Would Khan Academy Work for Elementary Math?

Last week I wrote about Khan Academy’s apparent moves to play a more active part in thousands of classrooms, and my concerns that there was a hidden agenda of trying to make the curriculum “teacher-proof”. This new train of thought was triggered by two recent posts by Dan Meyer (I recommend you check him out; his blog is outstanding).

Khan Academy: Only for High School Math?

While the Khan Academy has videos for all levels from kindergarten/preschool up to university level, the discussion I’ve read about his philosophy of teaching, his vision for education, and the uses made of his material by teachers has almost all been in the context of high school math education. And the discussion has been, shall we say, pretty heated. High school math teachers especially, it seems, are critical of Khan’s methods of teaching, possibly the unfair influence applied by the Gates Foundation’s funding of the academy, and the suggestion that the Khan approach could be used to “fix” what ails math education in the developed world of the 21st century.

Elementary school class with teacher outside

So, what I’m wondering is, have elementary teachers of math had the same discussions around the staff lounge, or in their blogs, or has this highly contentious debate passed them by? And what would the discussion look like if we suggested that perhaps the Khan approach could fix the problems in earlier math education, before kids get to high school with a bad attitude and poor understanding of math?

I’d like to propose some basic points about this situation. And remember, Khan is just the most obvious example of an approach that was probably inevitable, given the expansion of the internet, delivering teaching episodes via online videos. So what we’re discussing is not really the Khan Academy per se, but the idea of replacing a teacher with a recorded lesson prepared by an “expert teacher”.

  1. This is not a new idea, that expert teaching could be captured and recorded, and delivered to students in a “perfect” form, bypassing the teacher, who of course is flawed and makes mistakes. Back in the day, lessons were packaged into slide shows or filmstrips, with audio recordings and flash cards. I remember having a set of these things in my classroom, and being amazed that some syllabus publisher thought I needed a script to make sure I taught everything correctly. The “teacher-proof curriculum” has been an attractive idea to governments and various commentators who don’t understand classroom teaching, and think the real problem with education is the teachers.
  2. Let’s admit that Khan’s output is nothing short of astonishing. The guy is clearly a workaholic, and has a vision for helping students with their math, science, and many other subjects which is attractive in many ways. I am sure that lots of teachers could find ways to use Khan videos to help students learn, to support the other activities that go on in the classroom.
  3. Given that students need to understand what they are learning in order to make sense of it and apply it in their “real” lives outside math class, both now and when they are grown, videos are going to be extremely limited in the ways that they can effectively produce that sort of learning.
  4. Yes, Khan’s videos can supply revision of once-learned, now-forgotten material, they can help explain and demonstrate algorithms and processes for approaching set problem types. But they can’t possibly engage a student as a real live teacher can, in conversation about the topic, to connect to students’ learning.

Elementary Math Teaching and “Teacher-Proof” Videos

It’s probably fair to say that many elementary teachers are not as confident with mathematics content as the average high school math teacher. This is understandable, given the wider range of subjects which teachers of younger students have to manage, and the different preparation they had at university. Does this difference mean that the Khan Academy videos are more attractive to elementary or primary teachers (do tell me your thoughts!)? In fact, would heavy adoption of KA materials be a good thing in elementary classes, as a way of “shoring up” the teacher’s lack of confidence and depth in mathematics content?

In a word, in my opinion, NO. Teachers of elementary students have a significantly different role to play in the education of the next generation: not only are they expected to teach the content knowledge and skills of each subject. They also have a responsibility to develop:

  • students’ attitudes to learning
  • their self images
  • their views of life and the parts they will play in it
  • their confidence
  • etc.
  • etc.

In mathematics specifically, elementary teachers ought to be (and many are) inspiring their students to construct a robust, flexible, deep understanding of what mathematics is about, how it makes sense, and how it may be applied in real life. To suggest that the teacher should hand over this job to a “video teacher” is ludicrous.

Your thoughts, as always, are invited – leave a comment below if you’d like to add to the discussion.

Photo References:
  • Elementary Teacher with Students:  © iStockphoto.com/Catherine Yeulet
  • Bored Child with Computer:  © iStockphoto.com/zhang bo

Best Math Blog Posts: March, 2012

I thought I’d write a different sort of post this time: a round-up of some of the best recent math teaching blog posts.

I share these posts via my Twitter and Facebook accounts already, but those posts soon move off the top of the stream, and are lost pretty much for ever. But by sharing here on the blog, these links can remain accessible for much longer.

By the way, I’d love to hear what you think; I am planning to write similar posts in future weeks, if they are useful and interesting to you, my dear reader.

Math Blog Post Roundup

Fawn Nguyen [Teaching Math in Middle School] > Always Sometimes Never

  • Students sort mathematical statements into three piles: those that are always true, those sometimes true, and those that are never true.

Brilliant math activity for any grade from @fawnpnguyen: Always Sometimes Never ow.ly/9PnSB#mathchat

I linked to this article on March 24, 2012 via Twitter, and it was far and away my most clicked tweet all week. I guess other teachers agree that this is a wonderful article, explaining a simple activity that any math teacher could use with their class. Fawn’s students worked on statements which included “p + 12 = s + 12″ and “If you divide 12 by a number, the answer will be less than 12”. I love these statements, and the activity, for several reasons:

  • the statements themselves are easy to understand at first, which will help develop “buy-in” by students.
  • I would expect just about every student to be happy to get started.
  • None of the statements can be answered immediately via some standard routine procedure.
  • Each one requires a level of intuition, investigation, even lateral or creative thinking.
  • For many statements, there is an obvious answer; and like many obvious answers, it isn’t always true.

