What Can We Learn from Other Nations?

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 I've already investigated the state of mathematics in NZ. We clearly have a problem and it is far wider than that of my own classroom. As Hannah, Clarelle and I are undertaking a collaborative inquiry, I decided to have a look at what other countries have done to increase mathematics on a far broader level.

I looked at our latest NZ TIMSS data in an earlier post, so today I thought I'd look at the countries improving their TIMSS results. This report compares the changes made in three countries improving their TIMSS score to the work that we do in NZ. The three countries were Austria, Ireland and Sweden.

In Austria the most obvious difference to me is the way the teaching profession is treated. Austrian teachers complete a masters course within their first five years of teaching. Specialist maths teachers are utilised from year 6 onwards. As such, their pedagogical content knowledge would be higher than many NZ teachers.

In Ireland, they have mathematics recovery, similar to the reading recovery that we have in NZ. They also offered funded maths PLD opportunities for teachers in 'project maths' since 2010. They also have a more clear curriculum, with maths goals for every year level (not every two years) and interrelated strands, such as measure, data, shape and space.

In Sweden, once again, there has been PLD offered and higher qualifications for teachers. There seems to be a bit of a trend in increasing teacher content knowledge.

In Ireland and Sweden there is more rote learning and memorisation of facts than in NZ. In all countries, teachers do more whole class teaching compared to NZ, where we typically teach small groups.

I am really not surprised by the difference in teacher content and pedagogical knowledge in maths. As a uni student, I voluntarily sought out a maths tutor who ran a free programme on teaching fractions. I also took a higher mathematics paper and focussed on maths for my dissertation,

However, I was shocked by a lot of the other students attitudes towards maths. "I didn't really like maths at school, I'll just teach the juniors" said one girl who was identified as needing to attend an extra maths tutorial due to her poor performance in a maths assignment. I remember her distinctly because the next year she got a job at an intermediate school.

That is not to say that all teachers share this same attitude towards maths, but they do exist and are able to graduate from university.

I am surprised that the countries in the study used more whole class teaching. The rote learning side I can understand - in England we had to know our times tables by year 4. Here, I've just spent three weeks trying to teach the three times tables to my year 7 and 8's.

But it seems that the teachers are using whole class instruction to teach full concepts, not just ten minutes of times table practice like we might do in NZ.

This is something that I would like to investigate further. 



 



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