Sinking Classrooms: What’s Wrong with “Building Thinking Classrooms” in Mathematics?

A Mathematics teaching craze known as “Building Thinking Classrooms.” Is now sweeping across North American K-12 education. With post-pandemic student math scores languishing and senior administrators scrambling for a ‘quick fix’, BTC has quickly taken over classrooms with its small group engagement activities and wall-mounted strip white boards known as “vertical learning spaces.” It’s also acquired a new and rather cheeky moniker on social media – #sinking classrooms.

Since its founder Simon Fraser University education professor Peter Liljedahl spoke at the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association’s Toronto conference (May 2, 2015), BTC has expanded from its British Columbia origins, spread around the world, and proliferated in classrooms. It easily captured school system leaders and was seeded in local professional development sessions for school administrators and curriculum consultants. It has great appeal to principals and teachers, often with little mathematics background, steeped in “progressive’ teaching methods attempting to ‘hook kids’ and overcome their math anxieties,

University mathematics professors, specialist teachers, and engaged parents are beginning to raise serious objections to Peter Liljedahl’s math teaching philosophy, its limited research basis, and visible impact on students already struggling in mathematics. While Liljedahl’s approach is purportedly backed-up by research, that is now attracting more critical scrutiny.  Leading Canadian mathematics expert Dr Anna Stokke of the University of Winnipeg is very skeptical about its research basis and seriously questioning its widespread use in classrooms.

The whole approach is rooted in progressive teaching philosophy and espouses a popular and largely discredited strategy known as “minimally guided classroom instruction.” Most lessons begin with students assigned tasks in groups of 2-3 or 4 and asked to collaborate on problem-solving.

Here’s how it works: The groups are randomly selected, purportedly to promote connection and different thinking. With a minimum of direct instruction, it all revolves around vertical learning, random groupings, and a wide variety of curricular and non-curricular thinking tasks. Essentially, every day in math class, students are mostly left alone, in groups, to figure out the answers.

Liljedahl’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms, is described by Nova Scotia math teachers as “the bible” and the walls of many math classrooms are covered in “vertical learning spaces” (whiteboards). A patented commercial product, known as “wipebooks,” is tied-in with the consultant’s work and, in PD sessions, they are freely distributed to teachers, especially in schools affiliated with the Halifax Regional Centre for Education

American mathematics educator Michael Pershan, author of Teaching Mathematics with Examples, was one of the first to raise objections. The founder makes “big claims” that the approach is research-based based upon four academic articles, but, in his view, “the evidence is weak.”  Surveying his supporting studies, Pershan found that “it doesn’t support big generalizations.”

A few examples will suffice: Liljedahl’s research measures engagement but not learning; it focuses on only two aspects, engagement with vertical whiteboards and homework; it counts teacher uptake as engagement; and it is entirely based upon older students with some math background. Most critical of all, there’s no indication of how the test groups of students were selected or any explanation of how his percentages are derived in his reports.

The BTC philosophy has some appeal because it creates a buzz of activity. It gained a foothold because its founder is engaging and it works best with teachers who have prior knowledge of mathematics. Regular students struggling in the subject, left to fend for themselves, tend to get lost and either tune out or act out in class. That’s the dominant view of several teachers who spoke with me but, sad to say, insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of repercussions.

“Creative thinking” is the buzzword of our time and anything attached to it attracts senior administrators looking to make an impact. Right across Canada a sizable proportion of the teachers in math classrooms have only a smattering of mathematics background or are teaching “out of field.”  Student engagement is their priority and BTC fills that bill, even if it doesn’t improve students’ mastery of mathematics nor deepen problem-solving skills.

School leaders know their audience. “Nobody reads the papers,” Pershan points out. “Very few people care about getting this right. And yet, apparently, almost everybody cares a great deal about the perception that some new thing is rooted in research. It opens doors, hearts, and minds.”  It also generates speaking tours, substantial consulting fees, and sucks-up time and resources better spent actually teaching kids how to do math and get the correct answers.

Engaged parents exposed to “Building Thinking Skills” promotional meetings are beginning to raise questions and unlikely to go away. Peter Liljedahl claims to be building “thinking classrooms” (BTC, 2016a, p. 364), but parents are getting a one-sided sales pitch and critical questions being brushed aside. It did not go over well in Berkeley Heights public schools, where a November 2022 parent survey revealed that the vast majority of parents and students found BTC ineffective and petitioned the school district to suspend the program.

