INTRODUCTION: THE POWER OF MINDSET

I remember clearly the fall afternoon that I sat down with my dean in her office, waiting for what would turn out to be a very important meeting. I had only recently returned to Stanford University from England where I was the Marie Curie Professor for Mathematics Education.

I was still getting used to the change from the grey cloudy skies that seemed to be my constant companion during the three years I was on the Sussex coast in England to the sunshine that shines down on Stanford's campus almost continuously. I walked into the dean's office that day with some anticipation, as I was going to meet Carol Dweck for the first time. I was a little nervous to meet the famous researcher whose books on mindset had revolutionized people's lives, across continents, and whose work had moved governments, schools, parents, and even leading sports teams to approach life and learning differently.

Carol and her research teams have collected data over many years that support a clear finding—that everyone has a mindset, a core belief about how they learn (Dweck, 2006b). People with a growth mindset are those who believe that smartness increases with hard work, whereas those with a fixed mindset believe that you can learn things but you can't change your basic level of intelligence. Mindsets are critically important because research has shown that they lead to different learning behaviors, which in turn create different learning outcomes for students. When people change their mindsets and start to believe that they can learn to high levels, they change their learning pathways (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007) and achieve at higher levels, as I will share in this book.

In our conversation that day, I asked Carol if she had thought about working with mathematics teachers, as well as students, because I knew that mindset interventions given to students help them, but math teachers have the potential to deeply impact students’ learning in a sustained way over time. Carol responded enthusiastically and agreed with me that math was the subject most in need of a mindset makeover. That was the first of what would become many enjoyable con‐ versations and collaborations over the next four years, which now include our working together on shared research projects with math teachers and presenting our research and ideas to them in workshops. My work on mindset and math over recent years has helped me develop a deep appreciation of the need to teach students about mindset inside mathematics, rather than in general. Students have such strong and often negative ideas about math that they can develop a growth mindset about everything else in their life but still believe that you can either achieve highly in math or you can't. To change these damaging beliefs, students need to develop mathematical mindsets, and this book will teach you ways to encourage them.

The fixed mindsets that many people hold about mathematics often combine with other negative beliefs about mathematics, to devastating effect. This is why it is so important to share with learners the new knowledge we have of mathematics and learning that I set out in this book.

Over the last few years, I have taught and shared a number of online courses: a free course for students and parents (www.youcubed.org/online-student-course/), which has now been taken by approximately half a million people; and three teacher courses, sharing ways to teach mathematics using the ideas that bring about equitable and high achievement. I always interact with people inside the courses, which makes me realize how many people have been traumatized by mathematics. Not only did I find out how widespread the trauma is, but the evidence I collected showed that the trauma is fueled by incorrect beliefs about mathematics and intelligence. Math trauma and math anxiety are kept alive within people because these incorrect beliefs are so widespread that they permeate society in countries across the world.

I first became aware of the extent of math trauma in the days after I released my first book for parents and teachers, titled What's Math Got to Do with It? in the United States and The Elephant in the Classroom in the United Kingdom. That book details the teaching and parenting changes we need to make for mathematics to be more enjoyable and achievable. After the book was released, I was invited onto numerous different radio shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, to chat with the hosts about mathematics learning. These varied from breakfast show chats to a 20‐minute, in‐depth discussion with a very thoughtful PBS host and a spot on a much‐loved British radio show called Women's Hour. Talking with radio hosts was a really interesting experience. I started most of the conversations talking about the changes we need to make, pointing out that math is traumatic for many people. This statement seemed to relax the hosts and caused many of them to open up and share with me their own stories of math trauma. Many of the interviews then turned into what seemed like therapy sessions, as the highly accomplished and knowledgeable professionals shared their various tales of math trauma, usually triggered by something a single math teacher had said or done. I still remember Kitty Dunne in Wisconsin telling me that the name of her algebra book was “burned” into her brain, revealing the strength of the negative associations she held on to. Jane Garvey at the BBC, an amazing woman for whom I have complete admiration, told me that she was so scared of mathematics that she had been fearful of interviewing me, and she had already told her two daughters that she was terrible at math in school (something you should never do, as I will discuss later). This level of intensity of negative emotion around mathematics is not uncommon. Mathematics, more than any other subject, has the power to crush students’ spirits, and many adults do not move on from mathematics experiences in school if they are negative. When students get the idea they cannot do math, they often maintain a negative relationship with mathematics throughout the rest of their lives.

Mathematics trauma does not reside only in people in the arts or entertainment professions. The release of my books led to meetings with some incredible people, one of the most interesting of whom was Dr. Vivien Perry. Vivien is a top scientist in England; she was recently awarded an OBE, the greatest honor bestowed in England, given by the queen. Her list of accomplishments is long, including being the vice chair of council for University College, London; a member of the medical research council; and a presenter of BBC TV science programs. Surprisingly perhaps, with Vivien's scientific career, she talks publicly and openly about a crippling fear of mathematics. Vivien has shared with me that she is so scared of mathematics that she cannot work out percentages when she needs to complete tax documents at home. In the months before I left the United Kingdom and returned to Stanford University, I presented at the Royal Institution in London. This was a great honor, to present at one of Britain's oldest and most respected institutions that has the worthy goal of bringing scientific work to the public. Every year in Britain the Christmas Lectures, founded by Michael Faraday in 1825, are aired on TV, given by eminent scientists who share their work with the public. I had asked Vivien to introduce me at the Royal Institution, and during that introduction she shared with the audience that when she was a child she had been made to stand in the corner by her mathematics teacher, Mrs. Glass, for not being able to recite her seven times table. She then went on to make the audience laugh by telling them that when she shared this story on the BBC, six women called the BBC action line and asked—was it Mrs. Glass of Boxbury School? Vivien shared that indeed it was.

Fortunately, such harsh teaching practices are almost extinct, and I continue to be inspired by the devotion and commitment of most mathematics teachers I work with. But we know that negative and damaging messages are still handed out to students every day—messages that are not intended to harm, but that we know can start students on a damaging and lasting mathematics pathway. Such pathways can be reversed, at any time, but for many they are not, and they affect every future experience of mathematics that people have. Changing the messages that students receive about mathematics is not, sadly, as simple as just changing the words teachers and parents use, although words are very important. Students also receive and absorb many indirect messages about mathematics through many aspects of math teaching, such as the questions they work on in math class, the feedback they get, the ways they are grouped, and other aspects of mathematics teaching and help that we will consider together in this book.

Vivien is convinced that she has a brain condition, called dyscalculia, that stops her from being successful with math. But we now know that one experience or message can change everything for students (Cohen & Garcia, 2014), and it seems very likely that Vivien's negative math experiences were at the root of the math anxiety she now struggles with daily. Vivien—fortunately for the many who have benefited from her work—was able to be successful despite her mathematics experiences, even in a quantitative field, but most people are not so fortunate, and the early damaging experiences they have with mathematics close doors for them for the rest of their...