While mathematicians find joy in doing mathematics and understand its importance to the world, many people see this subject in a very different light. They think, for example, that mathematics is done only by those who have an innate ability to engage with it or that it is too abstract to be used for anything but calculating a tip at a restaurant. These misconceptions are quite prominent in our society, and they manifest in such issues as gender imbalance in STEM classrooms and misunderstanding how exponential growth works in savings bank accounts. Our team has recently authored an illustrated book with the goal of addressing common misconceptions about mathematics. It follows the story of a girl named Addie, who confides in her math teacher father, Mr Brown, that she no longer wants to take math classes. Mr. Brown decides to show Addie what math is truly about. Together, they engage in a series of bonding activities where Mr. Brown addresses misconceptions that Addie holds, such as the belief that math is primarily done in isolation or he stereotype that boys are better at math. We report on the findings of our research project where we interviewed six undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo who exhibited signs of misconceptions about mathematics. In each interview we talked about student’s attitude towards mathematics and assessed the effect of our illustrated storybook on correcting their misconceptions. Our research project has been funded by the University of Waterloo LITE Seed Grant and received clearance by the University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board.

Authors: Anton Mosunov, Gavin Orok

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2024

• Date of Conference: 23-25 July, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/CICE.2024.0072
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-65-5
• Conference Location: Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada