Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify how University of Colorado researchers handle their data collection. A student digs into a math problem that references his favorite superhero, ...

It’s a question that high school and middle school math teachers have heard many times. Some educators think it’s because math instruction is stuck in a rut. Procedural, boring and, in some cases, ...

Every January, Nashville teacher Joel Bezaire reads The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time aloud to his students. Sounds pretty standard, right? It would be — for an English class. But ...

Why do so many students hate math, fear it, or both? If you ask most students what they think their role is in math classrooms, they will tell you it is to get questions right. Students rarely think ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Linda Darling-Hammond is an expert on education research and policy. This blog was updated on June 24, 2026 to clarify a statistic ...

Excerpted from Dear Math: Why Kids Hate Math And What Teachers Can Do About It by Sarah Strong and Gigi Butterfield. Published by Times 10 Publications. As learning theorist Yrjo Engestrom (1995) ...