{"id":36032,"date":"2025-01-30T13:54:40","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T18:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=36032"},"modified":"2025-01-30T13:54:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T18:54:40","slug":"when-math-doesnt-add-up-furman-students-research-explores-math-teaching-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/when-math-doesnt-add-up-furman-students-research-explores-math-teaching-methods\/","title":{"rendered":"When Math Doesn’t Add Up: Furman student’s research explores math teaching methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a first-year student at Furman University, <\/span>Erin Prins<\/span><\/a> \u201926 didn\u2019t think she stood a chance of being selected to do undergraduate math research \u2013 but it was worth a shot.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She had heard about an opportunity from mathematics professor <\/span>Kevin Hutson<\/span><\/a>, who encouraged her to attend a meeting for interested students and put her best foot forward.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prins, a math major, wants to teach high school math after graduation. As she sat in the meeting, assistant math professor <\/span>Casey Hawthorne<\/span><\/a> pitched the project: The \u201cSlide-Divide Bottoms Up\u201d factoring method taught in schools teaches students to treat each part of a math expression as independent symbols that can be moved around at will, rather than understanding how they relate to one another.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

Casey Hawthorne, assistant professor of mathematics<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThere is no grounding to understand anything,\u201d Hawthorne said. \u201cIt focuses on getting answers, not developing thinking, which is what mathematics is about.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hawthorne wanted to develop a new teaching method that makes the concepts concrete, requiring students to explore the relationship between the symbols in a mathematical expression and understand how they relate to one another.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the perfect intersection of math and education for Prins. Her interest in teaching and experience learning this method when she was in high school made her the right fit for this research, and she joined Casey\u2019s team.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s common for Furman undergraduates to conduct research across all disciplines, from <\/span>English<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>chemistry<\/span><\/a>. Each year, the <\/span>Office of Undergraduate Researc<\/span><\/a>h<\/span><\/a> holds <\/span>Furman Engaged<\/span><\/a>, a day dedicated to students showcasing their research. See highlights from last year\u2019s Furman Engaged <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prins\u2019s work ethic and diligent notetaking quickly made an impression on her faculty mentors.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a benefit to have someone who was not that far removed from high school to be able to identify her own struggles learning factoring,\u201d Hutson said. \u201cEvery time we gave Erin a direction to explore in the research, she did, and she always came back with interesting observations.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Five

From left: Caitlin Witherow \u201926, Erin Prins \u201926, Morgan Carns \u201925, Alyssa Pate \u201925 and assistant math professor Grace Stadnyk attend the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics. Photo provided.<\/p><\/div>\n

Prins helped Hawthorne by coordinating and conducting interviews with local high school teachers about their teaching model and found there wasn\u2019t a consistent logic educators could explain behind it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really interesting, pedagogically, to understand what my teachers had been teaching,\u201d Prins said. \u201cThe more you dig into it, the more you realize it\u2019s hard to fix.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through their research, Hawthorne said they developed <\/span>a geometric model<\/span><\/a> for teaching factoring. It uses algebra tiles, a tool used to provide an interactive approach to learning algebra concepts. Through their analysis of the two models and the interviews Prins conducted she helped produce four research papers and presented their work at multiple conferences, adding to mathematicians\u2019 understanding of the issue. Hawthorne said the next step of this research is to apply the new model in classroom settings and try to give students an understanding of the concepts behind factoring.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t think I would do anything like this in college,\u201d Prins said. \u201cAt most of those conferences I was the only undergraduate.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is an example of one of the things <\/span>Furman does best<\/span><\/a>, Hawthorne said: This research ties together Prins\u2019 professional goals with her academic experience, equipping her for her future career in education.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prins said she appreciated the mentorship and encouragement the professors gave her along the way.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFurman focuses so much on these professor-student interactions. If I had gone to any other school, this wouldn\u2019t have happened,\u201d she said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An aspiring math teacher, Prins joined the ranks of Furman student researchers and worked on a project that could change how math is taught. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":36031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2717,50,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-furman-engaged","category-mathematics","category-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36032"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36040,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032\/revisions\/36040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}