Attitudes & Beliefs

Learning math also involves the 4th kind of knowledge – Development of right attitudes and beliefs.

Math is predominantly conceptual. Even the procedures need an understanding of underlying concepts. This demands a lot of mental effort on the part of students.

Procedures also need mastery through a lot of “deliberate” practice. Deliberate is to emphasize practice with understanding.

Because of both the above factors, learning math effectively demands a lot of effort & focus over an extended period of time.

Sustaining these needs cultivation of the right attitudes and beliefs in a student.

Some of these are directly related to learning math. Some others are related to learning anything.

Those related directly to math can be taught, to an extent, by the teacher through many examples.

Those related to learning in general are the most difficult since they cannot be taught directly by a teacher. They need to be learnt by a student.

Teachers can help by role modelling these in the class and discussing them with the students.

Let us look at some of these attitudes & beliefs.

1. Related to Math

a. The core purpose of learning math is to develop life-long competencies of logical & structured thinking.

b. These in turn would make it easier for learning all other subjects and everything else.

c. No one is innately a “math person”. Anyone can learn math through sustained effort & persistence. This is known as the Growth Mindset

d. Always look for opportunities to generalise from specific instances. Generalisation is the way to abstraction.

2. Related to Learning Anything

a. Learning is a continuous & life-long process

b. View mistakes as learning opportunities. Do not hide them.

c. Have the courage to admit that you do not know something and ask for clarifications.

d. All learning is interconnected. Look for connections of a concept from any subject to other topics & subjects.

When Oscar Wilde said: “nothing that is worth knowing can be taught”, this is this kind of knowledge he must have meant.