In the early years of schooling, there is barely any gender divide in maths. But by age 8, a clear gap in self perception of mathematical ability develops in female students1 one that widens as they enter high school and often they decide against pursuing maths in senior year levels2.
This is not because girls don’t recognise how useful maths can be to them later in life, including in helping them to pursue their desired career. They do. But lower levels of confidence and higher performance anxiety3 are likely connected to what studies show as a lack of interest — and liking — of the subject4, 5 .
Maths Pathway addresses all aspects of this problem. The model is designed around mastery learning6.
Students work in their Zone of Proximal Development7, 8 and with the fundamental understanding that they must actively construct their mathematical understanding from existing knowledge9.
This in turn requires a hierarchical learning paradigm wherein each piece of new learning has strict prerequisites that must first be met10. In other words, students can only conceptually understand a new piece of maths if they have already mastered everything that leads to that point.
The model is centred on rewarding accuracy and effort and encouraging productive struggle, students develop perseverance and resilience and take ownership — becoming intrinsically motivated learners.
This approach enables student growth, regardless of gender. The average female student in 2018 learned 1.28 years worth of maths curriculum in 12 months, exceeding the already impressive growth rate of 1.20 achieved by male students.These findings tell an important story. That all students in Maths Pathway classrooms are more than doubling the amount of maths they master every year.
Fatima’s Story
“My name is Fatima, I go to Glenroy College and I’m in Year 7. I really like maths. It’s my favourite subject. Some people look at the numbers and freak themselves out, but we use Maths Pathway and that makes it really easy. People work at their own pace and it helps them. They don’t have to be ’Oh my god this is too hard for me’ or ‘this is too easy for me.’ It’s like perfect for them. I started at Year 6 level and I was really struggling, but now I can work Year 9 stuff really easily. I could not have gone this far if I didn’t do Maths Pathway because they would obviously be teaching me Year 7 stuff and I was working at a Year 6 level, and I would have been freaking out and I would probably have been below. Now, I’m around 9.5. I can’t do Year 10 stuff yet. I try but it’s too hard for me. But I keep working on it and I think I’ll be able to do it in a little while.”
