Girls and Maths

Last night, we were lucky enough to have Dr Jo Boaler and Cathy Williams attend an event we held to celebrate nearly 200 Scottish teachers completing our Mindset in Education Programme and they shared lots of insights and resources. Over the new wee while, I'll be resharing some here, along with my own meandering reflections.

How many of you like maths?

And if you don't like maths, can you remember a time when you did?

I can. I probably enjoyed the challenge of maths up until Standard Grades (GCSE) when it got harder, and duller and the challenge went from interesting to impossible, especially when there was the lure of other subjects which I found I did enjoy more. Probably not coincidentally, I also got a different teacher round about that time.

The consequence of this was not just a poor Higher result but a decade long dread of being asked something to do with numbers off the cuff. I would actually panic when faced with anything that felt vaguely 'mathsy."

The irony of me getting a job in my early twenties managing a learning centre where I actually had to step in and teach maths sometimes was not lost on me, but I knew that my relationship with maths made me empathetic towards other kids who felt the same.

And in trying to explain things that I didn't entirely understand I often found myself drawing things and using other creative ways to explain, which didn't feel quite right because maths, in my mind, was the opposite of a creative subject. And I very often used the tactic, "what do you think you should do?" to buy myself a little time, which also proved to be an early introduction to a coaching leadership style.

Now, I run a charity. I had my own business for 5 years. I can deal with numbers and budgets but it took me a long time (and nurturing a growth mindset) to be able to ask questions, show my ignorance and develop a range of strategies to give me confidence with numbers.

The bigger picture is that we know that girls tend to drop STEM subjects as they progress up the school (for a variety of reasons) and that means we as a society are missing out on these super talented girls entering STEM fields when they are older.

Believing that you can do something hard, and that it's actually in the struggle that you learn the most is an important skill, and that takes courage, especially in exam focused environments.

And for teachers, it takes courage (and time, an increasingly previous commodity in these pressured times) to revamp a curriculum, to challenge established beliefs and to try (and sometimes fail) when trying new approaches.

But when it works, oh boy, it works.

Last night I listened to one principal teacher of maths talk about the impact of our Mindset in Education Programme on his school. He and colleagues totally revamped the course to make it more creative, changed the language they used and modelled the behaviour they hoped to see from their students. It took longer - early morning meetings to figure out a visual way to demonstrate a particular concept, allowing the children to figure things out rather than learning by rote but the results speak for themselves.

• Almost all children said they 'hated' or 'disliked' maths at the start, by the end all of them agreed, "I could actually get quite good at this."
• When asked how they felt about a new topic being introduced, not a single student said that they felt 'anxious' or 'hopeless', in contrast to what they would have felt pre-course.

And as a bonus, the children were able to come up with their own ways of explaining things, and supporting each other.

As a charity leader, I often ask the question, "so what?" to really test our impact, but the so what came out loud and clear last night. More empowered teachers, more confident students and higher attainment levels.

Results aside, for those students a different approach can be truly transformative. You can see it in their body language and the way they carry themselves.

Jo and Cathy run Youcubed which, among many other amazing things, runs summer camps for middle school students. This short case study video makes me happy and optimistic and even more determined for Winning Scotland to continue play its role in creating similar ripples in Scotland