and they
worked with us, which wasfantastic.
(31:59):
So in this basketball unit thisis all free on our site kids
watch videos of the Stanfordplayers explaining basketball to
them and showing the moves andthen they try it themselves on
their desks and they're doingreally important maths.
And we have a nice little videoof students reflecting on the
unit and one of the studentssays I think this is really
(32:22):
important that people teachmaths in this way, and then us
kids wouldn't see it as uselessas we do now.
And when I play this forteachers, they all laugh at this
student saying maths reallyisn't as useless as we all think
it is, because that seems crazyto teachers.
How can you think maths isuseless?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But of course, that's what kids think when they never
get used to it when, in thecourse of your daily childhood,
are you put in a situation whereyou really need math to solve a
real world problem.
Like it's.
Not like that, because we'vecreated a synthetic world for
kids and we need to like help.
Help them make the tie.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
That's so abstract and removed from their lives.
One of the first studies I didwas it was my PhD study in
England followed kids throughdifferent high school, different
school, and then I was actuallyable to go and interview them
10 years later, after they'dexperienced these different
school approaches.
And the kids who'd gone to thetraditional school they were in
(33:19):
ability groups, you know, copythese methods.
One of the biggest reflectionsof the kids afterwards, when
they were adults, when they werelike 24, 25, was I see maths in
the world everywhere.
Now, why was it so disconnectedwhen I was in school?
Why did we never know that thisis, you know, everywhere in the
(33:45):
world, which is a good question, and that was really very
strong for them.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Mm, hmm, yeah, it's like it is all around you, but a
normal kid is not going to belike that's math, right, because
they need someone to engagewith them in a way that kind of
teaches them to think that andto teach them like trains you
know, like when you're, whenyou're doing art, like you know,
your art teacher is not justtraining your skill but your
observation skills too, to helphelp you see angles and see
(34:13):
light differently, and we teachthis very fake maths in schools.
Right, it's very synthetic.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's really only useful for school, and so we do
things to stop kids seeing thatthis is the maths in the world,
and that's part of what we needto change.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, we do this exercise with our prenatal kids
where they'll set.
So they're all doing masterrace learning.
You know this age mixeveryone's on their own track
doing their own goals, but theyhave to set a purpose.
Every time they set a goal,like a year long math goal, come
with a purpose and sometimesI'll go through our system and
I'll read them and I am alwayssurprised to see how many of
them say something like I wantto complete fourth grade math so
(34:53):
that I can be ready for fifthgrade math.
Like oh, that's not a purpose.
It's like it's like that's justlike doing number computations
for computation's sake, likethat's not a real broad, deep,
meaningful purpose.
And so I'm trying to still likepush our community to
understand what purpose andrelevance looks like and
authentic use of math.
But it's a struggle.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, indeed, and we set ourselves up for that.
By the way, we teach kids,we're not helping them see how
important these ideas are fortheir lives.
I mean, of course, a lot ofteachers are and they're doing
it fantastically, but we need itto be more widespread.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, so a new project you have going.
I don't know if it's new newbut Struglycom, oh yeah, strugly
.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, tell me more about Strugly, a little online
tool we've developed.
So this came about.
I've had a lot of people overmy career say, come and work
with us in this app firm and Ilook at their maths apps and
they're all about speed andcalculating.
But this was different.
So I was contacted by a reallycool design firm in Germany, by
one of the leaders of thecompany who had said that her
(36:02):
daughter had significant mathsanxiety.
She was eight until she starteddoing the tasks that we share,
and now she loves maths and istop of her class in maths, and
so she became really passionateabout getting this maths up to
more kids.
So what I love about what theycan do in this design company is
they can make thesemathematical ideas really come
(36:24):
to life through their amazingdigital work.
They do so.
It's an online tool for kids ofreally any age.
It's particularly good rightnow, I think, for students of
about four to 12.
But there's more and more beingadded to it because it's giving
kids the message that struggleis good, and we know we talked
(36:44):
about how important it is.
But yeah, it's just a toolwhere they get to see beautiful
maths and kids are loving iteverywhere.
We're finding is fromeverywhere that every the kids
who engage with struggling loveit.
And parents are saying to meyou know, we used to have film
night at my house, special treat.
And now my children are saying,can we do struggling instead?
(37:06):
And there's just.
You know, kids really, they getget badges for struggling and
for making connections betweenideas and for persisting for a
long time on problems and theylove those, they love the badges
.
So yeah, I'm really happy abouthow Strugly is going.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Those are actually like the metrics, like the
gamification of Strugly, isn'thow many right answers can you
earn?
It's literally like how longcan you persist?
That's amazing.
And can you see a?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
connection between ideas and what I really love is
they've managed to bring intoStrugly valuing the different
ways kids think about something,because so many maths apps and
textbooks they're really lookingfor one way and if you get it
slight, if you do somethingslightly different, then you get
a big, no, big wrong where it'snot wrong, it's just somebody
(37:57):
thinks about it differently.
So I I that's great aboutstruggling they've managed to
really value that yeah, I wasplaying with it a few days ago.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I was there aren't like instructions, like you're
kind of given an activity andyou kind of have to figure out
what you're even supposed to do,and my brain was immediately so
frustrated by that because I,my brain, just like wants to win
right, like wants to like do itas fast as it can, and it's
like yeah there's no instruction, Like I have to like experiment
with this thing and like thatis my brain.
(38:30):
It's engaging my brain in astruggle right there and that's
changing the architecture of mybrain.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Kids are really good at that, better than we are yeah
there are no instructions, sothey dive in and they have to
figure out how it works, makesit great for language learning
because it's not language heavyand the kids totally get it.
Yeah, they're expecting me tofigure out how to do this.
I'm going to press this.
Press that try that and they'rein, so I think it's harder for
(38:55):
us.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yes, it is definitely harder.
We don't have theneuroplasticity that the kids do
.
