math

Matthew Lynch published in International Education

For Australia to improve in maths, policymakers need to make a plan and stick to it

This article was written by Vincent Geiger

Australia is struggling to improve its performance in maths due to a lack of continuity in policymaking.

While Australia tends to plan in three-year cycles, the countries that are performing the best – or making significant improvements – in international rankings for maths, such as Singapore, Finland and Japan – tend to revise their maths curriculum every five to six years.

This allows teachers to become fully acquainted with new initiatives and provides time for the bedding down of any changes to previous practice. It also allows curriculum developers and system administrators to evaluate the effectiveness of innovations.

So what impact has a lack of continuity had on maths education in Australia?

Slipping standards in maths

The last two international tests revealed that Australia is failing to improve in maths education.

In the 2015 version of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Australia was 22nd in Year 4 maths, and 13th in Year 8 maths, a decline from 18th and 12th respectively in 2011.

In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Australia was 18th in maths, down from 12th in 2012.

The results of these assessments indicate that the performance of Australian students is declining in both an absolute sense and in comparison to students from an increasing number of other nations.

The government and opposition have blamed each other for the situation, claiming the failure of respective policy direction and its implementation.

Impact of continuity in policy

It is hard to ignore the fact that there are nations that have made changes to their approach to maths education and made significant comparative progress.

In the case of Singapore, revision of the curriculum does not mean throwing out all aspects of previous practice and beginning again. Rather, it means a meticulous process of reviewing what has been effective and what needs to be improved or added to prepare students for the world they will move into – not just the world as it exists.

Curriculum is based on knowledge and practices that have served students well in the past, but is also future orientated.

This period of time also provides an opportunity for curriculum developers and system administrators to evaluate the effectiveness of innovations.

The approach to curriculum development is national, focused, carefully coordinated and then thoroughly evaluated.

In Australia, however, education is the responsibility of the respective states and territories. This poses a serious challenge for a coherent coordination of our curriculum development efforts.

Development of an Australian curriculum

The Australian Curriculum was heralded as a landmark in national cooperation in education.

Through the process of negotiation for its development and implementation, however, has emerged a determination by states and territories to preserve their differences and distinctiveness.

Some states have been accused of making superficial efforts to align with a national approach.

State efforts at curriculum development have a tendency to respond to whatever political pressure point is being stimulated at any time. For example, the most recent performance on NAPLAN results are prone to quick fix solutions.

Such flightiness brings into question how any long-term effective change brought about and rigorously evaluated.

Consequently, when looking at our national effort, it appears to be disjointed, unfocused, somewhat ad hoc in its development and close to impossible to evaluate in terms of student outcomes.

Introduction of teaching standards

Australia has created a number of measures to help improve its performance in maths. These include:

  • The introduction of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) national teaching standards, which include a requirement that all graduating teachers have the ability to promote students’ numeracy capabilities across the curriculum.
  • A numeracy (and literacy) tests for initial teacher education students to ensure graduating teachers have the necessary level of personal numeracy to be effective in classrooms.
  • National programs aimed at strengthening initial teacher education students’ mathematics and science knowledge, such as Enhancing Training of Mathematics and Science Teachers (ETMST).
  • Restoring the Focus on STEM in School Initiative, which aims to support the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects in primary and secondary schools.

These initiatives demonstrate the commitment of considerable federal resources for the purpose of enhancing the nation’s mathematical (and scientific) capabilities.

Taken as a suite, this list seems to represent a comprehensive approach to improving students’ mathematics outcomes – all aspects of curriculum, teacher pre-service education and teacher in-service education receive attention.

So why has this (what appears to be) well thought-out plan proved to be seemly ineffective?

Continuity of funding

Having been part of a number of federally-funded programs aimed at strengthening the teaching capabilities, I think it is fair to say that most have been successful in what they set out to achieve.

Programs such as the Enhancing Training of Mathematics and Science Teachers, for example, were carefully scoped out and then thoroughly monitored throughout their implementation. They are now undergoing stringent evaluation.

But no matter how successful, no program has any chance of securing additional funding. We appear to set agendas, allocate funds, complete projects and then move on to something new – unlike many successful countries that value continuity in their approach to teacher professional learning.

While project leaders will always have in place plans for the sustainability of the work begun through a program, the hard reality is that without further funding those involved will be expected to find new projects and income streams and move on.

The Conversation

Vincent Geiger, Associate Professor and Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Secondary Education, Teachers

High school Dropout Rates Up; Are Math and Science the Cause?

More rigorous math and science requirements for high school graduation are in place, and simultaneously dropout rates in the country are up.

Research back to 1990 showed that the US dropout rate rose to a high of 11.4 percent when students were required to take six math and science courses, compared with 8.6 percent for students who needed less math and science courses in order to graduate.

The dropout rate is up to 5 percentage points higher when gender, race and ethnicity are considered.

William F. Tate, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences says that part of the problem with adding math and science courses to requirements was that a significant number of students weren’t prepared to meet the revised requirements.

