Redefining Math Education: Jen Munson’s Vision for Collaborative Classrooms
Jen Munson is an assistant professor of learning sciences at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. She teaches two courses for the Teaching, Learning, & Education Program: Elementary Math Methods & Content, and Mathematics for Elementary Teachers.
Picture a math classroom. What do you see? Perhaps rows of desks arranged alphabetically by last name, with the teacher at the front, modeling problems on the board. Students, quietly working, are replicating procedures to solve math problems, over and over. In these classrooms, talking to a classmate is seen as cheating, and asking a question is embarrassing, even shameful.
For School of Education and Social Policy professor Jen Munson, these were the classrooms she saw again and again as a child. Notably, Munson’s family moved several times during her childhood, and this predictable, “traditional” structure of the math classroom was consistent across five states, and eleven schools. It wasn’t until high school when Munson was sent to a boarding school in Surrey, United Kingdom, that she was allowed to explore math in a way that would change her life forever.
“I befriended Mrs. Pye, one of our house parents, who taught 4th grade at my school,” Munson said. “She told me emphatically that I had far too many study halls and I should spend all of my extra time in her classroom, and I did.”
Under Pye's mentorship, Munson began to notice the intricacies of the classroom environment—details she’d never considered before. She observed how students interacted, who participated and who didn’t, and the dynamics that shaped their learning. When Pye asked her to plan and teach a math lesson, Munson eagerly accepted the challenge. But when she began teaching, it quickly became clear that her lesson was flawed. “I remember this sinking feeling that I had made this terrible mistake,” she said. “After seeing the students’ faces, I realized that this was never going to work. This moment gave me a profound respect for the complexity of teaching.”
After high school, Munson thought she might be a math major. But she soon realized her passion was rooted in those moments in Pye’s classroom. She pursued her bachelor's in elementary education, and spent thirteen years working in schools - first as a teacher, then as a math coach. She then went on to Stanford to earn her PhD in mathematics education and teacher education. In 2023, she published The Collaborative Math Classroom, a guide for educators looking to break away from the traditional model she had experienced as a child.
“In a truly collaborative math classroom, kids tackle shared mathematical tasks,” Munson said. “No one child is responsible for figuring everything out on their own, and there’s no shame in asking for help. If you were to walk into that kind of classroom, you’d see students clustered together - not working individually on their tablets - but maybe around a piece of chart paper, or sprawled on the floor with manipulatives, working together. That’s a collaborative classroom.”
Munson says that research shows that traditional approaches to teaching math often make students anxious, embarrassed, and create an environment they want to avoid. “It’s the system that creates that anxiety,” Munson said. “It is not an attribute of individual people. If we change the system, we change how people feel and whether or not they can thrive in it.”
Furthermore, Munson also sees hope that this research-driven approach to mathematics instruction will create more access for students traditionally excluded from mathematics. Munson sees progress in gender diversity in math participation. But “the racial imbalance is deeply concerning,” she said. “The way we value certain students' participation often hinges on bias. One child might ask a question and it’s seen as insightful; another child asks the same question, and it’s viewed as disruptive. We need classrooms that validate all students and their contributions.”
Reflecting on her path, Munson is confident she made the right choice in pursuing education over a math major. “I would never have been a happy professional if I had only pursued math,” she said. “No matter how much math you think you know as a mathematics major, you only know the smallest slice of the math that humans engage in. As a teacher, you get to see the richness of math through the eyes of your students. For me, there’s nothing more gratifying than that.”