Opinion30th August 2019
Lisa Coe is a Primary Development Lead for , one of 黑料情报站’s ventures, and works with around 30 primary schools across the UK. Prior to this role she worked as a classroom teacher, primarily in Upper Key Stage 2, and a maths lead. She takes an active interest in the development of mathematics teaching and reads and reviews education books as well as engaging with research and debate on social media. Lisa also speaks at conferences on a range of mathematical subjects including use of manipulatives and mathematical language.
When teaching, I have distinct memories of conversations with pupils that could have gone better. Specifically, points where I wanted a pupil to give a particular response to a word problem and they, for myriad reasons, could not provide it. So, I would engage in a series of ever more specific questions, ranging from 鈥榯hink of the word problem like this鈥 to 鈥榠t鈥檚 between 12 and 14鈥 in order to get said pupil to say the correct answer. Both pupil and I became increasingly more exasperated 鈥 me, because I just wanted the answer given in order to move on and the pupil because they did not know what was in my head, or why I was asking so many questions. Think about your experience 鈥 I bet that you can conceive of something similar in your own practice.
As practitioners, we can all identify moments in our teaching that didn鈥檛 quite work 鈥 where an interaction could have been better or where pupil learning could have been deepened. What do we do about such moments? More frequently in recent years, engaging in educational research has been seen to be the answer. Teachers have been called upon to have become more research-engaged or research-led, with the rise of conferences aiming to share research, blog posts frequently citing research papers, and teachers seeking research to back up classroom practice. Could research be the answer to improving my interaction with this pupil?
The potential challenge with research is that it can be difficult to apply to everyday classroom life. Recent publications by the and the show that although most teachers report that their school environments are conducive to evidence-informed practice, research evidence continues to have a small impact on teachers鈥 decision-making in comparison to other sources of information, including their own experience. Research findings can also be contradictory. Follow-up studies can produce different results, or research can be debunked. Growth mindset, based on research by Carol Dweck, is one such example, with follow-up despite teachers suggesting her approaches . The DfE identified that teachers felt more confident in research when it was corroborated by other findings, which can be a time-consuming and challenging task.
Despite these barriers, there are advantages to engaging with research. Hendrick and Macpherson in What does this look like in the classroom? note: 鈥溾hat we are finding out is that children are often more similar than they are different in how they learn 鈥 and what we are now beginning to gather is a series of 鈥榖est bets鈥 about effective practice in the classroom鈥. Although children are unique and practitioners work in a range of settings, research suggests some common threads in effective maths learning. Mathematics Mastery has used this research to develop their approach. For example, there is a wealth of research regarding the importance of representations when teaching mathematics. A number of studies and reports, including the , suggest that carefully considered representations, including concrete manipulatives, can be powerful tools for supporting pupils to engage with mathematical concepts. It is therefore possible to make a 鈥榖est bet鈥 that using multiple representations chosen based on pedagogical principles will support the development of conceptual understanding.
This year I completed the Mathematics Mastery Professional Development course, requiring participants to apply research in a cycle of planning, teaching and reflection. A teacher will read and reflect on research around a specific idea 鈥 task design or dialogue, for example 鈥 and plan a lesson or series of lessons based on this research. Within this course I came across some evidence-based ideas which reminded me of the classroom situation I once found myself in. In reading John Mason鈥檚 writing on , I learned about a strategy that he calls 鈥榝unnelling鈥. He describes this as the process of 鈥渁sking learners more and more precise and detailed questions in an attempt to find something that they can answer鈥. These are precisely the interactions I did not feel were successful in my classroom. My intention was not to emulate what the authors report, particularly in the case of highly contextualised small-scale studies, but rather to plan and teach lessons which I feel capture the 鈥榖est bet鈥 of the research. I decided to apply a similar strategy to that suggested by Mason: tell the pupil the answer and return later to engage in an exploration of why the answer was correct.
It is important to acknowledge that what I felt was a key message may not be everyone鈥檚 experience reading the research, but I don鈥檛 think this matters. What was important was that I identified an aspect of my own practice which research suggested I could improve and acted on this. This approach was successful; the pupil was able to articulate why the answer was correct without the need for a chain of ever-narrower questions to achieve an answer. It meant that they could focus on the mathematics rather than making numerous guesses to please me with a correct answer.
draws a distinction between the terms evidence-based and evidence-informed, and I feel it is the latter that characterises the way I have approached applying research to the classroom. Evidence-informed teachers bring various forms of evidence to bear on their practice, including knowledge of their pupils, understanding of their context and external research findings. Stoll says that in this case, teachers are in the driving seat, not the evidence; 鈥榚vidence鈥 is only as useful as the actions inspired as a result of it. I certainly found this in the case of my questioning.
Mathematics Mastery aims to transform mathematics education in the UK, by empowering and equipping schools to deliver world-class mathematics teaching. Find out more on the Mathematics Mastery .