Maths teaching should improve for good results |29 October 2014

All children have the capability of understanding Mathematics and making progress, but if the teaching isn’t good and the resources aren’t good then we have a problem.

Brian O’Doherty, principal of St Patrick’s Loreto private primary school in Ireland, made this revelation to the media yesterday morning as he prepared to run a half-day workshop to introduce a new series of Mathematics textbooks – Cracking Maths.

The Cracking Maths textbooks are for primary schools and the aim of the workshop forms part of the education sector’s medium term strategy 2013-2017 to improve the numeracy skills and competencies at primary level.

Organised by the Centre for Curriculum, Assessment and Teacher Support (CCATS) of the Ministry of Education, yesterday’s workshop at the ministry’s headquarters contained two presentations.

First Mr O’Doherty talked about where Ireland is right now in teaching Maths and the journey the country has travelled to get to where it is now.
“It’s been a long journey, nearly 30 years to get to the stage where we are now. We looked at how we have made improvements in the teaching of Maths and obviously how the children have made improvement because the teaching has improved,” said Mr O’Doherty.

The second presentation was about the Cracking Maths series which has just been published in Ireland in April this year. Although it is new to the Irish market as well, Mr O’Doherty, a member of the team who devised and developed the Cracking Maths series, said it is something he has been involved with for 13 years.

“I was responsible for writing the P5 and P6 materials. We looked at the thinking behind this programme and why it was written the way it was written, and how it can benefit students in Seychelles,” explained Mr O’Doherty.

Asked if we can expect to see better results after the teachers have followed the workshop and received new resources, Mr O’Doherty replied: “It takes time to get results, but nothing can substitute from good teaching. A Maths book is just a tool; it can help a teacher and the instructional framework. So if the teachers are asking the right questions and are getting the students to think and speak mathematically this book will help.”

He added that “Maths is like a language and very often we think children aren’t able to use that language, so we use different words. Why do we teach them different words when we could teach them the right words? Maths is very specific and sometimes teachers are scared of teaching Maths. Like in Seychelles, primary school teachers in Ireland teach all the subjects and sometimes Maths is the one they feel least confident about because they’ve struggled with it themselves when they were in school. And then they think how am I going to teach this subject properly when I don’t really understand it?”

The teachers who followed the workshop learned about curriculum content; skills development; learning trajectory; instructional framework; eliciting, supporting and extending Mathematical thinking; classroom culture; and expectations of children.

When she opened the workshop, education principal secretary Merida Delcy said the ministry needs to continue exploring new ways of teaching, new resources which could be more adaptable to our students’ needs.

“We need to develop the capacity of our teachers and leaders in order for them to approach the teaching of Maths in a different light – as Mathematics is equivalent to everyday living,” said PS Delcy.

She added that the ministry has in the past run the Improvement Pupils’ Achievements in Mathematics (Ipam) project and in 2013 mathematics specialists from Singapore ran a week-long training for early childhood teachers to equip them with the necessary skills in Mathematics teaching in the early years.  A Maths week was also organised in 2013.

For his part, Dr John Nolan, special advisor on Education to the President, said that a teacher who is enthusiastic about Maths can make it easier for students to learn the subject.