When Math Doesn’t Add Up: Furman student’s research explores math teaching methods

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When Math Doesn’t Add Up: Furman student’s research explores math teaching methods

Math major Erin Prins ’26 helped produce four research papers and attended four conferences to promote her undergraduate research into methods of teaching factoring. Photo provided.

As a first-year student at Furman University, Erin Prins ’26 didn’t think she stood a chance of being selected to do undergraduate math research – but it was worth a shot. 

She had heard about an opportunity from mathematics professor Kevin Hutson, who encouraged her to attend a meeting for interested students and put her best foot forward.  

Prins, a math major, wants to teach high school math after graduation. As she sat in the meeting, assistant math professor Casey Hawthorne pitched the project: The “Slide-Divide Bottoms Up” factoring method taught in schools teaches students to treat each part of a math expression as independent symbols that can be moved around at will, rather than understanding how they relate to one another. 

A profile photo of a white man in a blue and white-patterned button down shirt standing outside.

Casey Hawthorne, assistant professor of mathematics

“There is no grounding to understand anything,” Hawthorne said. “It focuses on getting answers, not developing thinking, which is what mathematics is about.” 

Hawthorne wanted to develop a new teaching method that makes the concepts concrete, requiring students to explore the relationship between the symbols in a mathematical expression and understand how they relate to one another. 

It was the perfect intersection of math and education for Prins. Her interest in teaching and experience learning this method when she was in high school made her the right fit for this research, and she joined Casey’s team. 

It’s common for Furman undergraduates to conduct research across all disciplines, from English to chemistry. Each year, the Office of Undergraduate Research holds Furman Engaged, a day dedicated to students showcasing their research. See highlights from last year’s Furman Engaged here.

Prins’s work ethic and diligent notetaking quickly made an impression on her faculty mentors. 

“It was a benefit to have someone who was not that far removed from high school to be able to identify her own struggles learning factoring,” Hutson said. “Every time we gave Erin a direction to explore in the research, she did, and she always came back with interesting observations.” 

Five white women stand in front of a black cloth backdrop, holding a red frame around their faces as they pose for a photo.

From left: Caitlin Witherow ’26, Erin Prins ’26, Morgan Carns ’25, Alyssa Pate ’25 and assistant math professor Grace Stadnyk attend the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics. Photo provided.

Prins helped Hawthorne by coordinating and conducting interviews with local high school teachers about their teaching model and found there wasn’t a consistent logic educators could explain behind it. 

“It was really interesting, pedagogically, to understand what my teachers had been teaching,” Prins said. “The more you dig into it, the more you realize it’s hard to fix.” 

Through their research, Hawthorne said they developed a geometric model for teaching factoring. It uses algebra tiles, a tool used to provide an interactive approach to learning algebra concepts. Through their analysis of the two models and the interviews Prins conducted she helped produce four research papers and presented their work at multiple conferences, adding to mathematicians’ understanding of the issue. Hawthorne said the next step of this research is to apply the new model in classroom settings and try to give students an understanding of the concepts behind factoring. 

“I definitely didn’t think I would do anything like this in college,” Prins said. “At most of those conferences I was the only undergraduate.” 

This is an example of one of the things Furman does best, Hawthorne said: This research ties together Prins’ professional goals with her academic experience, equipping her for her future career in education. 

Prins said she appreciated the mentorship and encouragement the professors gave her along the way. 

“Furman focuses so much on these professor-student interactions. If I had gone to any other school, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said. 

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