I don't think Right.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Well, there still is neuroplasticity.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, it's there, isn't that?
Like when I was in grad school,I was like I'm pretty sure they
taught us that like your braindoesn't change, like you can't
make new synapses, and thingslike that, that we believed that
for a long time yeah uh-huh andum.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
You know when the first evidence came out was
actually done with taxi driversin london.
Taxi drivers I don't know ifyou've taken a black cab in
london, but you are told thatyou can get into a black cab
name any place street, landmark,street, anything and they'll
take you there.
That is the expectation and ispretty true.
(39:43):
I've never found a black cabdriver to not know somewhere.
But to become a black cabdriver, you have to take this
extremely difficult test calledthe knowledge, where you have to
have memorized every street,every landmark in a 25-mile
radius of London, which iscomplicated, and I think the
average amount of times it takesto pass the knowledge is seven
(40:06):
times.
So the neuroscientists werelike oh, we should look at the
impact of this knowledgetraining on taxi drivers' brains
.
And what they found was goingthrough this process changed
their hippocampus.
So when they released thisevidence and I think this was in
the 90s people didn't believeit and they argued against it
(40:26):
because that's what they thought.
Your brain is fixed by the timeyou're an adult.
Maybe as children it's not, butby the time you're an adult
your brain is fixed.
And they have absolutely shown.
Now that's not the case and infact some of the studies of
neuroplasticity have been donein retirement homes, where they
find that the greatest evidence,the greatest times for people's
(40:50):
brains are when they'relearning new things.
So they've studied all theseolder adults and find that the
most neuroplasticity comes whenthese adults take on something
new that they hadn't learnedbefore.
Interesting.
But yeah, neuroplasticity ishappening all through our lives
and yeah that was not whatpeople believed, is still not
(41:12):
what people believe I justwonder what else we believe
right now.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That's not going to be true.
All of the things that you knowthat engender these limiting
beliefs.
It's like, oh, can we just ripthe band-aid off and just stop
with all of this, all of this,let's just let every kid be
gifted and everyone learn.
Like it really isn't about.
I mean, I think education hasjust become a giant sorting
machine, essentially, and likeif you can't do it in this way,
(41:37):
after the teachers explained itonce like you're, you're not
special, and I just feel likewe're losing.
Uh, there's the concept of likethe lost Einsteins, where it's
like how much, um, how muchhuman innovation and creativity
and and problem-solving powerare we leaving on the table
because we're not able tonurture it in these early
educational years?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And how much in maths , more than any other subject.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, and you don't have to turn the whole world.
You can still do meritocracy,you can still compete in the
market, you can do all of thosethings but, like, education
should be a place where you cancome and everyone can have
access and success.
Ok, well, thank you so much forcoming.
We're going to wrap up with ourfavorite question who is
someone in your life that hashelped shape your perception of
(42:23):
yourself, like helped youovercome limiting beliefs,
helped like you find yourpassion or kindled your
motivation, like who is thatperson and what do they do?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I would have to go to somebody I mentioned at the
beginning, which is that themaths teacher I had when I was
17, 18.
Up to that point, as I said,maths had always just been about
speed and right answers, andmostly men as well.
So here I was, doing A-levelmaths.
I had a woman teacher.
(42:55):
I always remember, you know, wehad a head teacher who was very
strict and you weren't allowedto wear earrings not children or
teachers and she would run intoour maths classroom and like
slam the door behind her,panting because she'd just
passed the head teacher in thecorridor and she'd got these big
, dangly earrings on and I was,wow, this is a different kind of
(43:15):
maths teacher and she was verypersonable.
As I said, she had us work ingroups and we would discuss
ideas and then she would teachus new things inside these
projects.
You know very much what weteach now and she did change the
way I thought, both about mathsand myself.
So I think she's been veryinfluential in the career I've
(43:36):
had.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I love that.
And then last question how canpeople learn more about your
work?
We've those are the places Iwould say Strugly and for.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Mathish.
I have a website now,mathishorg, because I share some
ideas in Mathish which are justina black and white book and I
really wanted people to havevisual, nice handouts to give to
kids and things.
So they're on that website.
So, yeah, those are the mainplaces.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Amazing.
Thank you so much for your time, dr Bowler.
I've just like loved thisconversation, thank you.
Thank you Great.
I've loved it too.
Thanks.
The Kindled podcast is broughtto you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy to startand run an amazing micro school
based on all the ideas we talkabout here on the Kindled
podcast.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media at PrendaLearn, and
, if you'd like more informationabout starting.
And really you know we don't do anything important
without struggling, so we haveto have students feel
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We find that when we share withthem, we want you to struggle,
they're more willing to bepersistent and to keep going.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast.
I'm Katie, your host for today,and in this episode we're
talking to Dr Jo Bowler.
We talk about math, anxiety,neuroplasticity and what we as
parents and educators can do tohelp kids develop a growth
mindset around math.
But before we get to ourconversation, I'll tell you a
little bit more about Dr Bowler.
She's a Stanford professor.
Formerly she was the MarieCurie professor of mathematics
(00:35):
education in England and amathematics teacher in London
Comprehensive Schools.
She's the author of 19 books,numerous articles and a White
House presenter on women andgirls.
In her latest book, math-ishFinding Creativity, diversity
and Meaning in Mathematics, shetalks about lots of the things
that we talked about on thisepisode and I can't wait to get
that book.
She co-founded ucubedorg andstrugglycom and she was on the
(00:57):
writing team for the 2023California Mathematics Framework
and was named as one of theeight educators changing the
face of education by the BBC.
Let's get to our conversationwith Dr Bowler.
Dr Bowler, welcome to theKindle podcast.
We're super excited to have youon today.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So let's go back in time a little bit.
Take me to the beginning ofyour work.
Where did you start?
How did you get to be doingwhat you're doing, and kind of
tell me what your big why is, orlike the change you're seeking
to make in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, well, I started my career in London schools as
a maths teacher and I taught atHaverstock School, where there
were over 40 different languagesspoken.
