Supporting Productive Struggle in Learning Mathematics

Room to Grow - a Math Podcast

This episode of Room to Grow wraps up Joanie and Curtis’ season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions. The final practice in the series is “Support productive struggle in learning mathematics.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics consistently provides students, individually and collectively, with opportunities and supports to engage in productive struggle as they grapple with mathematical ideas and relationships.

Our hosts begin with discussing the connection to classroom culture, ensuring that students feel safe, emotionally and academically, in order to be willing to struggle. Additionally, the expectations set by the teacher when there is a belief that productive struggle is a valuable and important aspect of learning math. Then they linger on the word “grapple” and the connotation it creates, and how different it is than the connotation of the word “struggle.” And they emphasize that productive struggle isn’t about the math being hard, but rather thinking about the mathematics in new ways, and making connections that may not have been obvious. A key idea is the importance of educators’ asking questions to better understand student thinking, which is a necessary condition for helping them to grapple with new mathematical connections.

Additional referenced content includes:

· NCTM’s Principles to Actions

· NCTM’s Taking Action series for grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12

· Favorite No protocol (5 minute Video)

· Previous Room to Grow episode Helping Students Struggle Productively

· Image of America flag made of baseballs

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [email protected] . Be sure to connect with your hosts on X and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.