There is a place for Rote Learning?

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 After reading about how Irish and Swedish teachers facilitate more memorisation of facts than in New Zealand, I decided to read a little further about 'rote learning'.

I found this article with information about the rote learning of basic facts. While it contains some things I am already familiar with - the fact that knowledge of basic facts such as times tables frees up cognitive load and enables children to solve more complex problems.

The level of memorisation required by students is automaticity - they need instant recall. For example, do you know off the top of your head, do you know the 15th letter of the alphabet? What about 4 x 8?

8,16... is not automatic - it needs to be something that comes straight to mind. Otherwise there is still some cognitive load.

In order to reach this level of automaticity, it seems like a variety of approaches is needed. Students need to be exposed to basic facts in different contexts, multiple times to commit them to memory. I think this is an area we are going wrong - we are thinking that by giving them the same task on a regular basis - e.g. a times table website, that we are doing enough to support them to reach automaticity. However, perhaps we need to go a bit broader with this.

However,  I am not ignoring the fact that many high performing countries also use culturally responsive, 'real world' approaches to teaching maths. I have read a lot of research on this, particularly from the DMIC programme, which I do believe still has a place in the classroom.



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