CRITICAL OBSERVATION #3 Discovery Learning is Not Doing Mathematics We had just started working on our Problem of the Week

(POW). These POWs are rich mathematical problems and puzzles that fall outside of the content of our ongoing unit or project.

Are ALL secret triangles solvable? This had created a level of excitement in the room today. Students were spread around the room in self-selected groups of two to four people, each digging deep into some conjecture that they thought might lead to a breakthrough. As I was moving around the room, I eventually got to Dyson and Makai. Both of them were hovering just slightly out of their seats, as if the problem was literally drawing them in, and there was a sort of excited puzzlement in their expressions. ! 101!

What were you thinking, Makai? Dyson asked. I thought it might be easier to start with small numbers, so I started by just looking at different triangles using numbers 1, 2, and 3. Did it lead you anywhere? he probed. Well, in one case I put a 1 on two of the sides and a 3 on the other side and I discovered that it would be impossible. Whoa, interesting. Yeah. What were you thinking? she returned. I started messing around with different combinations of evens and odds as the secret numbers. I think there is something there but Im not quite sure what it is. Lets keep going with this together Makai suggested and maybe we can put our ideas together somehow They continued together with an almost hurried pace to their work that day. Despite their uncertainty about what to do and how to approach the problem, they were willing (and eager) to try things out and see where their ideas would lead.

The very next day we would return to our unit about instantaneous rate of change. I had been trying hard to capture the spirit of these POWs in our more content-driven work as well. The POWs seemed successful because they offered students a genuine opportunity to engage in the habits of a mathematician, so, in designing todays lesson, I tried to build in opportunities for these habits in student work. ! 102!

Alright everyone. So, we have been looking at different ways to approximate instantaneous rate of change. We have used the slope of the tangent line and we have also used coordinate values along the curve that are extremely close together. Today, lets look at the instantaneous rate along multiple parts of this curve and see if we can find patterns that might help us make conjectures or generalizations about the relationships. The students seemed so great at conjecturing, testing, and looking for patterns yesterday that I was excited to see how students would engage in these habits of mind in the context of our current unit. After giving them some time to think on their own, I started circulating the room as usual and I got around to Dyson and Makai again. If there existed a polar opposite to their behavior from yesterday, this seemed to be it. They had this frustrated look on their face and ! 103!

they were sitting back in their seats waiting. Yesterday the problem seemed to pull them in. Today the problem seemed to push them away. How are things going here? I asked. We dont get it Dyson said for the two of them. What do you mean? We dont know what you want us to do Makai added. Ok. Im suggesting we look at the instantaneous rate at a bunch of points along this curve. Once we do that, lets start looking for patterns to see if there might be a rule or shortcut that we can create. There was a bit of silence as they thought about that for a couple seconds I still just dont know where to start Makai admitted honestly. The rest of that lesson quickly devolved into me basically telling groups of students how to start and what to do. Dyson and Makai, two students that had so excitedly and persistently tackled uncertainty, made conjectures, and looked for patterns the day before, were seemingly transformed into different people the very next day. MAKING CONNECTIONS I have thought a lot about the stark juxtaposition of those two experiences. Why was it that they were so excited and willing to act one day and completely helpless the next? Talking with Dyson and Makai about their experience with both problems was rather ! 104!

revealing. Their words led me to think that there were several factors at play, but I think most prominent was my desire to steer them narrowly in the direction I wanted, in the direction of the curriculum. Our society has created a very narrow definition of participation in the math classroom by setting a rigid measure of curricular outcomes. While the theory of constructivism has the potential to disrupt this model, it often devolves into a sort of equally unjust practice of discovery learning where the teacher is listening for particular responses rather than listening to the thinking of students (Lawler, 2010). This disregards the fact that all people are mathematical in the way they make sense of their experience. Consequently, to impose ones mathematics as the right way inherently causes the other to question their own thinking, to question their identity as a mathematical thinker, and threatens their mathematical agency. Interview with Dyson and Makai I was so intrigued by the differences in their actions from one day to the next, that I decided to sit down with Dyson and Makai, to talk to them about their experience with both problems. Following are the questions I asked, followed by their responses. For now, I will just report their responses and not provide commentary. Any reader will likely draw their own conclusions when reading their responses, but I hope to make my position more clear in the pages that follow as I use their quotes as evidence to support connections with research and literature. ! 105!

