Engaging math for all learners

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The UK extends its revised secondary (high school) national curriculum to 15-year-olds from September. The focus is on engagement, and in particular engaging all learners — regardless of ability — with rich, varied and compelling math activities.

And to reflect the new priorities, the UK’s public examinations — the General Certificate of Secondary Education GCSE — will boost assessment of applications and problem solving from 20 per cent to 50 per cent.

“This does not mean that technical competence is no longer important, rather that just being able ‘to do’ mathematical techniques will not be sufficient,” writes Sue Pope of the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency^* in Mathematics in School.

“Students will need to be able to think for themselves and decide when and how to use their mathematics to tackle problems within mathematics and in other contexts.”

The new curriculum is ambitious and defines “an entitlement of experience for all learners.

“Rather than labelling learners and restricting access, the richness of the entire progamme of study needs to be made available to all,” says Sue Pope. “Whilst this may seem daunting, particularly if you are used to teaching level by level… it can also be liberating.”

Mick Waters, director of Curriculum at te QCDA: “If we want young people to do well in mathematics, it helps if they enjoy the subject… to see that the subject is fascinating and exhilarating, to see the way it affects everyday life and helps to change the world in which we live.

“We have to strike a balance between the challenge of incremental steps in understanding, knowledge and skills, and the joy, wonder and curiosity of learning.

“It is not about ‘basics’ and ‘enrichment, all children should have a rich experience.”

For students to develop problem-solving and mathematical thinking schools “their classroom experiences need to be rich and varied”:

A rich mathematical task…

❏ Engages everyone’s interest from the start,

❏ Allows further challenges and is extendable,

❏ Invites learners to make decisions about how to tackle the activity and what mathematics to use,

❏ Involves learners in speculating, hypothesis making and testing, proving or explaining, reflecting, interpreting,

❏ Promotes discussion and communication,

❏ Encourages originality and invention,

❏ May contain and element of surprise,

❏ Is enjoyable,

❏ Allows learners to develop new mathematical understandings.

The QCDA worked with some 30 UK schools to develop programs of rich tasks aimed at “combining understanding, experiences, imagination and reasoning to construct new knwledge”.

Tasks and case studies are spelled out in the downloadable Engaging Mathematics for all Learners.

^*Shortly after the election of a new Conservative government in May, the UK Department of Education announced legislation will be introduced in the autumn to close QCDA.