It's a very diverse school withstudents as you might imagine in
central London lots of studentswho'd only recently come to the
country, and what I found therewas students with a lot of gaps
(01:50):
in their knowledge and withmany of them I worked one-to-one
to catch them up.
And that was when I learned thatreally anybody can catch up and
students can learn anything,and that's really been my North
Star through my career that weknow that every student can
learn maths and it's really justabout the opportunities we give
them.
(02:10):
So I went from teaching inLondon to doing a master's
degree at King's College, londonUniversity, and then a
doctorate, and then waspresenting some of the results
one day in a conference inAthens when people at Stanford
were in the audience and theysaid come to Stanford, come and
be a professor at Stanford, andat first I said no, they started
(02:30):
sending me picture books ofCalifornia and they said just
come for a visit.
So we thought, well, I guess wecould just go for a visit and
then I ended up taking the jobat Stanford and after some years
there, I met Carol Dweck, whois the creator of Mindset, and
we together agreed that wereally needed to get the ideas
out to teachers and parents andsince then we started a website
(02:55):
called YouCubed that gets theideas of Mindset out and also
how to teach with a growthmindset, lots of free resources,
lessons and videos for studentsand many other things.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, we actually used UQ about Prenda.
We love it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Nice.
Yeah, that's some of my story.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That's great.
Okay, so tell me about your ownrelationship with math, like
why math for you?
Why, personally, do you chooseto focus on that?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, I first.
I guess first interest in mathsreally started, or my first
interest in learning mathstarted when I was in school.
I was pretty good at maths butI didn't enjoy it that much.
It was just answer all theseshort questions, go as fast as
you can, but I did notice that alot of my friends really
(03:45):
struggled with it and I wouldhelp them.
So I think that was my firstlike awakening, of thinking
about learning and why peoplefind maths difficult.
And then in England we choosethree subjects when you're 17
and 18, called A-levels.
I chose maths and that was whenI had my first amazing teacher
of maths who just changedeverything for me.
(04:08):
She had us work in groups,discussing ideas.
It was sort of calculus mainly.
Then everything changed.
I hadn't been planning toreally stay in maths.
I was going, I wanted to be ascientist.
But she changed the way Ithought about maths, changed the
way I thought about myself, andI ended up becoming a maths
teacher in London and from therewhere I am now, I love it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
What about math and math education feels broken to
you.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh, so much.
Unfortunately, there's a lot ofthings we need to change in
maths education.
So one of them is I work withneuroscientists at Stanford and
they have now got this reallyimportant data on the way our
brains process maths, and one ofthe things that they know is we
have five different pathwaysthat we can use when we're
thinking about maths.
(04:58):
Two of them are visual pathways, so at the back of the brain
really important to activatethese different pathways.
So a big message that we alwaysshare is math should be taught
in a multidimensional way wherestudents get to see things
visually, they get to buildthings with their hands, they
get to speak and talk aboutmaths.
It's not just answeringquestions with numbers.
(05:21):
Then, of course, a big thingthat needs to change is this
myth that's out there in thesystem that only some people can
do well at maths, the terribleidea of the maths person.
Laid into that are all sorts ofstereotypes about who it is can
do well in maths.
So if we could change thoseideas people have about maths
(05:41):
and also make it this broadsubject that's taught, honoring
all the different ways we thinkand learn, I think we would have
a wholly different nation ofmaths loving people yeah, tell
me more you know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Some of your research goes into kind of like the link
between beliefs and cognitionand I think this is aligned with
Dweck's work, right, right.
To help us realize that whatyou believe about yourself as a
learner actually influences yourability to learn right.
Go into that.
It's so interesting yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And in my latest book , which is called Mathish, I
share this research in the firstchapter, actually new research
from somebody called Lang Chen,who has shown that not only does
what you believe about mathscorrelate with your maths
achievement, but what youbelieve about maths they see in
the hippocampus, as the brain isworking on maths.
(06:34):
It literally shapes yourability to learn and a lot of
times people have thought youknow you have beliefs over here
and you have knowledge over hereand they're kind of separate.
But now we know they're notseparate and they're very
intertwined.
So we should be spending a lotmore time with learners on
helping them feel good aboutmaths.
(06:55):
It's really neglected in theschool system and we just focus
on knowledge and getting kidsthrough tests and that's such an
important missing piece.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, when I think about math and my own experience
with math, I definitely have afixed mindset.
Around math, I wear the hat ofnot a math person loudly
sometimes and it actually it hasclosed.
I remember being maybe afreshman in high school and
wanting to take this physicsclass that involves some math
and it was for a freshman.
(07:26):
It wasn't a complicated class,but I think my dad said
something to me like that classis for smart people and he
wouldn't sign my card to getinto it and I was like what are
you?
I mean, he did not know anybetter, he was doing the best he
could.
But yeah, just like how weteach kids the language we use
with kids.
Maybe we could talk about that.
(07:47):
Like what are we doing asadults to kind of shape the
beliefs.
How do we influence that?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
can be and should be or how important these ideas are
.
The whole idea of being smartis a very damaging, fixed idea.
Students think of that in avery fixed way and what we know
is that everybody's brains arechanging, growing, adapting.
So, yeah, we know thatstudents' mindsets are formed by
the time they're three years ofage and, of course, they can
(08:27):
change at any time.
And that comes from the praisewe give students and the parents
who are praising their childrenin fixed ways.
That does lead to thedevelopment of a fixed mindset.
Some people are smart, somepeople are not, some people are
gifted, some people are not.
These are all very fixed,damaging ideas and we try and
(08:48):
help people learn to give sortof growth praise.
So, instead of saying to yourchildren, that's great, you're
so smart that you could do that,saying you know, love the way
you approach that problem orthat's a really creative way of
thinking about that, anythingthat values what they're doing
rather than this fixed notion isvery helpful.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, so why can you go into a little bit more like
what is it about that beliefthat limits your ability to
learn?
