Your Brain on Maths: Educational Neurononsense Revisited

Earlier this week, I was asked on Twitter why I had never blogged about the "neuro-myths" of Jo Boaler. I confessed I'd never heard of her. So I looked her up and learned that Boaler is a professor at Stanford, and an expert on the teaching of mathematics. Her work in that field has been both influential and controversial. Boaler argues that any child can become proficient at maths, given time, if they believe in themselves and in their ability to improve. Children should not be told that they have fixed traits such as 'clever' or 'bad at math', but rather they should be given a 'growth mindset'. This is a mindset in which they see ability as learnable, and they see mistakes as chances to learn. I'm no maths teacher, but Boaler's ideas seem reasonable to me. We do learn from our mistakes, or at least we can do. ...