It’s been nearly five years since I defended my master’s thesis back in March 2020! Over the past few years, I’ve shared my passion for incorporating coding in math classrooms through workshops with students, teachers, and teacher candidates. My fascination with weaving coding into math lessons goes way back, even before BC introduced the redesigned curriculum in 2016. I can’t think of a better first topic to post than reflecting on the research that has started my journey as an education researcher and continues to drive my curiosity.
Here are a few observations:
1. Students have never stopped to amaze me with what they could accomplish. Here are a few student work samples from my math coding art workshop for grade 8/9 students:






2. I’ve noticed a widening gap between students’ skill levels in coding. An activity designed a few years ago with planned extension tasks is no longer challenging enough for a couple of keen students with previous knowledge in programming. At the same time, there are still students with little experience who need more support to get started. I found myself having to justify using block-based coding with the students in the past two years – as many see it as something they had done in elementary school. I still think using block-based coding is great at this point. As I told the students, the purpose of the workshop is to focus on the math involved, and we don’t have to worry about the syntax as much as in text-based coding. However, I wonder if soon I will need to switch to text-based coding for these workshops and find ways to make the activity still accessible to students with little experience. I had a casual conversation with a teacher I interviewed for my master’s thesis and was pleasantly surprised by how she’s started introducing text-based coding to her Math 8 class.
3. Working with pre-service teachers has also been an incredibly rewarding experience. Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to present one-off workshops to three cohorts of math teacher candidates at UBC. These sessions were always lively and full of energy. However, I also think the idea of integrating coding—or technology in general—into math lessons can be both exciting and overwhelming for teacher candidates. While these workshops are a great starting point, they’re not enough. There needs to be ongoing, sustained support that helps new teachers build confidence, develop skills, and adapt to new technologies and approaches.
4. As for supporting my teacher colleagues, I have shifted my attention from simply “coding in math” to “coding in math with diversity and inclusion in mind.” This shift aligns with my broader research interest in culturally relevant pedagogy in math education. I titled the talk “Fostering Inclusivity and Equity: Incorporating Coding in Math Classrooms” for my presentation at the BCAMT (BC Association of Math Teachers) conference in 2023. While I’m putting this on hold for a bit as I focus on my PhD dissertation, I look forward to revisiting and exploring this topic further.
For anyone interested, I submitted an article to Vector (the BCAMT journal), which is a much shorter read than my 100-page master’s thesis. Maybe soon it will be time to write a new article on this topic.
Leave a Comment