Which problem did you feel most successful with? Why? Makai: The triangle problem. It was hands on and I could go in any direction I pleased. I wasnt limited with options and there were no restrictions on possibilities or approaches. Dyson: It depends on what you mean by successful? Is successful getting a solution or developing an understanding? With the Triangle Problem, we definitely tore this problem apart. We looked at all the different possibilities, all the restrictions, we looked at a variety of theories and hypothesis, and we proved or disproved them. I felt successful because we created rules that we could use for any given triangle and it really helped me to understand the problem more. The other problem was good but it was more, like, content based I would have to say. I gained knowledge but I need to practice more. With the Triangle Problem there was no real content idea that you had to learn. How would you feel if every problem we did in class was like the Triangle Problem? Makai: I like problems like the Triangle Problem because I feel extremely intelligent when I'm working on them. When you feel insignificant compared to others around you, you have a tendency to not feel important to the conversation but with these problems I feel like my opinion matters. As a creative person, I enjoy them because they force you to think in creative ways and challenge your ! 106!

brain in ways you have never thought of before. When you have that 'a-ha' moment, there is really nothing like that and I never really experienced that moment with the other problem. I mean, I eventually 'got it' and I was, like, now it makes sense but with the Triangle Problem I felt like I was doing something bigger than just math. It's almost like 'therapy math' in a way because you just feel really, really good about yourself. Dyson: Im kinda stuck between what I think would benefit me more for college and what I enjoy more. Like, the Triangle Problem is not gonna show up on the SAT. Personally, I just wanna do problems like that but I don't know that I would be as prepared as if we also focused on content. Did you notice a difference in how your group functioned with the two problems? Makai: I saw a clear shift when we were doing the content-based problem versus the Triangle Problem. There were people who got it and people who didn't. Another student and I will still be figuring something out and the other part of our table is like, 'done...we got it.' Dyson: With content, our table is usually split. But when we were working on the Triangle Problem, we were all working really cohesively. We had all these different ideas that everyone was throwing into the mix and from that 'idea throwing' we came up ! 107!

with this great new idea that we had all created together. And with content it's more like 'this goes to this.' With the Triangle Problem, we had all these different approaches and they were all correct. Discourses and Power There are discourses at play in our education system. Discourses are the taken-for-granted ways of operating and these structures almost unavoidably create issues of equity, power, and politics. As Rochelle Gutierrez explains, what counts as knowledge, how we come to 'know' things, and who is privileged in the process are all part and parcel of issues of power (2010, p.8). Mathematics education suffers severely from these issues. We have come to see view mathematics and the mathematical knowledge that a teenager should have as that which we know to be the high school mathematics curriculum. I see that clearly in Dysons statement that the triangle problem isnt gonna show up on the SAT and in Makais distinction between the content-based problem and the other problem. Not only do they recognize that school mathematics has a place of power in society and their lives as a gatekeeper to further education, but they have also started to let that define for them what mathematics is. They recognize the Triangle Problem as being mathematical, yet the mathematics they created through making sense of it seems to live in a sort of quasimathematical place for them because the outcome is not part of what students are supposed to know. To again quote Rochelle ! 108!

Gutierrez, what counts as knowledge clearly becomes an issue of power. Stemming from that are also issues of equity and participation. Makai clearly recognizes that when we are doing content, there are people who get it and people who dont. This is contrasted by Dysons description of collaboration, equal participation, and idea throwing with the other mathematical activity. Although their responses here are directed towards these two specific math problems, I have had many students in my research confirm that these trends generalize to all of our Problems of the Week. All of this is to reaffirm that how we define mathematics and mathematical knowledge will affect who participates, who is privileged, and who is viewed as mathematical. In the current state of things, knowledge seems to have been replaced by behavior and performance. The reproduction of sanctioned and accepted approaches, procedures, and outcomes have become synonymous with knowing or mastery. The goal of mathematics education seems to have become to get all people to submit to these sanctioned ways or acting and knowing and, in the process, asking them to set aside their own thoughts and ideas, their own identity (Gutierrez, 2012). To name the outcomes in advance is to define participation and to create issues of politics and power.

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The Misguidance of Discovery Learning The mathematics as truth and knowledge as behavior paradigms pin the teacher into a tight corner. Rather than creating, or maybe even necessitating, freedom for students to explore, wander, and question in developing increasingly nuanced ways of knowing, the teacher feels obligated to look for and enforce certain behaviors. At its most obvious level, this is seen in the operations of the traditional math classroom where it is the instructors role to name those behaviors and ways of thinking in advance and then aid students in replicating them. However, even the well-intentioned progressive educator falls into a similar trap. The desire to teach by not teaching leads them to script scenarios and problems in which they are not actually interested in divergent student approaches, but instead they are hoping for the students to find the way or discover the approach the teacher was hoping for. Brian Lawler (2010) describes the scenario well in his paper on The Fabrication of Knowledge. In it, he uses Mathematics (capitalized) to distinguish dominant Mathematics, or what we would refer to as the school Mathematics curriculum, from what he calls the mathematics (not capitalized) and thinking of the child. When unquestioningly engaged in an epistemology of soft constructivism, we treat the learning activity as a process of discovery, holding tight to a knowledge that is to be discovered, listening for (Davis, 1997) cues to hear in the child our own ways of knowing this knowledge, (M)athematics. The pedagogical practices of the teacher ! 110!

devolve to a guess-what-Im-thinking state; the pressure of time and the testing of this pre-existing knowledge drive the maddening process of an education that began with a hopeful premisethat children make meaning through active engagement with their experiential world, that children are knowledge constructors, fabricators (p. 21). I distinctly felt the pressure that he describes in my interaction with Dyson and Makai during that second lesson. I designed what I thought to be a promising lesson, yet that was a false promise. I pressed to strongly for students to mirror back to me my understanding of a part of the curriculum. Because the desire for this mathematical activity did not come out of their own work, they were left guessing at what they thought I wanted them to do and what they thought I wanted them to think. I take Dysons statement that he gained knowledge but needs to practice more as evidence of this. When we create knowledge on our own, we dont need to practice. Practice is a form of training, a way of mastering something that is foreign. Makai also commented that when you have that 'a-ha' moment, there is really nothing like that and I never really experienced that moment with the other problem. Even though she admits that she eventually got-it, or that she seemed to understand the other problem, it was never of her own thinking and doing. It was an understanding of, or submission to, a foreign way of thinking. It is not the fault of the curriculum, yet the existence of that curriculum seems to inherently steer our activity in specific ! 111!

directions. This pressure is unquestionably heightened by testing, accountability, pacing guides, and other measures that seem to place a determinant on what students will know and when they will know it. As such, I fear that in pushing toward the singular ways of knowing that are outlined in the curriculum (or maybe more precisely toward my knowing of that curriculum) we fail to let students think for themselves. Connections to Agency: to Impose is to Oppress I think the connection to agency is rather clear here. I return to Paulo Freire, for whom I believe this was a central concern in his writing of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individuals choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed into one that conforms with the prescribers consciousness (p. 47). The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible (p. 48).

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The mathematics curriculum often serves as the sort of prescription that Friere mentions. By naming outcomes in advance, the standards-based system of mathematics can often force a foreign way of thinking on students. In contrast, Dyson mentions that with the Triangle Problem there was no real content that <they> had to learn. Yet, in that same thought he describes the many ways in which he and his group were engaging in the process of doing mathematics; we looked at all the different possibilities, all the restrictions, we looked at a variety of theories and hypothesis, and we proved or disproved them. I felt successful because we created rules that we could use for any given triangle. I think this is where the habits of a mathematician can be most powerful. They serve as a way of redefining what mathematics is and what counts as mathematical activity while not pigeonholing the teacher into a position of coercion. This alternative view clearly has benefits on student identity and agency as represented by the strong emotional reaction that both Dyson and Makai speak of. Most powerful, I think, is Makais reflection on her activity where she acknowledges that she felt extremely intelligent, that her opinion matters, and that she felt really, really good about herself. I think we need more of this in our math classrooms.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING If we were to let the habits of a mathematician serve as a definition of mathematical activity, it might change what was possible in the classroom and change the way students were able to see themselves and their thinking in the work they were doing. I would like to describe one attempt I made to push hard on the conventional ideas of school mathematics. As with all specific classroom scenarios I have shared, I dont intend it to be a description of what should be happening, only as a description of one particular attempt. This particular activity started with a simple premise: Create as many squares as possible using only 12 lines. With that, students were off and running. After a little bit of play, they realized that they would have to define some parameters for themselves. The two big questions were: 1. What do we mean by line? and 2. Do the squares all have to be the same size? The process of setting parameters and defining a space to work within seems to be an important part of doing mathematics, one that is (unfortunately) often done by the teacher. Here, impartial to the outcome this might lead to, I let students answer their own ! 114!

questions as a community and decide which parameters would create the most interesting problem for them. They decided upon a relatively standard definition of a line (set of points extending infinitely in both directions) and concluded that squares, by definition, could be different sizes. They worked in small groups for a while before proposing a few different ideas, but this problem was only the beginning of our investigation. After they had settled on a solution, I encouraged groups of students to think about and brainstorm all of the different questions that we could pose to extend our investigation. At first, I encouraged them to write down anything that came to mind no matter how crazy they thought it sounded. I also encouraged them not to stop and think about solving their questions, but instead to just write as many as they could. Once they had some to choose from, I asked them to go back through as a group and select some of the ones that they thought sounded most interesting. We shared them as a class and came up with the following list: 1. Can we create a rule/formula for the maximum number of squares based on the number of lines used? 2. How many triangles/rectangles/etc. can be created using only 12 lines? 3. Is there a difference between even and odd numbers of lines? 4. How many shapes can you create with 12 lines? ! 115!

