In the education world over the past few years, a lot of attention has been paid to phonics and balanced literacy and the ways in which reading instruction practices often don’t align with what we know about how students learn to read.

Are there any obvious parallels in math instruction?

Are there bad ideas about how students learn math that prevent students from learning more? Is there a disconnect between math education research and classroom practice? And what does the evidence say about what good math instruction looks like?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Anna Stokke. Nat and Anna discuss common math myths, the quality of math textbooks, whether evidence-based practice is just common sense, mandatory times table tests, the concept of math anxiety, what math professors get wrong about teaching math, and why fads in math education catch on.

Anna Stokke is a mathematics professor at the University of Winnipeg and the host of Chalk & Talk, a podcast about math education.