Like you mentioned thehippocampus a little bit Like
can you dig into that?
I mean?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
one of the damages of those fixed ideas.
What we know is when you praisestudents for being smart, for
example, they feel good.
At first.
They're like, oh great, I'msmart.
But then later on, when theymess up on something which they
will, they start to think, oh,I'm not so smart.
And we know about a lot ofpeople.
(09:40):
So I teach an undergraduateclass at Stanford.
I have a whole host of theseyoung people who've been praised
for being gifted and smart andthey have very fixed mindsets.
And what happens when they cometo Stanford and they take a
class that's difficult and maybethey get a B or a C is they
(10:02):
fall apart and they think it's amajor crisis and they drop out.
So these ideas are importantfor all students.
People think, oh, they're forlow achieving students.
It's not the case and in fact,the biggest group of fixed
mindset students in the schoolsystem is high achieving girls.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Really that's fascinating You've done.
You presented at the WhiteHouse on this right, like about
girls in education.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Tell me about that work that were there were groups
(10:49):
like the Girl Scouts anddifferent groups were there, but
they all were delivering likean outside intervention to help
girls feel good about STEM.
So I was there and I was reallychampioning the importance of
teaching all the time Like it's.
We shouldn't be just thinking,well, we can fix girls, damage
girls and then go off and fixthem in an afterschool program.
We need to do better insideteaching because we know that
(11:12):
those regular teachinginteractions are really
important.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And the people that I mean from the like attachment
theory kind of body ofliterature, like the people that
are closest to the childtypically have the greatest
impact on that child's belief.
So that's the parent.
And if you're attendingtraditional school, like you
spend all day long with yourearly elementary teachers, right
, so you're playing a very heavyrole in that belief development
(11:37):
.
I'm I'm curious around likeokay, we talked about the belief
and then let's shift over totalking about knowledge and
actual like math acquisition.
Because I feel like sometimes,when, when we talk about get,
like you said, like trying toget get kids to feel better
about themselves and about math,that feels a little like fluffy
to people or it's like no, likemath has a right answer.
(11:58):
This isn't like a socraticdiscussion, like there's a right
answer.
We are like speed does oh, inpeople's perceptions around like
speed kind of matters, like thefaster you go, the smarter you
go, you are, the fewer mistakesyou make, the smarter you are
right.
Like these are the kind of ourstereotypes, our beliefs.
What's wrong with those beliefs?
(12:18):
Like why is this not a fluffy,uh, kind of response to math?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
What we're trying to do through YouCubed and the
books I've written is show howyou can teach maths in a way
that students love the subjectand it's really hardcore maths.
It's not that we're saying, oh,let's go off and play and that
will make you feel better aboutmaths, but you can teach algebra
(12:45):
visually by having kids look atpatterns and be wowed by the
beauty of the mathematics, andthey're learning algebra at the
same time.
So this is not a sacrifice wehave to make.
We're going to stop doingproper maths so we can help
students feel good about it.
We can teach in ways thatstudents learn to love and see
(13:07):
the beauty in maths and what'sso great about that is when
teachers start doing that, theystart to love maths more and
love teaching more because theyget such a positive response
from students.
We have a summer camp model andyou can see it on YouCubed where
we develop this summer camp forstudents.
(13:28):
It's typically about four weekslong and we share this
beautiful maths with them andlots of mindset messages and
what we find is a really shorttime in that maths environment
and students' scores and statetests really massively go up.
So we know that this creative,more joyful maths increases
(13:50):
students' mathematical cognition.
We don't need to make maths dryand be encouraging speed the
same.
With that speed message.
I mean we might agree thatthinking quickly is helpful in
some situations not really manybut you don't get kids being
faster by encouraging speed.
In fact, often that makes themslower because it's what brings
(14:13):
anxiety to students.
Actually, the way to be fasterwith maths is to be really
comfortable with numbers andconcepts and then release your
mind from these negative anxietyproducing ideas.
It's a bit like that oldexpression that you know we
don't make kids taller bymeasuring them.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I love that saying.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Completely over again .
And the same with math.
But we don't make them fasterby giving them speed tests.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
That's so true.
There's like biology behindthis right.
Like when you put a child in astress-inducing situation,
they're feeling a lot of anxiety.
Like that activates thesympathetic nervous system.
The prefrontal cortex comesoffline.
Like that is the part of thebrain they need to stay engaged
in that problem, to stay focusedto figure that out to reason.
So you're disconnecting themfrom that part of the brain by
(15:05):
introducing this fear or anxiety.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
One of the neuroscience I work with, binod
Meenan, has shown that whenpeople who are anxious about
math see numbers, a fear centerlights up in the brain.
It's the same fear center thatlights up when we see snakes and
spiders.
So, and exactly as that fearcenter lights up, the problem
solving centers shut down.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I had no idea that.
It's like literally the fearcenter of the brain with numbers
.
That's shocking.
But I can like relate to that.
Like when I think about mathespecially if someone's going to
watch me do math even now, likewe're like building Prendo,
we're leading this company.
You know, like if I have to, ifI'm sharing my screen or
something and I have to do math,I'm like very uncomfortable and
(15:48):
like immediately, you know,like you feel all of the same
feelings like as if like a louddog was barking at you or
something you'd almost get hitby a car.
You feel this like panic in youand then your mind goes blank
and you can't do the math.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
It's true, so many people, even people who are
really comfortable with mathsand so many maths teachers.
When they go out for mealstheir friends are like, oh,
you're the maths teacher, youwork out the tip and they're all
staring at you.
Literally people's brains shutdown, they're like they suddenly
can't do this calculation.
That is the impact of that fearhitting the important part of
(16:21):
the brain so totally true ofeverybody I think everybody
fears being watched doing maths.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, that's yeah something that we get.
