Humans are born to do math, and they have the brain infrastructure to prove it—including a cluster of specialized nerve cells for processing numbers. Despite this dedicated cluster, mathematical ...

The Education Week Spotlight on Mathematical Thinking is a collection of articles hand-picked by our editors for their insights on current math learning gaps, strategies for empowering students with ...

May 7, 2026-The May issue of Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12 (MTLT) is now available.

“To teach well, you should pay careful attention to what an assignment will make students think about,” Willingham advises, “because that is what they will remember.” It’s a sentence that has made me ...

There is a chasm between modernity and tradition, science and religion, skepticism and faith, the Devil and God. In the secular West, the Enlightenment Era separated church from state and removed God ...

Today, elementary mathematics classrooms look and sound very different than what many parents may have experienced. Many mathematics education researchers note that getting learners talking about ...

Spatial reasoning ability in small children reflects how well they will perform in mathematics later. Researchers recently came to this conclusion, making the case for better cultivation of spatial ...

Math teacher Samantha McGlennen wandered around her Summit Middle School classroom, unfazed by the students’ chatter and laughter during a recent lesson about exponential growth. Their behavior – ...

Math education is rapidly changing. And while there are real headwinds with respect to math achievement, the new ideas and curricula that are emerging have the potential to power real progress for ...

Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, John Nash—these “beautiful” minds never fail to enchant the public, but they also remain somewhat elusive. How do some people progress from being able to ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. In this recasting, mathematics isn’t just about solving problems, but about figuring ...