Proceedings of the Day Conference held on Friday and Saturday June 2023
Contents
Despoina Boli
UCL Institute of Education
In this reflective essay, the author shares her experiences and research journey focused on addressing the challenges that resit learners face when solving mathematical word problems. More specifically, she discusses the use of a mathematics revision workshop as an alternative method to collect qualitative data. The aim of the research is to better understand the prior experiences that GCSE Mathematics resit learners had with word problems and the approaches they had developed towards solving them. During the pilot phase of the research, learners were reluctant to participate in focus group interviews. The alternative method of a revision workshop on word problems emerged as a consequence of this. After careful consideration, a revision workshop seemed like an approach that would feel familiar to learners, increase participation, and benefit their learning. The workshop consisted of the following parts: a) learners’ reflection on their experiences with WPs, b) strategies for approaching and solving WPs with examples, and c) practice on past examination questions. Ethical concerns are addressed, emphasizing the voluntary nature of participation, informed consent, and the use of pseudonyms to protect participant identities. The author clarifies her role as a researcher, teacher, and curriculum manager to prevent potential power conflicts. The workshop successfully created a safe space for learners to share experiences, leading to valuable insights. This data, in turn, informed the development of an online survey, which is currently under analysis for her final thesis. Through this journey, her aim is to bridge the gap in research regarding resit learners’ perspectives and contribute to their academic success in mathematics.
Jennie Golding1, Benjamin Redmond2 and Grace Grima2
1University College London, 2Pearson UK
This paper reports on the post-pandemic ‘new normal’ in five fairly representative secondary mathematics departments in England, four of which were previously well-documented. It shows a significant move in these departments to PowerPoint-led lessons and away from textbook use, evidences renewed performance pressures, and identifies important features of teacher-level capacity and support as key in these schools to sustaining more ambitious learning experiences post-pandemic.
Jane Goodland
University of Manchester
Secondary mathematics classrooms often use modelling (demonstrating a technique for students to replicate), despite its inconsistency with a social justice approach. My paper looks at how the prevalence of modelling is part of a wider narrative of control and conformity that is linked to the neoliberal political landscape.
04 Cultural and Demographic Factors affecting Mathematical Confidence in England
Sophie Harris
Manchester Metropolitan University
This paper acknowledges the Mathematics Teacher Exchange Programme in attempt to tackle the gap in Mathematical attainment between pupils in the UK. By drawing on primary data collected within secondary schools in England, this paper presents that Mathematical attainment is much more complex due to the differences in demographics and the cultural and educational norms of pupils, which affects their Mathematical confidence and impacts on attainment.
05 The challenge of teaching and learning Angles: A pedagogic intervention
Henry Iberi
Oldbury Academy
This paper examined the reasons why students have difficulty with learning angles and reported on some successful pedagogical solutions. In this research, a case study is presented that illustrates how altering teaching methods and carefully utilising customised materials could promote advancements in the teaching and learning of angles.
Gamze Inan
University of Cambridge
This paper aims to interpret Critical Mathematics Education (CME) through the integration of a Foucauldian approach, with an emphasis on the nature of mathematics. To effectively apply CME and achieve its ‘liberatory’ objectives, the use of Foucault’s concept of power provides a language and analytical tools to challenge prevailing conceptions and discourses in the mathematics classroom and to define mathematics as a discourse based on its constitutive and constructed aspects within the mathematics classroom.
Laura King
University of Derby
This constructivist grounded theory research explores the enactment of maths mastery pedagogy on the experiences of Key Stage 1 children of learning mathematics, through the lens of social justice. Data is co-produced with children and teachers to examine whether social justice in primary mathematics education is enacted through mastery pedagogies.
08 Higher Applications of Mathematics: A new qualification to increase post-compulsory participation
Jamie Lawson and Sue Pope
Research and Evaluation, Scottish Qualifications Authority
This paper evaluates the success of Higher Applications of Mathematics, a new qualification in Scotland designed to increase participation in post-compulsory mathematics. Early data indicates the course is achieving its aims in providing an alternative pathway focused on developing real-world mathematical and statistical skills.
Volodymyr Proshkin1, Mariia Аstafieva2, Oksana Hlushak3 and Oksana Lytvyn4
1Loughborough University, 2, 3, 4 Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine
The study reveals the problem of improving students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics using a digital learning space. To form students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics based on the Graasp digital tool, an educational space for studying the topic “Derivative” has been developed. Under the guidance of a lecture, students can explore mathematical concepts and the relationships between them, formulate hypotheses, experiment, ask questions, draw conclusions and discuss the results obtained.
Suchismita Srinivas
University of Cambridge
This paper discusses the use of Collective Biography as a research method to examine discourses of mathematics teachers around the notions of ‘ability’, ‘educability’, and ‘inclusion’. It argues that this method has the potential to develop researcher-practitioner collective agency to develop alternate visions of ‘inclusion’.
11 Performance in GCSE Mathematics topics pre- and post-reform
Joanna Williamson and Carmen Vidal Rodeiro
Research Division, Cambridge University Press & Assessment
This paper contributes new findings on how GCSE reform affected students’ mathematics learning, by analysing candidate performance in GCSE Mathematics assessments. We compared the performance in different mathematics topics of approximately 250,000 candidates from the final three years of pre-reform GCSE Mathematics (2014-2016) and the first three years of post-reform GCSE Mathematics (2017-2019).