The myth of the myth.
A brief critique of a recent CIS paper.
In August this year, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) released a report titled Myths That Undermine Maths Teaching.
The report begins by claiming that ‘myths about learning and teaching maths continue to plague classroom practice despite consistent lack of evidence demonstrating positive outcomes for students’ (Powell et al., 2022, p. 1, emphasis added). The report proceeds by detailing seven myths that apparently pervade Mathematics teaching and subsequently present some evidence and argument against these.
Reports such as these often make a bit of noise, making headlines in The Educator and The Sydney Morning Herald and was further promoted with an event run by CIS titled Debunking Maths Myths, where these ideas were further fleshed out with Sarah Powell, Ollie Lovell and Jen Buckingham.
The report is still making the rounds on Twitter, with quote bites wending their way through the consciousness of social media. One explanation for the popularity of such reports may be the current trend towards discourses of panic surrounding educational “quality”. Biesta (2022, p. 14) describes this quite nicely when he states that:
There is a discourse of panic about educational quality, which seems to drive an insatiable need for improvement, geared towards ever narrower definitions of what counts as education and what counts in education.
In this post, rather that comment on the legitimacy of the claims made against each of these myths, I will focus in on the core assumption implicit within the very creation of this report, which doesn’t seem to be sitting on firm ground.
The myth of the myth.
What is often interesting in discourse surrounding evidence-based practice, is the rather inconsistent adherence to evidence-based approaches.
I reached out to the CIS Director of the Education Program, Glenn Fahey, asking for a response to my specific statement below:
Forgive me if I am missing something, but within the paper there does not seem to be evidence of these myths being realised in the everyday dealings of teachers? It seems that these ‘myths’ are claimed to exist in the profession without any proper reference to research that shows this.
In the importance of opening up dialogue, I think it is important that we let each other speak to issues rather than jumping to conclusions on behalf of one another. Glenn has responded to me in the past with some well-articulated arguments and so I wanted to give him the same opportunity to do so for this query. Unfortunately, I am yet to receive a response but I’m sure will update this post once one is received.
My main argument here is that the report, in claiming to espouse evidence-based approaches, seems to lack any evidence at all that these myths are actually being lived out in the work of teachers. The report itself seems to be rather based on a metaphorical straw teacher.
In other words, this report is founded on the myth that there are myths undermining the teaching of Mathematics.
References
Biesta, G. (2022). World-Centred Education. Taylor & Francis Group.
Powell, S. R., Hughes, E. M. & Peltier, C. (2022). Myths That Undermine Maths Teaching. The Centre for Independent Studies.
Keep it coming, Tom. Love this.
The primary syllabus in NSW embeds these myths.