The Math Education Shift Teachers Need

About this episode

This episode challenges misconceptions in math education, emphasizing the importance of number sense and conceptual understanding over procedural knowledge.

Why do students struggle with math — even when they get the answer right? In this full math professional development training, Jonily — founder of Minds on Math and host of Saturday Math — challenges one of the biggest misconceptions in math education: Solving is not learning. For decades, math instruction has prioritized procedures, algorithms, and finishing problems. But true math achievement comes from something deeper: number sense, reasoning, and conceptual understanding. If you're a math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, or school leader working to improve math achievement and raise math test scores, this training will show you what most curriculum models get wrong — and how to fix it. In This Math Instruction Training, You’ll Learn: ✔ The critical difference between number sense and notation ✔ Conceptual vs procedural math instruction — and why balance matters ✔ Why solving problems doesn’t guarantee understanding ✔ How to improve math test scores without teaching more procedures ✔ How the brain actually learns mathematics ✔ Instructional strategies that scale math achievement across K–12 classrooms Whether you're preparing for state testing…

People in this episode

Host: Jonily Zupancic

Topics covered

• math education
• number sense
• conceptual understanding
• instructional strategies
• K-12 education

Keywords

• math achievement
• math instruction
• procedural vs conceptual
• math test scores
• K-12 classrooms

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Minds on Math, Saturday Math

More episodes of Tier 1 Interventions

• Why Counting Is the Hidden Foundation of Math · May 12, 2026 · 26 min
• Math Facts Are Really Rectangle Relationships · May 5, 2026 · 14 min
• Why Good Math Teaching Doesn’t Always Look Like Teaching · April 28, 2026 · 20 min
• How to Teach Students to Ask Better Questions in Math · April 21, 2026 · 17 min
• Why Productive Struggle Matters in Math · April 14, 2026 · 20 min
• The Moment Students Stop Thinking in Math Class · April 7, 2026 · 20 min