5. What would a graph of maximum number of squares vs. lines used look like? Linear? Exponential? Other? 6. What if by "lines" we meant "toothpicks" or "unit lines?" I then had each person pick one question that they were most drawn to and we regrouped based on interest. After that, I just let students collaborate to try and make sense of their question in the best way that they could. They investigated all of these questions (to varying degrees). Following are student work samples followed by some short commentary from me about where I saw the habits of a mathematician in their work.

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FIGURE 3.1 Is there a difference between even and odd numbers of lines?

I saw this student being systematic and organized in the way they approached investigating their question by starting with 4 lines and working their way up one by one. They made conjectures about what was happening (note: all of the #s are perfect squares) by looking for patterns and regularity in their results. There was an attempt to create a rule/generalization here but this student and their group did not accomplish that. !

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FIGURE 3.2a Can we create a rule/formula for the maximum number of squares based on the number of lines?

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FIGURE 3.2b Can we create a rule (continued)

This work sample has given me lots to think about. On the one hand, the student displays many of the habits of a mathematician. They experimented with lots of different examples and collected data, looked for patterns in the results, and created conjectures on their way to creating a rule/formula. Although not defined as habits, this student also invented and assigned variables and also used conventional mathematical notation to describe their thinking. I was also left wondering about how they have defined a process for themselves (Step 1: Data ! Step 2: Look for Pattern ! Step 3: Create a Rule). As a class we have never described or defined this as a process or set of steps. I was never able to talk with this student about their decision to do that, but I feel it is worth pointing out. ! 119!

FIGURE 3.3 What if by lines we meant toothpicks or unit lines?

In this work sample (like many of the others), I see the student experimenting, looking for patterns, and (although not visible in their written work) they made many conjectures about what might explain some of the patterns they were noticing. Although not defined as habits, this student also created new parameters by redefining what a line was, posed their own mathematical question, and further investigated their pattern in multiple representations by creating a bar graph of their results (which they did not save so I was unable to report here).

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FIGURE 3.4 How many triangles/rectangles/etc. can we create using 12 lines?

A surface level evaluation of the work here shows that students were being systematic and organized in how they approached their question. There was also quite a bit of experimentation and conjecturing about how best to use their 12 lines in order to maximize the number of triangles they could create. This student and their group continued on to look at how many rectangles they could create with 12 lines in hopes of comparing the result with their solution for squares and triangles. However, they had a difficult time agreeing on a definition of rectangle that could serve their investigation and this roadblock seemed to halt their progress.

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SUMMING IT UP There were many great things about this experience. Students were being creative, posing questions, setting parameters, collaborating, sharing and challenging ideas, and generally owning their own experience. Based on my own framework for what I think mathematics is and what I think it means to do mathematics, this is the most genuine experience in students doing mathematics that I had been able to create in the classroom. Of course, the openness of the experience was not without its share of challenges. Because students were working on different questions/problems, it was difficult to maintain a sense of classroom community. We werent all able to discuss and challenge ideas in working together towards a common goal. There were times that groups would settle on an idea that seemed incomplete or lacking another perspective. Without the input and challenges from others, they saw no need to challenge their own ways of thinking. It seems people need the experience and outlook of others in order to perturb their own sense of equilibrium. There was also a shift in authority that created interesting dynamics in the classroom. There was a sense that students owned their own problem and, as a result, they determined what they did with it. There were times when I would suggest investigations that I thought might be potentially beneficial. For example, I suggested to the group investigating triangles that they look at other ways of ! 122!

using their 12 lines. Could they beat their solution of 27? How did they know it was the optimal solution? What about other numbers of lines? Is there a pattern in the number of triangles that can be created? Despite repeatedly inviting students to investigate further, none of my suggestions seemed to provoke them to action. In a classroom where I pose the problem and more directly steer the flow, I can simply pose those questions for all of us to think about, pursue, and discuss. All of which left me wondering about the benefits and consequences of those decisions as a teacher. I often perform this little thought experiment with myself around Problems of the Week and others like the one I described above. It generally starts when I ask myself, Why do students love these problems so much more than traditional math content? Take the question students posed above, can we create a rule for the maximum number of squares based on the number of lines? I have a solution in my mind that I believe answers the question that is posed. Imagine that my solution is part of our list of high school mathematics standards. As soon as we have named the outcome, nothing less than that is recognized as success. We push, tutor, and train until we believe students can demonstrate to us that they know (or perhaps can just use) that solution. However, because that solution is not part of our standards document, I feel free to let students explore, pose alternate questions, and end where they may, all the while feeling rather confident that they are doing mathematics. I suppose it all returns me my bigger questiondo ! 123!

we want students to discover our ways of knowing or do we want them doing mathematics?

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