Teach Secondary Issue 13.4

failure’, in which high- stakes accountability compels teachers to demand exam-centric materials, prompting publishers to meet said demand. The upshot is that the exam specification becomes the de facto KS4 curriculum, while the developmentally important KS3 is left neglected. Aprincipled approach It’s these issues that the LUMEN curriculum aims to address. Drawing on the expertise of Loughborough’s Department forMathematics Education, it is intended to be a free, evidence-informed and coherent mathematics curriculum that presents a viable alternative to both expensive, often low-quality commercial materials and the time-consuming task of resource curation. The LUMEN curriculum integrates international research findings within its very design, and remains actively iterated upon via real classroom trials to ensure continual improvement. A particular emphasis is placed on coherence, with the curriculum seeking to unify topics through consistent representations and contexts, drawing on Leslie Dietiker’s notion of the curriculum as a coherent story (see bit.ly/ts134-MC4) . Recognising the pivotal role performed by skilled teachers, LUMEN also stresses the importance of effective collaboration between school leaders and teachers, and acknowledges the need for professional decision-making to be supported by suitable guidance. Cognitive science is able to provide useful insights into effective learning strategies that can often be overlooked in traditional approaches. We have seen increasingly frequent calls for school mathematics curricula to be informed by robust research evidence, yet teachers often report finding insights from cognitive science difficult to implement (see bit.ly/ ts134-MC5). In designing the LUMEN curriculum, we have examined several of the challenges in applying principles from cognitive science to the design of a school mathematics curriculum and tried to balance them (Foster et al , 2024). For example, we have prioritised the use of consistent representations – such as the number line – even where doing so might make things more challenging in the short-term, so that benefits can be reaped in the long-term. The LUMEN curriculumwill hopefully be useful for new and more experienced colleagues alike. It offers a free, editable starting point that teachers can then adapt to the needs of their learners, and could prompt some broader discussions around pedagogy. We additionally hope that its materials will offer a more compelling story for teachers to begin with, compared to a blank page, and provide helpful detail on both what to teach and how to teach it. We’ve seen how inequalities persist in mathematics education, with students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under- represented groups regularly facing significant challenges. Access to high-quality teaching materials informed by cognitive science could help to bridge some of those gaps, and offer a more equitable learning experience – regardless of socioeconomic status, gender or race. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Francome is a senior enterprise fellow at the Department of Mathematics Education, Loughborough University; for more information about the LUMEN curriculum and to access its free resources, visit bit.ly/ts134-LUMEN 5 KEY PRINCIPLES As detailed earlier this year by Colin Foster et al. in BERA’s Curriculum Journal, the development of the LUMEN curriculum observed five key design principles, which state that amathematics curriculum should: 1 Harness and develop the skills and expertise of teachers 2 Balance the teaching of fluency, reasoning and problem solving 3 Give explicit attention to important errors and misconceptions 4 Compare and contrast alternative methods 5 Engineer coherence through strategic use of consistent representations and contexts 65 teachwire.net/secondary M AT H S