Students May Learn Math Better When Teachers Stick to Abstract Equations

April 29, 2008

Math educators take note: the idea that by making mathematics more relevant, students will have an easier time learning mathematics may be wrong--if Ohio State University researchers are correct. Their experiments suggest that it's better to leave apples, oranges, and locomotives in the real world--and to focus on abstract mathematics in the classroom.

Students who study mathematics abstractly did well when asked to figure out the solutions of a game assigned to them. Those who learned through examples using, in one case, measuring cups and tennis balls to solve problems performed just slightly better than if they made educated guesses. Students who were presented with abstract symbols after being shown concrete examples, however, did better than those who learned only through cups or balls. Still, the latter group didn't do as well as the students who understood abstract symbols.

The problem with using real-world examples, according to the researchers, was that they obscured the underlying mathematics. The students were unable to transfer their knowledge to new problems. “They tend to remember the superficial, the two trains passing in the night,” said researcher Jennifer Kaminski. “It’s really a problem of our attention getting pulled to superficial information.”

Source: Outside the Beltway