Andrew Plunk, a postdoctoral research fellow in the psychiatry department at Washington University School of Medicine, says the study highlights that the one-size-fits all approach to education requirements is not ideal due to various demographic groups, states and school districts that are all different.

When educational policies cause an unintentional consequence like an increase in students dropping out, the effects reverberate far beyond the classroom walls.

“Communities with higher dropout rates tend to have increased crime,” says Plunk. “Murders are more common. A previous study estimated that a 1 percent reduction in the country’s high school dropout rate could result in 400 fewer murders per year.”

While I do feel that the high drop out rate could be blamed on math and science courses, I don’t feel that the US should ease up on those requirements. I think the key is to better prepare the students. We need to make sure the students are ready for the requirements and aim to help all students graduate high school.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership

Why social interaction is essential to learning math

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Robert Sun

Not long ago, while visiting Israel, I had the opportunity to sit in on a fourth grade class at a progressive school in that country’s North District. The young teacher that day was leading her group of 19 students as they learned English. Over the 40 minute session, as the students were introduced to 20 new English vocabulary words, speaking them aloud and using them in sentences, I suddenly realized how important active, verbal and reciprocal exchange is to learning any new language.

And math, most definitely, is a language.

I know first-hand how difficult the task of learning a new language can be because, like those Israeli students, I had to learn English as a fourth-grade immigrant from Shanghai. Speaking English day after day, my new home in Philadelphia slowly became a much more inviting place—for me, a city of promise.

Fluency in English requires the mastery of 4,000 to 5,000 new and unfamiliar words. That’s a long process. By contrast, learning math should be much easier. After all, with math you don’t have to know what a “9” means; you only need to understand how a 9 can relate to a 3 or a 27, because math focuses on relationships and how numbers connect.

One reason I believe math is challenging for so many young people, is because it is so rarely spoken. In school, math instruction focuses on the written component: the constant litany of textbooks, board work and worksheets. At best, students listen to the teacher talk about math—but rarely do they speak it at length themselves.

Each of us, from the moment we hear our parents speak our name for the first time, gained our fluency for language through verbal interaction. The constant give-and-take, as we sharpened our pronunciations and built our vocabulary, became essential in our transformation from inarticulate toddler to fully functioning adult. The process of learning math would benefit from just such a dynamic. But it’s something we’re sorely missing.

All too often we forget that language acquisition demands a verbal component. You can focus on all the writing you want, from grammar to composition to reading—but without receiving the constant interaction, feedback and encouragement from people through conversation, your progress in mastering any new language will be limited.

Developing a working vocabulary is an exercise that can take many years. Until we build a foundation of competency, we are reluctant to speak because speaking is public—and in that public act we reveal ourselves.

Our education system seeks fluency in the language of math, yet it does not encourage students to use it in a social way, producing many who are anxious about math. If they don’t have to speak math, few people really know the extent of their math proficiency. It becomes easy to keep the “secret” of how weak they may be. Like all secrets, anxiety builds the longer the secret is maintained.

Over the last several decades, in fact, being “bad at math” has become socially acceptable. Admitting you are not proficient enables you to divert the subject and protect your deficiency. Unfortunately, so many people publically make this admission that it has become a culturally accepted way to avoid getting good at math. We need to change this dynamic.

I believe that as educators and as a society, we need to develop the idea of “social math”: the use of spoken math to inspire the human interactions that provide the feedback and motivation to master fluency. We can start to develop social math by encouraging our children, from a very early age, to speak as well as write the language of mathematics.

Just as the students in that Israeli classroom learned English by speaking words out loud, we can do the same when teaching math. Teachers can encourage their students to express themselves verbally using mathematical terms; even in the early grades, children can be asked to explain what they want or mean using numbers, or relationships between numbers. Anything that encourages them to talk about math and mathematical concepts is beneficial.

Today we understand how to remove the traditional stumbling blocks that prevent many from acquiring math proficiency:

  1. Provide immediate feedback; i.e., social engagement.
  2. Offer engaging and comprehensive content at hundreds of entry points, ensuring that no matter the skill level of a child, he or she can find an entry point to experience success and move progressively to advance their skills.
  3. Give children a sense of control and ownership over the learning process.
  4. Allow students the freedom to make mistakes, so they will push their skills right to the edge. That’s where the real active learning occurs.
  5. Encourage our children to SPEAK and write math so they will be truly fluent.

Technology has enabled us to develop tools that are designed to incorporate these features. Schools using these innovative tools discover that their students are eager to speak and practice mathematics.

Whenever children in a school are struggling to learn English, we invest considerably more resources into building their competence in that subject than we do when a comparable deficiency exists with math literacy. If our children are not expected to speak the language of math, they do not reveal their weakness and it becomes easier to ignore.

On the other hand, when we speak the common language of math with vibrancy and passion, we inspire our children to explore and pursue the rich opportunities offered in this essential and universal form of communication. This will benefit our next generation of thinkers immensely, providing them with the foundation to support careers in the STEM professions and every part of life.

________________________

ROBERT SUN is the CEO of Suntex International and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics.

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