Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

I had a surreal moment this year. I’d almost finished a lesson when one boy, usually a hyperkinetic little bundle of enthusiasm, raised his hand.

“So, like, I don’t really understand anything you’re saying,” he informed me, “But I can still get the right answer.”

He smiled, waiting.

“Which part is giving you trouble?” I asked.

“Oh, you were talking about this extra stuff,” he said, “like the ideas behind it and everything. I don’t… you know… do that.”

I blinked. He blinked. We stood in silence.

“So is that okay?” he concluded. “I mean, as long as I can get the right answer?”

Here is Part 6: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/02/11/the-church-of-the-right-answer/

Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

As for students, it can be frightening to start a math problem. You don’t know quite where it will lead. Will my approach be fruitful? Will it falter? Where do I even begin?

But unlike my desk-perching student, most kids don’t recognize that one rope holding them back is fear of the unknown. They just hesitate: too afraid to leap without a net, but never bothering to go in search of a net for themselves…

In all these cases, students are refusing to engage with their uncertainty. But if you’re uncomfortable with doubt, you’ll never break through to the other side. You’ll never have a “Eureka!” moment or an intellectual “Aha!” You’ll never… well… learn. After all, if you can’t bear to face the unknown, how will you ever come to know it?

I find that my desk-percher has it right. At times like these, the mere presence of an expert can supply the confidence you’re lacking.

Here is Part 5, introducing what happens when students get stuck getting started on a problem: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/02/04/fearing-the-unknown/

Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

This speaks more to my naiveté as a first-year teacher than anything else, but I was shocked to find how fervently my students despised the things they called “word problems.”

“I hate these! What is this, an English lesson?”

“Can’t we do regular math?”

“Why are there words in math class?”

Their chorus: I’m okay with math, except word problems.

They treated “word problems” as some exotic and poisonous breed. These had nothing to do with the main thrust of mathematics, which was apparently to chug through computations and arrive at clean numerical solutions.

I was mystified—which is to say, clueless. Why all this word-problem hatred?

Here is Part 4, addressing students’ fears of word problems: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/01/28/the-word-problem-problem/

Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

Every rule – even the craziest, most arbitrary mandate – has a reason rooted in this essential purpose. (Why leave the dishes with big particles? Because the person is still eating!) And so it is in math class. If you understand slope not as “that list of steps I’m supposed to follow” but as “a rate of change,” things start making more sense. (Why is it the ratio of the coefficients? Because, look what happens when x increases by 1!)

You get to work a lot less, and think a lot more.

Now, conceptual understanding alone isn’t enough, any more than procedures alone are enough. You must connect the two, tracing how the rules emerge from the concepts. Only then can you learn to apply procedures flexibly, and to anticipate exceptions. Only then will you get the pat on the back that every robot craves.

With my students on Friday, I garbled the whole analogy. I tend to do that.

But there’s a simple takeaway. Even if you don’t care about understanding for its own sake; even if you’re indifferent to the beauty and deeper logic of mathematics; even if you care only about test results and right answers; even then, you should remember that the “how” is rooted in the “why,” and you’re unlikely to master methods if you disregard their reasons.

Here is Part 3, addressing the importance of both computational proficiency and conceptual understanding: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/01/21/are-you-a-dish-washing-robot/

Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

Occasionally, we teachers grow frustrated with our formula-thirsty students. (Okay, more like “often” or “weekly.”) Sometimes, we even denounce formulas altogether, deriding them as “brainless plug-and-chug” or “not real math.”

Of course, that’s going too far. The intelligent use of formulas is an important part of mathematics. But we’re right about one thing: there’s a lot more to formulas than just throwing numbers into a blender.

Here is Part 2, addressing students’ natural desire to mindlessly plug numbers into a formula without conceptual understanding: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/01/14/mmm-strawberry-rhuburb-root-2/

Math With Bad Drawings had a terrific series on how students try to avoid thinking in math class. A quote:

In teaching math, I’ve come across a whole taxonomy of insidious strategies for avoiding thinking. Albeit for understandable reasons, kids employ an arsenal of time-tested ways to short-circuit the learning process, to jump to right answers and good test scores without putting in the cognitive heavy lifting. I hope to classify and illustrate these academic maladies: their symptoms, their root causes, and (with any luck) their cures.

Here is Part 1, introducing the series: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/01/07/how-to-avoid-thinking-in-math-class/