What Does “Evidence-Based” Mean in a Core Math Curriculum?
2 min readNov 17, 2022
Many math solutions claim to be evidence-based, but what does that really mean? At the surface level, you’ll see student growth results. But if you look deeper, you might — or might not — see a research foundation. We have both.
Our research-driven core blended Middle School and High School Math Solutions are rooted in five proven principles from the field of learning science.
- Active Learning: means that students’ minds are active in the classroom. For strong learning gains, students must engage in “minds-on” activities where they produce knowledge that isn’t immediately available.
- Motivation: students motivation is key to academic achievement, and achievement increases motivation. Carnegie Learning curriculum keeps motivation high by making math relevant — students apply the concepts they've learned to real-world situations.
- Memory: to make learning stick, students need to identify and attend to information that is relevant. We highlight important concepts in a variety of ways, and allow students the space for note-taking to minimize working memory load.
- Transfer: one way to help students transfer skills they learn at school is by helping them draw connections between different concepts and contexts. This helps strengthen memory retrieval and knowledge in any situation or context.
- Feedback: the effectiveness of feedback depends on students’ current motivational state. Timely feedback to students can help minimize floundering during problem solving. When goals are clear, students are more likely to be receptive to feedback.
For more information, check out our recent blog on these different learning principles that we use in our math curriculum.
