The Math Death Spiral: How Knowledge Gaps Lead to Student Failure
Accumulating mathematical knowledge gaps can lead students to reach a tipping point where further learning becomes overwhelming, ultimately causing them to abandon math entirely.
When people age, they accumulate biological damage that eventually reaches a tipping point and leads to a cascade of catastrophic health issues.
Students accumulate knowledge gaps as they progress through math, and they stop taking math classes once the number of gaps reaches a tipping point and spirals out of control.
Once you have a gap, you are unable to fully understand any new information further down that learning path. The gap proliferates.
The student may interpret this situation as “I’m not smart enough to learn more math” – when in fact, their mathematical lifespan could have been extended simply by having their knowledge gaps detected and repaired.
