All Equals Are Not Equal

Algebra, typically introduced in middle school, is a difficult subject to grasp. It involves a transition from arithmetic processing, which students have come to expect of math classes, to more abstract thinking and symbol processing. Algebra has also long been considered the gatekeeper course as students who don’t succeed in it are kept from all STEM fields. The difficulty of algebra is also one of the main causes for many students disengaging from math in middle school. So, understandably, algebra is one of the most researched topics in mathematics education. The design of the instructional content in the Xpert Notebook is grounded in this research and is guided by what students find difficult when they’re learning a particular concept. 

For example, one of the early stumbling blocks for students when introduced to algebra is caused by their understanding of the equal sign. The equal sign is a relationship operator that shows the equality between what is on its left side and what is on its right side. However, students who have been taught to evaluate the left side of the equation to write the answer on the right think of the equal sign as operational and believe that it is a call for action to evaluate what is on the left. This is detrimental to simplifying and solving equations in algebra. A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that over 50% of students in sixth and seventh grades and slightly less than 50% of students in eighth grade hold the operational view of the equal sign! The following video in the Xpert notebook in the game was created to help students understand the equal sign as a relationship operator.