So prenda takes a very similarapproach.
Like we won't really want tocreate an environment that is
where kids feel a lot ofinternal safety.
So we have access to theprefrontal cortex, right.
So we do a lot of a lot of thesame mindset work you're talking
about, and when we tell peopleabout this, they say like, oh,
it sounds too easy.
Learning has to be somehowinherently painful for it to be
(16:51):
effective.
And even when you talk to kidsabout their pre and post like
they went to traditional schooland then they came to Prender,
or maybe they had a certainteacher that was able to create
that environment and then acertain teacher that wasn't able
to we ask them how hard are youworking?
They will actually say thatthey are working less hard in
this environment.
That's more conducive tointernal safety.
(17:12):
But they're growing at likelike 1.5 grade levels per year
or something like that.
They're growing way more.
But their perception is, oh,this is easy.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, um, and it's like also yeah, they they're
believing that, like they're,they've internalized this idea
that learning has to be painfulyeah, if you set up that safe
environment and you allowstudents to be successful, they
will say this is easier in thisenvironment, even though it
isn't easier.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
The math isn't easier yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You've allowed them to be successful.
Well, one of our key messages,talking of this sort of pain, is
that struggle is really goodfor the brain.
You want to be struggling.
You don't want to find workeasy, because that's not good
for your brain.
And when your brain isstruggling, that's when it's
really making those importantconnections and growth.
(18:03):
And so we do a lot of work tohelp kids feel good about
struggle.
When I teach students, whetherthey're young students or
Stanford students, I will say tothem I want you to struggle.
I'm going to give you work thatwill cause you to struggle,
because that's really good foryou, that's really good for your
brain.
And we use James Nottingham'smetaphor of the pit of struggle
(18:25):
the learning pit.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Tell me about that.
I haven't heard about that.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, teach me that it's a really good one and lots
of teachers find it reallyhelpful.
Yeah, it's a really good oneand lots of teachers find it
really helpful.
And there's some teachers and Ihave visuals of these in my
books.
They get kids to draw their ownpit.
So you want to go down into thepit of struggle and in these
drawings you see kids on the waydown going oh I'm not good at
maths, I'm terrible.
But then, as they're coming out, they're saying I can just use
(18:49):
these tools, I can keep going.
And the teachers I work withsay to students you know, I
could take your hand and wecould jump over the pit together
, but that's not what we want.
You need to be in the pit.
And when we run workshops withteachers we hear them going oh
(19:12):
I'm really in the pit when wegive them these hard concepts,
hard tasks.
So just celebrating those timesof struggle, I find that to be
extremely liberating message forstudents.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I was just thinking, like we have so much fear, right
, and where's this fear comefrom?
It's like, oh, I'm lessvaluable if I'm not good at math
.
I'm less smart.
My parents would bedisappointed that all of these
very emotionally driven beliefsare in there.
And when you, when younormalize that and then you
celebrate it, it's like you gota d on your math test.
(19:39):
This is going on therefrigerator.
This is excellent, because whatdo we struggle in our family or
in our class?
Like we celebrate how long youstayed with this problem, or
like how, how diligent you werein yeah, persisting, right,
right and then next time they'relike oh, my mom feels proud of
me when I work my butt off right.
it's like, okay, then, thenthat's my behavior and that's
(20:01):
actually going to engender muchmore long-term success of in
that child's life.
Then I usually get lucky.
I'm feeling this lucky, smartfeeling and I don't actually
have any of those.
You know, all of the pits in mypath so far have been easy for
me to skip over and I haven'tspent a lot of time developing
Like think about just themuscles and ingenuity and all of
(20:21):
the skills you would develop ifyou actually were in a pit and
you had to get yourself outRight Like that's a much
stronger brain on the other sideof that pit.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And really you know we don't do anything important
without struggling and reallyyou know we don't do anything
important without struggling.
So you're not going to get tothat really good knowledge and
creativity and everything thatwe know to be important.
So we have to have studentsfeel comfortable with that.
We find that when we share withthem we want you to struggle,
they're more willing to bepersistent and to keep going.
(20:50):
And although this is a messagewe share in all of our work, I
don't hear teachers doing itvery often.
I think it's a hard one forteachers to, because now our
education system has for so longjust been all about correctness
, so it's a harder one forteachers, I think, to take on.
(21:11):
But when they do take it on,it's really transformative.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
What are some of the other blockers to like really
changing this in society?
What's getting in the way?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, well, first of all there's resistance to these
ideas, and I've faced a lot ofit in my career.
There are some people who don'twant to believe that they're
not especially gifted or youknow that they've really
absorbed these fixed ideas andthey want to keep them.
That can be hard for somepeople to take on that idea that
(21:44):
everybody can learn and grow.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
OK, I'm having, like sorry, like a major epiphany
here, because I've never appliedfixed mindset to, like, say, an
administrator or someone who'slike making decisions.
It's like I was special, I wasgifted and if I allow everyone
to, if we let go of these labels, then I am now less valuable
and I as an adult am stillfeeling like I'm fighting for my
(22:08):
value and using these thingsand my credentials and things
like that to substantiate myself.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Wow, never really thought about that A lot of high
school maths teachers inparticular have built their
whole identity around this ideathat they were the special one
who could learn maths, and sothey as a group tend to be more
resistant to the idea that wecan all learn.
And then other factors thatwork against change.
(22:35):
I think there's too much in thestandards that are given to
teachers every year just way toomuch in there.
So when we teach, say to themyou know, let students work in
depth and think deeply aboutthings and make connections that
they think.
I don't have time.
I've got to get through all ofthis in the book, these massive
(22:55):
maths books that are in the USthat kids can hardly carry.
So we have one of the things wedid in California working out
the new California framework isrearrange standards into bigger
ideas so teachers don't have somany to get through and they can
think well, this is a big idea.
There's like eight in eachgrade level.
