BACK TO BASICS
Dismal test scores? Many point the finger at elementary school teachers with no background or skills in math
THERE ARE NO SIGNS of stopping the decade of decline in elementary school math scores.
Despite years of alarm, the number of Ontario students in Grades 3 and 6 meeting the provincial standard continues to tumble — 10 percentage points and counting in the last four years alone at Hamilton public schools.
“There are many reasons,” said Mary Reid, assistant professor specializing in math at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. “We can’t pinpoint one area.” Most agree the problem isn’t the kids.
“Don’t blame the students,” said Trevor Hearn, emeritus professor of computer science engineering and math at Flinders University in South Australia who now lives in Ancaster.
“I don’t think the kids are any dumber … Make the connections available to them and they will respond.”
Hamilton schools themselves also don’t appear to be at fault for the majority of Grade 6 math students missing the mark last year in annual Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) testing.
“I don’t think the education system is broken,” said Ian VanderBurgh, director of the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Waterloo.
“EQAO scores are good to look at, but I don’t believe EQAO is telling us everything that is happening in the education system. It’s a test on one day of the year.”
WITHOUT A DOUBT, any discussion about dismal math results has to start with the hot-button issue of inquiry-based learning.
The approach — also called discovery-based learning — focuses on students’ ideas, observations and questions. Students learn by investigating problems, working through scenarios and asking questions facilitated by their teachers instead of being simply presented with information.
Many parents, educators and math experts point the figure squarely at this approach as the main culprit in Ontario’s math problem.
“Our pendulum in Ontario has swung too far to discovery-based learning,” said VanderBurgh. “There is great value in that, but students need to have basic underlying skills.”
He uses hockey star Sidney Crosby as an example. “He needs to know how to skate and stickhandle the puck” before he can win the Stanley Cup finals.
A number of groups nationwide, including the Western Initiative for Strengthening Education in Math (WISE Math) and MathRight, have ongoing petitions and advocate for math curriculums to get back to the fundamentals.
“Students don’t have basic math facts,” said Reid. “You need the basics. But you also need the inquirybased learning. You need a combination.”
She stresses learning the fundamentals doesn’t necessarily mean memorizing your times tables.
“It’s math games and it’s making math fun,” said Reid. “It’s not pure memorization. It’s knowing what division is and what multiplication is, you have that foundational concept.”
The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) argues misinformation is fuelling some of the doubts about math curriculum.
“There are some misconceptions out there,” said Peter Sovran, executive superintendent of student achievement and school operations. “You often hear the term, ‘the new math,’ and there really isn’t new mathematics. The math is the math; it’s not any different.”
EQAO results were so worrisome to the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board that it set up a math task force in 2014.
The task force found “a problemsolving approach is hailed in the research as integral to any effective mathematics program.”
But inquiry-based learning is only as good as those who are teaching it — which leads to the next part of the equation, the math skills of elementary school teachers.
“You do not need any qualifications in math,” said Reid. “In high school, you do.”
Reid hopes the recent doubling of time teachers spend training from one year to two years will help alleviate the issue by allowing more time to be devoted to math.
But it doesn’t change the current reality.
“Many of them do not have that much background in math,” said VanderBurgh. “We need to make sure we are first and foremost helping them become better math teachers.”
It’s an issue both the HWCDSB math task force and the Expert Panel on Early Math in Ontario identified.
“Teacher efficacy comes up repeatedly,” said the HWCDSB report from January 2015.