in the classroom
Not adding up
Analysing the new maths curriculum and increasing student engagement .
Greg Asham interviewed by Emilie Lauer
Mathematics has made the headlines recently . Amongst the issues are a new curriculum , the lowest enrolment rate ever in Australia for Year 12 students , and peak bodies advocating for better mathematics education .
According to Head of Mathematics and Research at Ballarat Clarendon College Greg Asham , the new curriculum is in itself “ not bad ”, but “ won ’ t do much to address Australia ’ s decline in maths performance ”.
Asham believes the current situation could be turned around if students felt a sense of achievement with the subject .
He joined Education Review to discuss the new curriculum and what we could do to bring Australian maths education back in line with international standards .
ER : What are your thoughts on the Maths program in the new curriculum ? GA : Well , it ’ s not as bad as it could have been . When the draft was released early last year I had a number of concerns . The delaying of content like times tables and linear equations , and quite a few other things , from what we have in the previous version was a concern .
It also very heavily pushed a particular teaching style previously , which is problem-based learning or inquiry learning , which I ’ m not a fan of . I want a curriculum document to be neutral on that and not enforcing a teaching style . The version that was released is better .
In other words , we ’ re back to square one . They ’ ve got rid of the stuff at the start that really promoted problembased learning and inquiry learning , but I don ’ t think it ’ s going to do much to address Australia ’ s decline in maths performance .
Throughout the curriculum , there are elaborations that are supposed to give guidance on how you might meet content objectives , and they are still very heavily promoting inquiry style learning . So , anyone that follows the investigations will essentially be following a particular kind of teaching style .
They ’ ve introduced stuff that I ’ ve been calling for , which is to define what students need to be able to do without using a calculator . That ’ s a feature of the curriculum in Singapore and something that I think is valid and useful and something that could knock through into NAPLAN and how we assess this .
In summary , it ’ s not as bad as it could have been , but it ’ s not the sort of curriculum that is world class .
What is lacking from your point of view ? I ’ m probably not the expert here . I would defer to a certain extent to mathematicians who teach undergraduates , because part of the purpose of a maths curriculum is ensuring students are prepared to take maths at a high level .
I understand not everyone is going to do that , but we do need some people to . If we don ’ t have lots of high level mathematicians being produced by universities , the only alternative really is to try and get people from overseas with those skills .
But there are certain things like the standard algorithms for doing multiplication , division , addition , and subtraction , things like long division – they should feature in there because they are the most powerful tools we have for doing those processes without a calculator .
If you want students to understand how these things work , if you want them to be the designers of future calculators and things like that , they have to have a good grasp of these procedures .
I think it ’ s not very ambitious . Kids are actually capable of a lot more if taught well , if taught efficiently . They ’ re capable of reaching some of these objectives earlier .
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