Carles Granell: "Phrases like 'I'm a literary person' hurt a lot more than we think."

BarcelonaCarles Granell is a primary school teacher at the Sant Lluís School in the Prosperidad neighborhood of Barcelona and a professor of mathematics education at the University of Barcelona. He is also a member of the Federation of Mathematics Education Entities of Catalonia (FEEMCAT), which organized the Catalan Congress on Mathematics Education in Lleida last July, where hundreds of teachers analyzed the state of mathematics and how its learning could be improved.

In the latest core competencies (now called end-of-stage assessments) the math level in 6th grade was the lowest in history since the tests began in 2009. The results in 4th year of compulsory secondary education weren't good either. What's going wrong?

— It's very difficult to narrow it down to a single factor, because different factors that are part of the entire education system surely come into play. There are aspects such as teacher training that should be reviewed, and we also need to consider how we are working in the classrooms once this training has been received or what curriculum-aligned proposals are being made in the different schools in Catalonia. At the same time, we need to consider how much importance we want to give to these standardized tests or others like PISA. And finally, there are complex socioeconomic factors in terms of the profile of students and families that do not promote learning.

What are those agents?

— It's very complex to summarize, but on the one hand, we have students in very difficult socioeconomic situations, without a stable family network that can provide support at home; and on the other, the high ratios and low staff stability don't help, making many school projects or improvements that begin one year very difficult to continue in the following years, because any change takes time.

Considering your thoughts, do these tests that assess students' performance make sense?

— The tests are very different and are grouped together as if they were the same. The PISA tests, for example, assess competencies; others, knowledge or curricular content. We're looking at slightly different things. What should we base our approach on? What the 2022 curriculum says. At the same time, we must define our concept of educational success in mathematics, which is no longer calculating, but understanding, reasoning, thinking, communicating, and working in groups. I think this would be a first step, one that is essential for moving forward. Now, as a society, we should be concerned because we don't like having these results. But I also insist that we must be clear that what's important is not the day they're published, but the day that mathematics is taught each hour in schools.

I was commenting on the topic of teacher training. Are teachers poorly trained?

— Regarding preschool and primary education, I believe it's necessary to improve the teaching curricula for teacher training programs. There are very few hours dedicated to mathematics teaching, even though it's one of the areas in the curriculum to which children dedicate the most hours in school, along with languages. However, if you look at the teaching curricula for teacher training programs, we're not training them to the level we need. It's also necessary to review how this initial teacher training is provided. In this regard, it's urgent to create, in the case of preschool and primary education, the specialization of mathematics teaching specialist. Not only so that these teachers have better initial training, but also so that this, in turn, can enrich the teaching teams in all schools.

And what about secondary school teachers?

— We should promote a degree in mathematics education that teachers can access after completing the specialized master's degree. The hours of training in didactics are a very important area for improvement: it is necessary to know the tools and mechanisms, how to manage the classroom, what activities and resources are available, and how to work competently. And this is not just mathematical knowledge; it is a part of didactic knowledge. It is also necessary to improve the practices these future teachers follow: supervised practices, with follow-up, with classroom interventions that provide feedback of improvement.

We're talking about medium-term challenges, but what are the ones that can be implemented this year to achieve better results?

— I believe that, as a society, as an educational system, as schools, and as teachers, we need patience for the changes that have begun in recent years to bear fruit. We must give teachers peace of mind so they can bring the knowledge they are learning to the classroom. The second point is to review ongoing teacher training. Teachers have many hours of different in-school training and projects proposed by the Education Department, but perhaps we should rethink this ongoing training to create this position of mathematics specialist. And finally, in the classrooms, we must follow the curriculum, which I believe is a very advanced curriculum.

You ask for time, but what would you say to a family who sees their child progressing through grades with a poor math proficiency and is about to finish compulsory education?

— I would tell them that we need to redefine what mathematics is, what teachers, families, and students understand as mathematics, and that we need to enjoy mathematics as the first objective, and then the results. Obviously, they may demand a certain immediacy in the results, but I insist on what results and what we are prioritizing. For me, it will always be a priority that students in the mathematics classroom feel safe and confident in developing their own learning. If we are achieving this, it is a great step.

Why does mathematics have such a bad reputation?

— We teachers don't like it at all when we see negative news about the image of mathematics in the media or on social media, because there are some very good activities (association projects, activities in which hundreds of students participate each year) that never make the front page. If only the negative headline appears, perhaps we are contributing to this negativity. There are also stereotypes entrenched in society; phrases like "I'm a humanities major" or "I'm not into math" hurt much more than we think. I believe it's everyone's responsibility to change this negative image. And the first to do so should be students, families, and teachers. We must learn what mathematics is and what we understand by it. We no longer want mathematics to merely calculate results; we want it to awaken curiosity, thought, reasoning, and the ability of children to communicate or learn from mistakes.

But there's a generational problem here. Most families of children have learned math through calculations, and if we try to help our children, we'll inevitably explain how we learned it.

— The way I learned them is not the one I'm promoting. We might think: why don't we do it that way? Because many of my classmates weren't lucky enough to learn them. I liked them, but many others fell by the wayside. And if we reproduce this method, we must be aware that this will happen again. What we should seek, then, is better mathematics education for everyone, not for a few who learned and had a favorable environment. For example, when my grandmother came to pick me up from school, she would ask me about the multiplication tables, but there are many students who spend many hours on the street, only in the afternoons, without organizations or family support networks.

Should families be trained so that we all work together?

— There are many cases where this is done. Families from preschool, first and second grade, come in the afternoon and work on the same activities their children did those days. Of course, we have to explain it to them; we can't just say, "No, it's just done differently now." We have to connect with them.

The transition from elementary to secondary school is often dramatic, especially in math. How can we help students make this transition more fluid and natural?

— Elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, and university professors must be aligned to work on this unit of mathematics education. We must identify the shared resources and tools for this learning process and how they are organized in schools. A shared, but also critical, perspective is necessary.