(23:15):
I'm really going to go intodepth on that big idea.
I'm really going to give kidsrich experiences and so, um,
yeah, teachers, everything feelstoo rushed in the school system
and they feel that they have toget through so much right and
that I mean they are under a lotof professional pressure to
perform right those, those statetests.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Like their schools are judged on that, they're
judged on that and a lot of it'sout of their hands.
Kind of like it's the districtsaying like this is the
curriculum schedule for all ofthe kids that are nine in your
care.
You know, like you have toexpose them to fill in the blank
, and it's a thousand thingslong.
So it's like there's thisimmense amount of pressure and
so it's like you really need,like a system wide change to
(23:57):
really it's not just like, oh,teachers do a better job, be
more creative.
It's like, well, the teacher isacting a certain way because of
, like you know, I don't want tokick the can off the road, but
it really is like a very highlevel problem that's trickling
down and damaging, damaging thestudent's education that's
trickling down and damaging thestudents' education.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
That's right.
And then we have these booksthat are written to teach kids
maths, that really don't drawfrom research or what we know
about learning.
They're written very quickly bypublishing companies to get
them out there and they don'tteach maths in a creative,
visual way.
It's just lots and lots ofshort, uninteresting questions.
(24:36):
Yeah, yeah, teachers, if theyreally are under that kind of
pressure, here's this book toteach from.
Here's your district pacingguide.
Here are all the tests.
It's hard for them to reallyimplement the ideas.
So we need leaders.
We need change at theleadership level as well.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Tell me a little bit more about standards, Like how
did standards become the way wedo education and what is?
You've mentioned kind of bigideas like go into a little bit
more about like maybe analternate view on that, because
we don't want to let go of likethere are right answers in math
and we do want to have highexpectations.
It's not about making it easier, and I think standards have
(25:18):
become kind of synonymous withlike excellence or like a high
degree of rigor or somethinglike that.
So talk to me about that idea alittle bit.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, when I was working with the Department of
Education in California, one ofthe things I learned in that
process was the standards werenever intended to be a guide for
teaching.
They were never written to bethe guide of what teachers teach
.
They were more written as asetting out somewhere what is
(25:46):
everything.
But they have become this guidefor teaching, and textbooks
have taken all these smalllittle standards and turned them
into small little questions forkids.
So, as I mentioned, one of thework we did in California was to
really think about what are thebig concepts in each grade
level.
That is what is reallyimportant.
That is what will underpineverything students do, and so
(26:10):
we combine standards into thosebigger concepts.
It's exactly the samemathematics If you teach to
those big ideas, kids arelearning a number of standards
at once.
We don't have to go one by one,by one.
I mean, if you teach that thestandards what's happening is
you might be teaching fractionsfor some weeks of the year and
(26:30):
then six months later, you'reteaching shape, but actually
kids can learn fractions throughshapes.
Why aren't they combined?
Why do we separate everythingand make it disconnected?
So, yeah, any work that we cando to bring back the connections
in maths.
Maths is a very connectedsubject.
Anybody who works inmathematics knows that it's
(26:53):
actually a subject of a few bigideas and a lot of rich
connections between them.
So having kids see and knowthose connections is important.
In our system the teachersdon't even know the mathematical
connections.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, because you're like, you're a geometry teacher,
right, like we've even takenmath and we've made it into
subjects.
So it's like, hey, I'm onlythinking about geometry, I'm
only thinking about algebra.
So it's like the way we've setit up makes it impossible for
even well-educated people to seethose connections high school
maths into different courses.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, in fact, the US is one of very few countries in
the world that do that.
Most countries teach maths andthat was what I learned in
school.
So when I was doing high school, we would do problems that
involved algebra and geometry,because that is the maths of the
(27:46):
world.
And when I first got here I waslike wow, I don't even know
where I would put this problem.
It has algebra and geometryinside.
Is that a geometry?
Not allowed, not allowed.
So, yeah, any moves we can haveto integrate mathematics in the
high school levels is alsoreally helpful.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So what you're saying here is reminding me, actually
bringing me back to high school,because I grew up in California
and I remember my math actuallybeing more integrated like this
.
Now that I think about it, I'velived in Arizona and done other
education things, so now mybrain is like more segmented
thing, like that.
There was like a few.
It wasn't totallyinterconnected, but it was.
It was algebra and geometry andall like all.
(28:36):
You got everything in that year, you know, and then you'd build
on that and all of thosedifferent, but it wasn't super
connected or visual like you'retalking about, but maybe that
was.
Maybe that's what they weretrying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, and there was a move in the is and nice to
teach more integrated maths andit was being really pushed out
by people who love thetraditional ways and want things
to stay the same.
But some states have madetremendous progress.
In Utah there is onlyintegrated maths.
That was made as a decision atthe state level and everybody
(29:09):
teaches integrated maths in Utahand they also have pathways in
data science.
They can choose in high schoolwhether they're focusing on data
or you know more calculus routeand they get really great
results.
You know their results havereally gone up since they've
moved maths more into the 21stcentury.
Yet still we fight about it.
You know in California there'shuge battles about it.
(29:30):
We don't look at the evidenceand look at, for example, the
data from Utah.
We just fight about it.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
There's this analogy that my back.
I'm a speech languagepathologist and I'm very into
early literacy instruction, sothe whole reading wars back and
forth is it's sounding?
It kind of smacks of the samething where it's like, is it
this way?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Is it this way it's like you know where it's like.
Is it this way?
Is it this way?
It's like you know.
It's very similar.
We have the math wars that thatare like the reading wars and
are so unproductive becausethat's not helpful if people are
at war with each other.
Same with reading, I mean.
Of course we had the wholelanguage approach.
So how I learned to read?
Then we had phonics and noweverybody's saying it's all
(30:13):
about phonics.
Of course kids need both.
It doesn't make sense that youjust isolate the sounds and
learn in that way.
It's meaningless for kids andof course you need some of that.
