Colaiste Mhuire **MA~O

INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONGriffith Avenue, Dublin 9

Tel:+3531 8057700 Fax:+3531 8335290

Email: info@mie.ie www.mie.ie

23 February 2011

A Chara,

In our capacity as mathematics educators in Colaiste Mhuire, Marino Institute of Education, we wish

to respond to the Draft National Plan to Improve Literacyand Numeracy in Schools. We found the

draft document to be stimulating and broad, with many worthwhile proposals. Although there are

many areas of interest to us, we respond in particular to three areas. They are initialteacher

education and continuing professional development in numeracy, the content of mathematics

textbooks, and the promotion of parental involvement. We finish by identifying three additional

areas that we believe merit further elaboration in the final report.

1. Mathematics Courses in ITEand CPO

Increased understanding of the importance of subject matter knowledge in teaching and pupil

achievement has occurred over the last three decades since Shulman (1986) introduced the concept

of pedagogical content knowledge. In mathematics education, research by Hill,Rowan and Ball(2005) has shown that teachers' level of mathematical knowledge can be worth the equivalent of up

to three weeks additional instruction in terms of pupils' gains on standardised mathematics tests.

However, the type of mathematical knowledge that benefits pupil learning is mathematics that is

applied to teaching, called mathematical knowledge for teaching. Letus illustrate this by means of

an example from Oeborah Ball'swork. Multiplying35 by 25 is something that teachers need to be

able to do and most people who have done fourth class maths can do this successfully.

35x25-875

..But teaching maths requires further knowledge. Inthe example below a child has done the same

calculation and got a wrong answer. Ifa teach~r is to help this child, the teacher first needs to figureout where the child went wrong. This is one of many examples of mathematical work, a kind of

applied mathematics that distinguishes a teacher's mathematical knowledge from the knowledge

needed by other people who work in mathematically intensive professions.

QUASI 51ELLI\E f-lICfl\"T

35

x 25

255

+800

1055

Measures of this knowledge have been used in an extensive study of Irishteachers' mathematical

knowledge and a relationship was shown between the teachers' scores on these measures and the

mathematical quality of instruction exhibited in the teachers' lessons (Delaney, 2010). Therefore, we

strongly recommend that courses in mathematical knowledge for teaching be a key part of teachers'

:nitidlteacher education prograrnmes and their continuing professional development. Modules and

courses in developing teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching would complement existing

modules and courses in developing effective teaching methodologies.

2. Textbooks

We agree with the statement on page 17 that encourages the alignment of classroom practice with

curricula rather than with textbooks. We recognise the importance of textbooks in supporting

teaching and learning in school. However, we also recognise that existing textbooks contain errors

and limitations (e.g. Charalambous, Delaney, Hsu,& Mesa, 2010; Delaney, 2005) that may militate

against the effective implementation of the curriculum. We recommend that any mathematics

textbooks used in Irishschools be approved on behalf of the Department of Education and Skillsby

subject experts with postgraduate qualifications in mathematics education.

3. Parental Involvement

The draft plan acknowledges the important role of parents in promoting literacy and numeracy.

However, the focus is primarilyon literacy and on information provision both at national and school

level. For parents to be active partners in promoting their children's numeracy, a supportive

relationship between parents and teachers is required. In order for this to move from aspiration to

practice,teachers need speciticguidanceon howto involveparents intheir children'snumeracydevelopment in a more meaningful way. In many cases parents only engage on the teachers'

professional terms and both pre-service and in-servicetraining is necessary to provide guidance in

how to develop partnerships which work (Schecter &Sherri 2009; Epstein & Sanders 1998 and Addi-

Raccah&Arviv-Elyashiv2008).

.IIn Marino Institute of Education an elective programme isoffered to student teachers to help them

understand the challenges and opportunities tnat can come from developing partnerships with

parents to support their children's mathematics education (for more see O'Dowd (2009)). Manyteachers have had little training to date in establishing partnerships with parents and consequently

we recommend that professional development for teachers in numeracy needs to enable teachers

to establish such partnerships.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the issues above and other matters with the authors

of the draft plan before they prepare the final document. Among the other issues that merit

attention are interventions geared towards changing teachers' beliefs about the teaching of

numeracy, initiatives to address gender-specific underachievement in numeracy and literacy and the

inclusion of references to research evidence that informs any initiatives proposed.

Yours sincerely,/

Valerie O'Dowd, M.5c.

..

Addi-Raccah, A. & Arviv-Elyashiv, R.(2008). Parent empowerment and teacher professionalism:Teachers' perspective. Urban Education. 43, 394-415.

Charalambous,C.V., Delaney,S., Hsu, H.-V.,& Mesa,V. (2010). A comparative analysisof theaddition and subtraction of fraction in textbooks from three countries. MathematicalThinking and Learning, 12 (2), 117-151.

Delaney, S. (200S). Mathematics professional development for primary teachers: Lookingback andlookingforward. Paper presented at the Mathematics education in Ireland: A researchperspective, St. Patrick's College, Dublin.

Delaney,S. (2010). Knowing what counts: Irishprimary teachers' mathematical knowledge forteaching. Dublin: Marino Institute of Education and Department of Education and Science

Epstein,J. & Sanders,M. (1998). What we learn from International studies of School-Family-Community Partnerships. Childhood Education. 74, No.6, 392-4.

Hill,H. c., Rowan, B., & Ball, D. L. (200S).Effectsof teachers' mathematical knowledge for teachingon student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 42(2), 371-406.

O'Dowd, V (2009). How can I use video technology technology to enable beginning teachers to workin partnership with parents in primary mathematics? Unpublished M. Se.Thesis,Dublin CityUniversity.

Schecter, S.and Sherri, D. (2009). Value added?Teachers' investments in and orientations towardparent involvement in education. Urban Education. Vo!. 44, No.1, 2009.

Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. EducationalResearcher, 15(2),4-14.

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