It’s a question that high school and middle school math teachers have heard many times. Some educators think it’s because math instruction is stuck in a rut. Procedural, boring and, in some cases, ...

Keith Perkins, foreground, works through an algorithm for calculating ladder rung spacing in Linn-Benton Community College’s math for welders class. Credit: Jan Sonnenmair for The Hechinger Report The ...

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.