David Ginsburg [Coach G’s Teaching Tips] > There Are No Stupid Questions, But…

  • How teachers respond to students’ questions may have a big impact on how likely students are to ask questions in the future.

Another great post from Coach G: There Are No Stupid Questions, But… ow.ly/9PmVZ

David is another blogger whose writing I admire. He manages to get right to the heart of an issue for teachers, grab your attention, and then get the reader to honestly think about his or her own teaching. This particular post is a great one if you care about the impact your comments have on students’ feelings of well being and self esteem.

I have to say, this isn’t really “Questioning 101”, but more like “Questioning 404”, for teachers or preservice teachers who have understood the basics of eliciting students’ responses, but realize that there is a higher standard to aim for. Key statement by David: “[students will] never feel such freedom unless we as educators value their input rather than just evaluate it”. Amen!

Malke [The Map is Not the Territory] > All in Good Time

  • The author’s 6-year-old daughter asks to be taught to play the penny whistle.

Music, math, reading, kids develop at different rates > All in Good Time @mathinyourfeetow.ly/9A9bb #edchat

Malke always writes interesting posts, illustrated with lovely photos of her daughter and the activities they share. This post caught my attention because of the focus on playing music, and also learning math, two of my loves. The key point: given the freedom to choose when to learn something, children will often reveal when they are ready, “all in good time”.

Ms Cookie [Math Teacher Mambo] > Shadows on Planet Earth….

  • Ms Cookie finds out that her students’ difficulties with similar triangle questions had less to do with the math, and more with fundamental misconceptions about shadows.

Not understanding shadows interferes with learning similar triangles… from Ms Cookie http://ow.ly/9Pwmn #mathchat #scichat

I love science as well as math, and so this post was a fascinating one to me. Students really do struggle with scientific concepts quite often, but even so I was surprised at their ignorance about shadows and how they are caused. How often do we think difficulties in math problem solving are caused by lack of math knowledge, when they might come from misunderstandings of the question itself.

Dr Mike Hartley [Math Games for Kids] > Is Math The Primum Movens?

  • Could mathematics explain the existence of the universe?

Is Math The Primum Movens? | Philosophical post > Does math alone explain existence? ow.ly/9Pp33 #mathchat

If you enjoy philosophical discussions and the study of mathematics, you’ll like this post. Dr Mike poses some really tricky questions about ultimate reality and First Causes (Primum Movens, in Latin). Is God the Cosmic Mathematician? You’ll have to decide.

That’s all I have space for this week. I hope you’ll follow the links to read other bloggers’ posts, and let me know below your own thoughts. If you have a favorite blog or two, let me know and I’ll check it out.

Photo References:

Khan Academy: “Teacher-Proof” Curriculum?

I follow Dan Meyer’s blog quite closely, and find the discussions over there really stretch my thinking sometimes about how we teach math, and the best ways to engage students in thinking.

Dan Meyer on the Khan Academy

I first encountered Salman Khan on his TED video, perhaps like lot of others. (Incidentally, that’s also how I first heard of Dan Meyer, watching his TED talk.) I found Sal Khan’s methods surprising and challenging, and incidentally, his business practices pretty remarkable also. If you look at his site, it’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer volume of material he has there, with a huge list of videos, all free for watching.

Recently Dan has posted a couple of articles about the Khan Academy:

Dan points out several really important points about the Khan academy’s approach, including an apparent shift in emphasis from supporting the work of teachers via flipped lessons to supplying an entire curriculum for students. Crucially, Dan comments that students actually find watching the Khan videos quite boring, which surely is a critical flaw in the program.

“Flipped Classes” – a Solution to Bad Teaching?

To summarise, in case you haven’t been keeping up with this debate, the idea put forward by Khan at the TED conference which has captured the attention of many educators, is “flipped classes”. In this model, instead of the teacher teaching in class and then assigning practice work for homework, students watch the teaching at home via Khan’s videos online, then in class the teacher gets to follow up the video presentation, offer one-on-one tutoring help, and generally support and troubleshoot students’ learning, freed from having to spend hours planning and teaching didactic lessons.

What’s the philosophical idea behind Khan’s approach? Note the low-tech quality of the videos: it can’t be able visual engagement, hooking students with exciting music, animations or the like. No, what Khan is attempting, without really admitting it, is to produce a set of perfect teaching videos. If you like (and I doubt you do), a teacher-proof syllabus. How does that strike you? I find it insulting: why does Mr Khan feel that a disembodied voice track and a screen showing the teacher’s written notes for a math process is better than what real teachers do in a real, physical classroom, with students who are present in the same space?

The only way to accept KA as a replacement for what teachers in general do in classrooms is if you subscribe to the idea that most teachers suck at teaching math. If that premise is accepted, then the idea that a single source of “expert instruction”, delivered uniformly to all students, could supply all the teaching might look pretty attractive.

However, critics point out, often with some heat and passion, that there are several problems with this scenario:

  • lecturing to students is not the best pedagogical approach to teaching
  • video recordings lock every student into a single lesson for each topic
  • there is no opportunity for students to ask questions of the video teacher, to have something explained again, other than replaying that part of the video

What do you think?