A report from Demos, published today. From Executive Summary:
This report strongly argues that the current model of accountability is profoundly toxic and is failing to achieve its stated goal of improving education. It sets out an alternative
regime, which would allow all children to achieve their potential, while ensuring the quality of education in schools is of a high standard. [...]
One of many cultural shifts undermining the traditional model of mathematics education: loss of dexterity in children. From The Telegraph:
Today’s children may be whiz kids at hi-tech gadgets, but they now learn to tie their shoelaces at a later age than ever before, a new report has found.
Few master the art before the age of six, and some still have difficulty tying their own laces when they are nine or ten years old, it is claimed.
The findings represent a major shift in social habits – just thirty years ago, being able to tie shoelaces was regarded as a skill to be learnt by the age of four, but changes in shoe design and footwear fashions means the skill is no longer essential until much older.
Gary Kibble, retail director for Littlewoods.com who carried out the study, said: “Today’s children now learn how to operate complex technology long before they know how to tie shoe laces. They understand navigation paths and algorithms – yet still don’t know how to make a knot.
Read the whole article.
…. the poignant and hugely entertaining theatre production of “The Universal Machine” at the New Diorama in central London. On April 23 there was a special performance with various various prominent ATY supporters in the audience. It was a great treat to see the nieces of Alan Turing there, familiar to many from their engaging TV interviews, with fascinating memories of their uncle Alan.
The uniformly wonderful company, and Diorama staff, must have been really relieved to hear all the positive comments. The music and cleverly crafted lyrics gave a special lightness to the essentially sad story, and both intensified, and lifted the impact to a new level. Turing’s niece Janet was especially happy to see her grandmother (Turing’s mother Sara) played so brilliantly by Judith Paris. Judith also attracted high praise from The Guardian.
There were lots of reviews in the national press. There was a thoughtful piece by Daisy Bowie-Sell in the Telegraph: http://bit.ly/ZLaiWH with our favourite review by the ever perceptive Libby Purves in The Times: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article3751815.ece
If you live within reach of London, don’t miss it! Some nights are already sold out, but it’s on at New Diorama (just 15 minutes walking from Kings Cross) until May 11: http://newdiorama.com/whats-on/the-universal-machine
This report was first published on 14 April 2013 in Seb Schmoller’s Fortnightly Mailing, and is reproduced here with Seb’s permission.
I’m six or so weeks into Keith Devlin’s 10 week Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, along with some tens of thousands of others.
Here is a longish thumbnail sketch of the design of the course, followed by two appendices. Appendix 1 concerns peer review. Appendix 2 is what the course web site has to say about grading and certificates of completion.
US Congress has introduced a bill that would mandate public access to publicly-funded federal research. The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in Congress February 14 on a bi-partisan basis. The bill would require that federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from publicly-funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. If enacted in law, the Act will have impact on academic publishing, including mathematics education research, all over the world.
Some quotes from the Act
A long division: Closing the attainment gap in England’s secondary schools, a report prepared for IPPR by Jonathan Clifton and Will Cook, published 07 Sep 2012. Its title is remarkable for the use of the mathematics education term long division as a symbol for socio-economic split in English education.
Guenter Toerner (Chair of EMS Committee for Education) and Ferdinando Arzarello (President of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, ERME) publish this grading of mathematics education research Journal in European Mathematical Society Newsletter December 2012, pp. 52-54:
A*:
A:
B:
C:
A quote on methodology used:
[75 experts from 32 countries experts graded] the journals on a four-point scale: A*,A, B or C, or to declare that they did not know the journal and code it with an X. The scale was defined according to four dimensions, characterising each rank: recognition; review process and quality standards; editors and editorial board; and citations. For example, the ranks A and B are described as:
A:
- Recognition: The journal is recognised amongst researchers around the world as a strong one in the field of mathematics education.
- Review process and quality standards: Through a systematic process of peer review the journal maintains high standards with a view to publishing research that displays the intellectual rigour, originality and significance that will be recognised as making a valuable contribution to the field.
- Editor(s) and editorial board: The editor(s) and the members of the editorial board of the journal are themselves highly regarded researchers, many already recognised as international leaders in the field of mathematics education.
