Teach Secondary Issue 13.4

Illuminating maths Tom Francome explains how a new, evidence-informed curriculum is seeking to reimagine how maths is taught at KS3 T he Loughborough University Mathematics Education Network (LUMEN) recently launched a free, evidence-informed and fully resourced mathematics curriculum for KS3. I’d like to set out here some of the principles and challenges involved in this, and why we believe it’s an important step towards increasing equity for young people. Better performance at school will improve pupils’ life chances – but what do we actually know about how educational outcomes can be improved? Education policy often tends to focus on improving the quality of teaching – yet teaching quality is notoriously difficult to measure, never mind influence. However, one frequently overlooked area is the quality of the curriculum learners are taught. It seems obvious that curriculum considerations should be at the heart of educational practice, but in the interests of maintaining perceived professional autonomy, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of teaching is typically left underspecified. Instructional design Research has shown that the use of higher quality curriculummaterials over lower-quality materials can have a significant impact on pupil outcomes (see bit.ly/ ts134-MC1). Higher quality materials improve student learning via the reduced levels of time, expense and workload they require on the part of teachers. Narrowing the attainment gap is a complex problem that can’t be easily solved, but greater specificity about content does tend to enhance equity, as shown by the work of Steiner et al . (see bit.ly/ ts134-MC2). Furthermore, teachers will typically follow the order of curriculum materials, with the instructional design of said materials often influencing those teachers’ pedagogical approach. In the UK, we have a National Curriculum that specifies what to teach, but not how to teach it, with teachers left to figure out the latter for themselves. Broadly speaking, schools have two ways in which to proceed – curating the resources available to them in the online curriculum bazaar, or buying into a published scheme. Resourcing over planning The first option seems as though it would support teachers’ autonomy while providing a tailored experience for learners, but it vastly underestimates the complexities involved in teaching. Designing high- quality resources is difficult, and demands a very different form of expertise to classroom teaching. We don’t expect great doctors to invent the medicines they use, nor great actors to write the scripts they perform. What teachers need is the best available resources to teach the content – which they’re unlikely to be even able to source, given their limited planning time (less than sevenminutes per lesson, if using only their allotted PPA time), let alone use effectively after careful planning. With the bulk of their preparation time taken up with sourcing materials, teachers thus end up resourcing their lessons, rather than planning them. This can often lead to feelings of guilt, or a sense that there’s something better out there, if only they had more time to look. What’s worse is that even if teachers do have access to the best available materials, the job of actually sequencing them into a meaningful story for learners is no mean feat. This is because the best individual resources may use different, or even conflicting models and representations, further limiting the overall coherence – in the same way that a writer couldn’t be expected to make a coherent story by piecing together their favourite scenes from different genres. Quick and costly decisions You could be forgiven for seeing the option of using a published scheme as a superior alternative – but published schemes can have inherent design issues of their own. Teachers will naturally expect published resources to be thoroughly thought through, but they differ vastly in terms of quality and coherence. Busy subject leaders can often be forced into making quick and costly decisions based on just a brief look at the materials in question, with the (understandable) expectation that they’ll be of high quality. Only to discover later that they have superficial coherence at best, and aren’t informed by mathematics education, cognitive science, and/or educational design. In a 2014 policy paper titled ‘Why Textbooks Count’ (see bit.ly/ ts134-MC3), Tim Oates wrote of a ‘chronic market “WehaveaNational Curriculum that specifieswhat to teach, but not howto teach it” 64 teachwire.net/secondary