Ever wondered how you learned that the number two meant that there were two of something, or that “plane” was the word for flying metal things in the sky?
Carleton’s Dr. Jo-Anne LeFevre thinks about those things almost every day. Her most recent research looks at how children develop math literacy and symbolic math (that’s knowing that the number 3 means three things, and whether the number 5 can represent more or less things than three things).
The Charlatan’s Tahereh Haji sat down with Dr. LeFevre to find out what languages are best for teaching math, how different cultures factor in, and whether there’s hope for students struggling with mandatory stats classes.
The Charlatan (TC): So, if you could be a kid again, what language would you want to learned math in?
Jo-Anne LeFevre (JL): I don’t think that it’s the language so much that’s the issue, but it’s that if the language is not particularly good for learning math in, you have to compensate for that. Since I learned English as my first language, it’s not the worst, but it’s not the best—I guess I wouldn’t necessarily change it. But I’m glad it wasn’t French!
TC: What first made you interested in literacy and numeracy?
JL: Right from the time I was an undergraduate I was interested in how people think about numbers and why some people find math easy and really enjoyable and some say “Ugh, I hate it, I find it really hard.” I was always interested in that, so I started working on trying to understand how people think about numbers—right at the start with my honours thesis work. It was later that I started to look at research on home literacy.
TC: Are reading and math related?
JL: Yes, because there are many similarities. We learn them both in school, for one thing. Both reading and symbolic mathematics are not things that most people would ever learn if they didn’t go to school. There are things that are culturally determined in terms of what the written language is like, what the symbolic language is like, and so there’s a lot of overlap in terms of what cognitive skills are relevant, but then there’s always some differences.
TC: You compared groups of Turkish and Canadian children in your most recent paper. How much does culture factor in? What about parents who drill their kids on math early on?
JL: It’s very hard to pull those things apart. There’s no question that cultures, say between North America and Japan, everything differs—the languages differ, the assumptions about what you should learn differs, the parent input differs. So it’s very difficult when you’re looking at that kind of comparison to say what the causes are. So yes, culture is important, but I don’t think it’s language per se that is the cause—it’s just one of the pieces of a lot of interesting differences.
TC: What about undergrad students? Is all hope lost for those of us struggling with statistics and calculus?
JL: I don’t think hope is lost at all! One of the great things about math is that it’s a pretty logical, reasonable kind of knowledge. Personally, I think this whole thing about some people are good at math and some people are bad at it is way overblown. Some people spend more time in learning math than other people do. What I would suggest is for people to get tutouring. Math, in some ways, should be easier to catch up with than other things. It’s just that you have to put the time into it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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