Goals

At the conclusion of this unit, participants will be able to:

1. Explore current opinions and beliefs about math, relate these to a “productive” math mindset, and understand how our beliefs affect the types of learning opportunities we provide students. 

2. Apply the principles of UDL to a math learning environment: 

   • Understand the relationship between three basic learning networks established in neuroscience research, and how we structure learning to effectively engage each network in a UDL model. 

   • Relate these with specific UDL guidelines that enable students to effectively activate each network. 

   • Apply this to math talk activities, observing barriers that individual students may experience in these math activities. 

3. Explore what the UDL definition of “expert learning” is and how that relates to students’ agency, ownership and identify with mathematics; observe for evidence of these characteristics in videos of math lessons and apply to the belief that the types of learning opportunities we provide students supports the development of expert learners. 

Big Ideas

• Our mindset about what math is and how we should engage with it directly affects the learning opportunities we provide our students and, in turn, the depth of their math understanding and achievement.

• Math is about relationships between numbers, patterns and concepts, not procedures or rote memorization. It is creative, open ended and visual.

• Students require choice in how they make sense of the math and the strategies they use; there is no prescribed way of doing math. Once this is recognized, the learning opportunities we provide students must honor student sense-making rather than telling students what to think.

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was selected as an equity-focused framework to address access to the instructional needs of a diverse student population for the simple reason that when we design for students with the greatest needs, all students benefit.

• UDL represents a paradigm shift in how educators proactively approach the creation and implementation of learning experiences: each of the three UDL principles, Engagement, Representation, and Action/Expression align to the learning networks of the brain, therefore when we design using a UDL mindset, we are supporting how the brain connects to student interest, processes information, and demonstrates understanding. The focus of lesson design is to provide a structure for an asset-based learning model with particular attention on building goal-directed, expert learners.

• The UDL framework emphasizes the importance of building expert learners across all contexts, which is particularly important in the math learning environment. Learning and building expertise are not static. They are continuous processes that involve practice, mistake, adjustment, and refinement.