- Citations: The journal is regularly cited in other journals, and many high quality research publications in mathematics education make some reference to work published in it.
B:
- Recognition: The journal is recognised by researchers around the world as an estimable one in the field of mathematics education.
- Review process and quality standards:Through a process of peer review the journal sets standards of rigour, originality and significance that command international respect within the field.
- Editor(s) and editorial board: The editor(s) and the members of the editorial board of the journal are themselves well regarded researchers in the field of mathematics education.
Confusion in the Ranks: how good are England’s schools? Report written by Alan Smithers for The Sutton Trust. From Executive Summary:
The most recent international league tables of pupil performance differ considerably. England languishes well down the list in PISA 2009, stars in the Pearson Global Index 2012, and lies somewhere in-between in TIMSS 2011. This report seeks to explain the differences and highlight some underlying consistencies.
There are three main reasons for the different rankings:
- Countries are ranked on scores which may not be different;
- Different countries are involved;
- The tests differ and some countries are ahead on one but not the other.[...]
Secondary School Pupils
We can see how these differences play out if we look in detail at the maths performance of secondary school pupils as an example. PISA 2009 has England joint 27 out of 65 countries and TIMSS 2011 tenth out of 42.
If we want to be at least 95% sure that a country has performed above England, then there are 20 above England in PISA and six in TIMSS.
Of those countries, five are above in both: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
Eleven countries were above England in PISA, but did not take part in TIMSS: Belgium, Canada1, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macao, the Netherlands, Shanghai, and Switzerland.
Four countries were above in PISA, but not in TIMSS: Australia, Finland, New Zealand and Slovenia.
Russia was above England in TIMSS, but not PISA. [...]
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Report is a detailed analysis of the use of international league tables in political debates.
Three letters published in a recent issue of TES (1 Feb 2013) under the heading
The junking of chunking is bad news for maths pupils highlight what, in my opinion, remains, a serious flaw in the current debate on mathematics education: confusion between the content and methods of teaching.
The recent speech by education minister Elizabeth Truss and subsequent articles about mathematics (“Time to knock chunks out of KS2 maths, minister says“, 25 January) fill me with fear for the next generation of primary children.
Her straw man argument mischievously rubbishes well-tested methods currently being taught. So-called “gridding” and “chunking” are logical learning developments which help children later to understand formal written long multiplication and long division respectively. Teaching these new methods has relieved the problem of the failed maths teaching of the past century: many children who were taught traditional methods of calculation, without understanding how they worked, had little confidence in their arithmetic and became fearful of maths.
I would instead draw ministers’ attention to the most significant problem facing maths education now – the lack of high-quality maths teachers who are willing to enter and stay in a profession which is endlessly dictated to according to the career aspirations of rising ministers, eager to impress their political masters.
Ralph Manning, Lecturer in primary mathematics education, University of East Anglia, and primary teacher.
It would be very optimistic, or educationally naive, to imagine that we could find one definitive method for multiplication and division and that all children could successfully learn it that way.
Finding the most “efficient” method may be an easier task, but there is a difference between efficient and effective when one considers the individuality of pupils. The chunking method often requires more steps but that may be a trade-off for other disadvantages that some children experience, most notably the tendency not to try the task at all if it is considered “too hard”.
That was the less worrying part of the article. The bit that is truly fascinating is the way in which children and teachers will be encouraged to take a narrow view of learning maths. Children’s efforts will be judged on a basis that can be summed up as “no marks for thinking differently from me”. I feel that we are entering an almost Orwellian world where “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think”.
Steve Chinn, Bath.
Your article on primary maths raises the issue once again of whether or not politicians should be able to prescribe teaching methods. The legal situation is unclear. The Education Reform Act 1988 does proscribe the education secretary from prescribing teaching methods. But there is an ambiguity. Is doing long multiplication by traditional methods part of the content of the proposed new curriculum or is it one of the methodologies by which that curriculum is taught? If the former, then it can be prescribed by the government. If the latter, it cannot.
If challenged, Michael Gove would probably say that he won’t be prescribing how traditional long multiplication is taught but that it will be taught. I’m afraid the system lost the chance to challenge this issue when it capitulated on synthetic phonics.
Colin Richards, Spark Bridge, Cumbria.