11: The Math Wars

Today's disagreement is about the "math wars."

The "math wars” is a debate happening in K-12 education about the best way to teach math. Broadly speaking, there are two camps that have conflicting pedagogical approaches:

Explicit instruction focuses on procedural fluency, guided practice, and repetition.

Inquiry-based instruction focuses on conceptual understanding, open-ended problems, and productive struggle.

This is an incredibly high-stakes debate — especially if you have children or loved ones that are currently receiving K-12 math instruction. To explore its contours, we’ve brought on two math education experts

The Guests

Kevin Dykema is President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), an international organization with more than 30,000 members. Kevin has been a passionate advocate for inquiry-based instruction and NCTM is one of the method’s leading proponents. Kevin is also a teacher — currently in southwest Michigan — and he has taught 8th grade mathematics for over 25 years.

Holly Korbey is an independent education journalist, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and many more. Holly also writes and produces The Bell Ringer, a Substack newsletter about the science of learning.

Today we ask a wide range of important questions about the Math Wars:

How do children actually learn math, and what’s the best way to teach them?

Which approach has a more compelling body of evidence on its side?

What is the best way to teach students from low-income and marginalized communities?

Show Notes

• Why the math wars are consequential [03:20]
• Inquiry-based instruction overview [05:19]
• Cognitive science [06:52]
• Relationship between conceptual understanding and fluency [11:26]
• Productive struggle [13:15]
• Research overview [20:05]
• What does explicit instruction look like? [23:50]
• Income and race [25:13]
• Arithmetic automaticity [29:19]
• What would change your mind? [32:01]
• Steelmanning [34:24]

This is a special episode of The Disagreement. What you’re about to hear is a live recording from the New Schools Summit, one of the most important education events of the year.

This our first ever live taping and we had a blast. Huge shout out to the NewSchools team for making it happen.

And we should add that we’re taking our podcast on the road! Would you like The Disagreement to come to your conference, event, off-site, college, synagogue, or mosque? We want to hear from you. Email podcast@thedisagreement.com.

Questions or comments about this episode? Email us at podcast@thedisagreement.com or find us on X and Instagram @thedisagreementhq. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://thedisagreement.substack.com/