Both are important.
But now we're pivoting.
We're going to go all one way.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I just love fighting, I think.
But there's an analogy that Ilearned early on in my literacy
education about chocolate cake.
If I was like, hey, joe, youwant to come over and I'll make
you, we'll have a snack together, we'll have a treat, and then I
sat you down and I gave you aquarter cup of cocoa and some
vinegar and some salt and someflour and made you eat them, you
(30:51):
would not want to come back tomy house to eat my treat, right?
You would hate this.
And then you'd be like, oh, Idon't think I'm a cake person,
like you know, but if you mixall of those things together and
make it delicious, that's astory in the literacy analogy,
right, and it's like I can helpyou fall in love with this story
.
And then eventually you'll wantto know how to make it yourself
.
And I feel like you're doing asimilar thing in math with like
(31:12):
tell me a little bit more aboutU-Cubed.
And like visual math, like themoves you're trying to make
there, because it seems, itseems analogous, where it's like
if we can help kids experiencemath and like an awe, inspiring,
like, like fun and engaging way, then they'll be more
interested and like the, thethings that they discover.
The concepts will be morerelevant.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Exactly.
You know we love to have unitsfor kids where they're really
engaging with something.
One of the things I'm most proudof and you cued at the moment,
that is one of our most recentthings is we developed a
partnership with StanfordWomen's Basketball Team because
we know that sport has a lot ofdata and mathematics inside it,
and we said we'd like to developa unit on basketball and they
worked with us, which wasfantastic.
(31:59):
So in this basketball unit thisis all free on our site kids
watch videos of the Stanfordplayers explaining basketball to
them and showing the moves andthen they try it themselves on
their desks and they're doingreally important maths.
And we have a nice little videoof students reflecting on the
unit and one of the studentssays I think this is really
(32:22):
important that people teachmaths in this way, and then us
kids wouldn't see it as uselessas we do now.
And when I play this forteachers, they all laugh at this
student saying maths reallyisn't as useless as we all think
it is, because that seems crazyto teachers.
How can you think maths isuseless?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But of course, that's what kids think when they never
get used to it when, in thecourse of your daily childhood,
are you put in a situation whereyou really need math to solve a
real world problem.
Like it's.
Not like that, because we'vecreated a synthetic world for
kids and we need to like help.
Help them make the tie.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
That's so abstract and removed from their lives.
One of the first studies I didwas it was my PhD study in
England followed kids throughdifferent high school, different
school, and then I was actuallyable to go and interview them
10 years later, after they'dexperienced these different
school approaches.
And the kids who'd gone to thetraditional school they were in
(33:19):
ability groups, you know, copythese methods.
One of the biggest reflectionsof the kids afterwards, when
they were adults, when they werelike 24, 25, was I see maths in
the world everywhere.
Now, why was it so disconnectedwhen I was in school?
Why did we never know that thisis, you know, everywhere in the
(33:45):
world, which is a good question, and that was really very
strong for them.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Mm, hmm, yeah, it's like it is all around you, but a
normal kid is not going to belike that's math, right, because
they need someone to engagewith them in a way that kind of
teaches them to think that andto teach them like trains you
know, like when you're, whenyou're doing art, like you know,
your art teacher is not justtraining your skill but your
observation skills too, to helphelp you see angles and see
(34:13):
light differently, and we teachthis very fake maths in schools.
Right, it's very synthetic.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's really only useful for school, and so we do
things to stop kids seeing thatthis is the maths in the world,
and that's part of what we needto change.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, we do this exercise with our prenatal kids
where they'll set.
So they're all doing masterrace learning.
You know this age mixeveryone's on their own track
doing their own goals, but theyhave to set a purpose.
Every time they set a goal,like a year long math goal, come
with a purpose and sometimesI'll go through our system and
I'll read them and I am alwayssurprised to see how many of
them say something like I wantto complete fourth grade math so
(34:53):
that I can be ready for fifthgrade math.
Like oh, that's not a purpose.
It's like it's like that's justlike doing number computations
for computation's sake, likethat's not a real broad, deep,
meaningful purpose.
And so I'm trying to still likepush our community to
understand what purpose andrelevance looks like and
authentic use of math.
But it's a struggle.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, indeed, and we set ourselves up for that.
By the way, we teach kids,we're not helping them see how
important these ideas are fortheir lives.
I mean, of course, a lot ofteachers are and they're doing
it fantastically, but we need itto be more widespread.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, so a new project you have going.
I don't know if it's new newbut Struglycom, oh yeah, strugly
.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, tell me more about Strugly, a little online
tool we've developed.
So this came about.
I've had a lot of people overmy career say, come and work
with us in this app firm and Ilook at their maths apps and
they're all about speed andcalculating.
But this was different.
So I was contacted by a reallycool design firm in Germany, by
one of the leaders of thecompany who had said that her
(36:02):
daughter had significant mathsanxiety.
She was eight until she starteddoing the tasks that we share,
and now she loves maths and istop of her class in maths, and
so she became really passionateabout getting this maths up to
more kids.
So what I love about what theycan do in this design company is
they can make thesemathematical ideas really come
(36:24):
to life through their amazingdigital work.
They do so.
It's an online tool for kids ofreally any age.
It's particularly good rightnow, I think, for students of
about four to 12.
But there's more and more beingadded to it because it's giving
kids the message that struggleis good, and we know we talked
(36:44):
about how important it is.
But yeah, it's just a toolwhere they get to see beautiful
maths and kids are loving iteverywhere.
We're finding is fromeverywhere that every the kids
who engage with struggling loveit.
And parents are saying to meyou know, we used to have film
night at my house, special treat.
And now my children are saying,can we do struggling instead?
(37:06):
And there's just.
You know, kids really, they getget badges for struggling and
for making connections betweenideas and for persisting for a
long time on problems and theylove those, they love the badges
.
