search.noResults

search.searching

dataCollection.invalidEmail
note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
FOREWORD


WE CAN DO IT! LET’S INSPIRE STUDENTS WITH A POSITIVE ATTITUDE TO LEARNING MATHS


A quarter of 16-year-olds leave school without GCSE maths and may feel they’ll never master it. Innumeracy is a huge failing of our society and the challenge for FE teachers is to ensure learners are confident with numbers. By Bobby Seagull


W


ith or without a calculator, can you work out what a five per cent increase to a £9 per hour wage is?


According to research by the charity National Numeracy, nearly one in two adults would struggle with this. It is sobering to think that 17 million adults, nearly 50 per cent of the working age population of England, have the numeracy levels we would expect from primary schoolchildren. This is quite shocking. (The answer was £9.45 in case you were wondering.) I have to declare my interest in maths before I write. I teach maths at a secondary state school in east London and I am also doing a Doctorate in Maths Education at Cambridge University. Before moving into education, I had


worked in finance, as a trader at the investment bank Lehman Brothers and then a chartered accountant at PwC. So you won’t be surprised to read that numbers are an important part of my life, and indeed strongly tied to my identity. Speaking to friends who are teachers


in further education, some of them say that they struggle to get students through their courses. This is in part due to many students arriving at college with low confidence and maths anxiety. We have to ask, why might this be the case? Newspaper headlines for the past couple of decades might give the impression of ever-rising grades. Yet if you delve behind the headlines, the story behind maths is more complex and nuanced.


Looking at Maths GCSE results since


the introduction of the new exams in 2017, the proportion of 16-year-olds not getting a grade 4 or above has remained


around 27 per cent. Grade 4 is roughly equivalent to the old C grade, with 9 being a super-charged A*. This means that more than one in four of our 16-year-olds leave Year 11 without a pass qualification in GCSE Maths. And more than that, they now have a damaged view of themselves as someone that can’t do maths.


Sweaty palms? A racing heart? A lump in the back of your throat? The average person on the street may


not have heard of the term maths anxiety formally, but it is likely they, or someone they know, may have suffered from it. Teachers in further education are


likely to have taught students who are hampered by maths anxiety. Speaking off the cuff, maths anxiety is a negative emotional response when dealing with maths. It can happen to children as well as adults, whether in the classroom doing long division or in the real world when splitting a restaurant bill. Academically, maths anxiety has been described as a “feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in ordinary life and academic situations”. (Richardson, F. C., & Suinn, R. M. 1972. The Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale: Psychometric data. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 19(6), 551-554.).


One of the most damaging myths out there is that of the ‘maths brain’, that only a certain kind of person can do maths. There is research (especially from Professor Jo Boaler at Stanford University) that shows that there is no ‘maths brain’. I personally believe that we have


positive or negative experiences of the subject at school, and this shapes our view as learners of maths. In the UK, there needs to be a wholescale shift in attitudes towards mathematics and numbers. It is acceptable, almost a badge of honour, to tell friends loudly that “I can’t do maths”. Yet if anyone proclaims that they can’t


read or don’t read, the reaction would be one of shock. And rightly so – illiteracy in modern Britain is an unacceptable failing of our society. But equally, innumeracy should not be tolerated in a 21st century modern economy. We need to ensure that students leaving school not only have a Maths GCSE but, more importantly, have a sense of number confidence that they carry with them for the rest of their lives.


Bobby Seagull is a school maths teacher and Maths Education Doctorate student at Cambridge University. He is the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers and co-presenter of the BBC TV series Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide.


InTUITIONMATHS • AUTUMN 2019 3


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16