One razor-sharp Greater New York City parent, Virginie Delwart, active with Berkley Heights Community Watch, claimed that many students were struggling to master math in the program and it was dividing both her family and the community. Too many honours students were bombing their assessments, and weak students with learning challenges were completely lost.

The BTC model is saddled with the unfortunate label of “sinking classrooms.” Much of the pushback is well-founded. One thing is clear: It’s unlikely to improve student math scores or raise achievement.

Why did Peter Liljedahl’s “Building Thinking Classrooms” find a receptive audience with school leaders and become the latest craze in Mathematics education?  Where is the evidence that BTC is soundly-based on research or that it works in teaching mathematics to students? How much of provincial and district PD math budgets now go to BTC and the associated wipeboards?  Is it another harmless exercise in engaging students or are there unintended consequences?          

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Pandemic School System Shutdowns: Was Closing School for Months a Forgivable Blunder?

Preventative health measures, such as masking, vaccines and rapid tests were effective at stopping schools and daycares from becoming vectors for the spread of COVID-19 during the peak of the 2020-2022 pandemic.  What’s less recognized is that school closures themselves had a negligible effect on containing the virus, the whole rationale for the shutdowns.

Closing schools for so long, it now appears, was a mistake because of the attendant and unanticipated problems that arose in its wake – measurable learning loss, teen mental health issues, social isolation, and disrupted services for society’s neediest children.

Those earth-shaking claims are not really new, but they have now found confirmation in the final report of a McMaster University study, published in February 2024, in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading academic journals in medical science. It was based upon actual evidence from studies, databases and websites from May 2020 and then updated 18 times over the pandemic before finalizing the conclusions.

McMaster health researcher Sarah Neil-Sztramko and her team rattled a few public health and education authorities with their definitive findings. Children and teens belong in school, supported by preventative measures (proper ventilation, vaccines, masks and rapid tests) and school system shutdowns were simply less effective in infection prevention and control.

What was the role of schools and day cares in COVID-19 transmission?  Armed with the evidence-based research, we now know that children and teens can stay in the classroom when these infection prevention and control measures are in place because it didn’t result in spikes of the corona virus in the community or put pressure on the health-care system.

Lead researcher Neil-Sztramko and her team were refreshingly honest about the biggest blunder.  When COVID hit, Ontario provincial and public health decision-makers were not only caught-off guard but unprepared, but unsure about how and when to safely re-open and operate schools and daycares.

“There was so much about the COVID-19 virus that we didn’t know at that time,” Neil-Sztramko told the Hamilton Spectator. “At the very first phase of the pandemic, we were working blind. We knew that the virus was causing a real strain on the health-care system and so extreme measures were put in place to curb the spread while we really didn’t have much information to know what measures might be most effective.”

Provincial and public health leaders were severely handicapped by the near absence of sound medical research evidence upon which to base their decisions about school closures during the pandemic, resulting in different responses across the country.

Provincial premiers, education ministers and deputy ministers claimed to be following “public health directives” which, it turns out, were backed-up by partial or inconclusive evidence. Public school systems were shut down for between 8 weeks and 27 weeks, with Ontario leading the pack at 135 days. What’s worse – that number doesn’t include individual classroom closures or time away from school because of exposure to the virus, COVID symptoms or a positive test.

The academic and social costs of suspending school for so long has come home to roost over the past two years. “We definitely saw the downside and the unintended consequences of school closures,” Neil-Sztramko confirmed in the media.  “At the student level in terms of social, emotional and mental health, and some of the learning outcomes down the road. We also know the negative impact that it had on parents and caregivers who are trying to work from home while taking care of children in that balancing act.”

Preconceived ideas about the spread of the virus and the susceptibility of children were not borne out during the COVId-19 period. As time went on, medical experts and health professionals discovered it was air-borne and did not affect children as severely as adults. The report is conclusive: Whether schools were opened or closed didn’t have any effect on how COVID spread.

“When schools were reopened or closed down again, it really didn’t have a huge impact on levels of community transmission,” says Neil-Sztramko. “Rather, the patterns that we saw in school were really reflective of the patterns of transmission that were occurring in the communities already.”

Without sound, evidence-based research, policy-makers resort to ‘making it up as they go along’ or, put in clearer terms, muddling through a crisis. What’s the big lesson?  The McMaster research lead put it this way: “The importance of being able to incorporate data into the decision-making as time goes on rather than just sticking with that initial decision… (based on not a lot of information), but being nimble and adaptive as new scientific evidence becomes available.”

All of this research begs a deceptively simple question – is it all a forgivable error and what are the chances it may happen again?

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