So yeah, I'm really happy abouthow Strugly is going.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Those are actually like the metrics, like the
gamification of Strugly, isn'thow many right answers can you
earn?
It's literally like how longcan you persist?
That's amazing.
And can you see a?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
connection between ideas and what I really love is
they've managed to bring intoStrugly valuing the different
ways kids think about something,because so many maths apps and
textbooks they're really lookingfor one way and if you get it
slight, if you do somethingslightly different, then you get
a big, no, big wrong where it'snot wrong, it's just somebody
(37:57):
thinks about it differently.
So I I that's great aboutstruggling they've managed to
really value that yeah, I wasplaying with it a few days ago.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I was there aren't like instructions, like you're
kind of given an activity andyou kind of have to figure out
what you're even supposed to do,and my brain was immediately so
frustrated by that because I,my brain, just like wants to win
right, like wants to like do itas fast as it can, and it's
like yeah there's no instruction, Like I have to like experiment
with this thing and like thatis my brain.
(38:30):
It's engaging my brain in astruggle right there and that's
changing the architecture of mybrain.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Kids are really good at that, better than we are yeah
there are no instructions, sothey dive in and they have to
figure out how it works, makesit great for language learning
because it's not language heavyand the kids totally get it.
Yeah, they're expecting me tofigure out how to do this.
I'm going to press this.
Press that try that and they'rein, so I think it's harder for
(38:55):
us.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yes, it is definitely harder.
We don't have theneuroplasticity that the kids do
.
I don't think Right.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Well, there still is neuroplasticity.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, it's there, isn't that?
Like when I was in grad school,I was like I'm pretty sure they
taught us that like your braindoesn't change, like you can't
make new synapses, and thingslike that, that we believed that
for a long time yeah uh-huh andum.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
You know when the first evidence came out was
actually done with taxi driversin london.
Taxi drivers I don't know ifyou've taken a black cab in
london, but you are told thatyou can get into a black cab
name any place street, landmark,street, anything and they'll
take you there.
That is the expectation and ispretty true.
(39:43):
I've never found a black cabdriver to not know somewhere.
But to become a black cabdriver, you have to take this
extremely difficult test calledthe knowledge, where you have to
have memorized every street,every landmark in a 25-mile
radius of London, which iscomplicated, and I think the
average amount of times it takesto pass the knowledge is seven
(40:06):
times.
So the neuroscientists werelike oh, we should look at the
impact of this knowledgetraining on taxi drivers' brains
.
And what they found was goingthrough this process changed
their hippocampus.
So when they released thisevidence and I think this was in
the 90s people didn't believeit and they argued against it
(40:26):
because that's what they thought.
Your brain is fixed by the timeyou're an adult.
Maybe as children it's not, butby the time you're an adult
your brain is fixed.
And they have absolutely shown.
Now that's not the case and infact some of the studies of
neuroplasticity have been donein retirement homes, where they
find that the greatest evidence,the greatest times for people's
(40:50):
brains are when they'relearning new things.
So they've studied all theseolder adults and find that the
most neuroplasticity comes whenthese adults take on something
new that they hadn't learnedbefore.
Interesting.
But yeah, neuroplasticity ishappening all through our lives
and yeah that was not whatpeople believed, is still not
(41:12):
what people believe I justwonder what else we believe
right now.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That's not going to be true.
All of the things that you knowthat engender these limiting
beliefs.
It's like, oh, can we just ripthe band-aid off and just stop
with all of this, all of this,let's just let every kid be
gifted and everyone learn.
Like it really isn't about.
I mean, I think education hasjust become a giant sorting
machine, essentially, and likeif you can't do it in this way,
(41:37):
after the teachers explained itonce like you're, you're not
special, and I just feel likewe're losing.
Uh, there's the concept of likethe lost Einsteins, where it's
like how much, um, how muchhuman innovation and creativity
and and problem-solving powerare we leaving on the table
because we're not able tonurture it in these early
educational years?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And how much in maths , more than any other subject.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, and you don't have to turn the whole world.
You can still do meritocracy,you can still compete in the
market, you can do all of thosethings but, like, education
should be a place where you cancome and everyone can have
access and success.
Ok, well, thank you so much forcoming.
We're going to wrap up with ourfavorite question who is
someone in your life that hashelped shape your perception of
(42:23):
yourself, like helped youovercome limiting beliefs,
helped like you find yourpassion or kindled your
motivation, like who is thatperson and what do they do?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I would have to go to somebody I mentioned at the
beginning, which is that themaths teacher I had when I was
17, 18.
Up to that point, as I said,maths had always just been about
speed and right answers, andmostly men as well.
So here I was, doing A-levelmaths.
I had a woman teacher.
(42:55):
I always remember, you know, wehad a head teacher who was very
strict and you weren't allowedto wear earrings not children or
teachers and she would run intoour maths classroom and like
slam the door behind her,panting because she'd just
passed the head teacher in thecorridor and she'd got these big
, dangly earrings on and I was,wow, this is a different kind of
(43:15):
maths teacher and she was verypersonable.
As I said, she had us work ingroups and we would discuss
ideas and then she would teachus new things inside these
projects.
You know very much what weteach now and she did change the
way I thought, both about mathsand myself.
So I think she's been veryinfluential in the career I've
(43:36):
had.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I love that.
And then last question how canpeople learn more about your
work?
We've those are the places Iwould say Strugly and for.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Mathish.
I have a website now,mathishorg, because I share some
ideas in Mathish which are justina black and white book and I
really wanted people to havevisual, nice handouts to give to
kids and things.
So they're on that website.
So, yeah, those are the mainplaces.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Amazing.
Thank you so much for your time, dr Bowler.
I've just like loved thisconversation, thank you.
Thank you Great.
I've loved it too.
Thanks.
The Kindled podcast is broughtto you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy to startand run an amazing micro school
based on all the ideas we talkabout here on the Kindled
podcast.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media at PrendaLearn, and
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