Publications

Research in medicine regularly makes new and better treatments and procedures available to patients.  What would you think if you were only ever offered the same treatments your doctor learned about on qualifying 20 years ago?

In a controversial speech in the1990s, David Hargreaves highlighted the way that medical professionals use research findings to inform the decisions that they make about treatment for their patients, in order to make sure they give the most appropriate care, with the greatest likelihood of success. He argued that the same was not true in schools and challenged education professionals to think about why there did not seem to be the same approach in schools to using research.

In order to explore these issues further the study looked at the following four key areas:

·         how did local authority officers, heads and teachers use research findings for school improvement?

While the mathematics education community has placed a great deal of emphasis on the need to connect mathematics in the classroom to the real world, there is evidence that in practice this happens infrequently. Research shows that teachers often:

 regard issues around behaviour and learners’ poor reading skills as obstacles to discovery learning

 have difficulties in recognising the mathematics that arises in the workplace, and

 only introduce real world connections in a cursory way rather than as an integral part of the curriculum materials and activities.

However, while there is a consensus in the findings of researchers investigating this topic, the actual volume of research is rather sparse.

The author of this study conducted a survey of 62 secondary mathematics teachers to find out about whether and how they used real-world connections in mathematics lessons. The author then explored the findings from these interviews by observing teachers making real-world connections in the classroom and comparing the outcomes from the survey with the observations.

People routinely gesture with their hands when they talk, and these gestures often convey additional information not found in their speech. This study investigated the impact on teaching and learning when 8-9-year-olds used hand gestures to solve maths problems

The authors wanted to know if gesturing would bring out implicit knowledge during problem solving; that is the knowledge that can be observed in pupils’ behaviour but which they cannot not express verbally or explain.

As a result of a two-part experiment, involving over 170 children, the researchers found that telling children to gesture while explaining their solutions to novel maths problems can be beneficial in two ways. Firstly, some of the children were able to identify new and correct problem-solving strategies. Secondly, gesturing made the children more receptive to teachers’ instructions on how to solve the problems, thus leading to learning.

The researchers’ results and conclusions about problem solving will be interesting to all school practitioners particularly those involved with SEN children.

"Over the next five years implementing the curriculum, assessment and qualification reforms will present significant challenges to teaching and learning. Schools will need to:

• develop teacher capability to deliver reformed GCSEs and A levels, including a focus on preparing pupils
• for the new style of examinations
• develop teachers’ ability to undertake assessment that evidences pupil progress in learning
• build capacity in middle and senior leadership related to curriculum design and development"

So says the Guidance Paper recently published by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) - with CUREE and TDT – setting out why its members should be as aspirational about the development of their professional colleagues as they already are for their students