Jo Boaler talks with Sarah Montague of the BBC about the messages teachers and parents can communicate to students about their potential. Given the right opportunities and teaching, she says, students can grow their brains to master high-level subjects.
Click the icon below to listen to an excerpt of the interview from the BBC4's series The Educators.
To hear the entire interview click on this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gw6rh
In the full 28-minute interview, Jo Boaler explains in greater depth how math is about much more than times-table memorization or learning rules and procedures. For Boaler, math is the study of uncertainty; it's the study of patterns and creative problem solving. Telling kids they are not "math people" simply because they can not parrot back a list of rules or fly through a page of simple exercises is counterproductive, she says.
