TEACHING APPROACHES


T LEVELS: ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN SCHOOL AND WORK


The new exams provide a big challenge for students so they can cross the frontier into a job with good maths skills. Help is at hand for teachers. By David Prinn


Levels are new, two-year, Level 3, technical study programmes that have been designed in collaboration with employers


to give young people the skills that industry needs. They will provide an alternative to existing qualifications and programmes including apprenticeships and A Levels. Unlike apprenticeships, T Levels will be mainly classroom-based, but they will include a mandatory industry placement of at least 315 hours in the students’ chosen industry or occupation. The first T Levels will start in September 2020. T Levels have a separate exit


requirement that learners must have achieved a Level 2 qualification (Functional Skills or GCSE) in maths and English. A frequently heard comment from


employers was that “too many young people have only learned to answer the sort of questions that are set on GCSE papers” (ACME, 2011, p.1). The maths required in work is very different from that taught in schools. School maths could be described as ‘complex maths in simple situations’, whereas work maths is often ‘simple maths in a complex situation’. Employers value young people’s ability to apply maths, including modelling and problem-solving skills. The use of computers in the workplace has become almost ubiquitous. This has changed, but not reduced, the mathematical skills required. The term ‘techno-mathematical literacies’ was coined by Hoyles et al (2007) to


REFERENCES


• ACME (2011) Mathematical needs: Mathematics in the workplace and in higher education. London: Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education. Available at http://www.acme-uk.org/ media/7624/acme_theme_a_final%20%282%29.pdf


• ACME (2019) Mathematics for the T Level Qualifications: a rationale for General Mathematical Competences (GMCs). London: The Royal Society. Available at: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/topics/education-skills/Maths/Mathematics-for-the- T-Level-Qualifications---a-rationale-for-GMCs.pdf


12 AUTUMN 2019 • InTUITIONMATHS


describe the fusion of IT, maths and workplace-specific skills required. T Levels will operate on the boundary between school and work, and the transfer of knowledge from one domain to another is often problematic. Some development of occupation- specific, techno-mathematical literacies will be required to assist learners in crossing the boundary, and technical specialists will need to be adept at identifying the maths (and English and digital) skills required in their context. To define the skills required, ACME (2019) is developing a set of General Mathematical Competences (GMCs). The GMCs will be sufficiently general to apply in most workplace situations, organise a substantial body of mathematical knowledge, emphasise the use of mathematical models, and ensure experience of using appropriate technologies to reflect how maths is used in the workplace. To explore some of these ideas, CPD courses, aimed at technical specialists, are being delivered on behalf of the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) by Claire Collins Consultancy and the West Midlands Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (WMCETT). For details on ETF support and courses visit bit.ly/CPDMathsandEnglish


David Prinn is a freelance maths education consultant and led on the development of the maths in T Levels CPD courses.


IDEAS AND TIPS FOR TEACHING MATHS EFFECTIVELY


By Peter Mattock


My one and only tip for teaching mathematics is to do it in a way that makes explicit the links within a concept, and between concepts. Often, we teach methods or


approaches that are good at one particular time, for one particular part of an idea, but make it harder to connect to other parts of the idea, or other ideas. Take for example the two questions below: 1. It costs 12 people £84 to go to an event. How much would it cost 15 people, if the rate stays the same? 2. Find the missing length shown in the triangle below, given that the two triangles are similar.


15cm


12cm 84cm


Both of these are examples of the same underlying mathematical idea, and yet the solutions will very often be modelled differently. To a student, they can appear as two completely unrelated questions, particularly if they are taught months or years apart. So how do we make the link explicit?


Well one way is to use a consistent representation. In this case something like a dual number line would be perfect:


We can see that in both questions the number line is the same, with the exception of the headings. Another thing that we can do is


ensure pupils understand the links with language. Students need to understand that ‘conversion factor’, ‘scale factor’,


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