Higher than what?

With its world heritage site Greenwich can potentially create a university that combines the best of the old with something new. That this does not happen automatically shows that the French sociologist of education, Pierre Bourdieu, was wrong in his contention that higher education is all form and no substance. But what is the substance of ‘higher’ learning? Higher than what? Further than where? as Sir Toby Weaver, author of our 1965 Woolwich Polytechnic speech, asked. Some would answer that higher education’s (HE) ‘higherness’ comes from specialisation but this is also the case in further education (FE). Others would assert academic freedom allows HE teachers to set their own courses linked to their research interests. However, although there is not (yet) a National Curriculum for HE, many programmes of study have long been agreed with professional bodies. And in an institution where the main activity of most staff is teaching or supporting teaching, research and scholarship exist, we admit, only in ‘pockets’. So this is not distinctive either. Therefore, when we are pushed to characterise ‘higherness’, we fall back on what we often look for in student assignments: A critical analysis of the information required. This is seen as ‘deep’ rather than ‘surface’ knowledge. Yet these tacit notions are often confused so that we know them when we see them but find them hard to justify explicitly. This contribution to Greenwich’s new pedagogic journal seeks to do this as simply as possible in the interests of stimulating debate and innovation

Developing purposeful mathematical thinking: a curious tale of apple trees

In this paper I explore aspects of the ways in which school mathematics relates to the “real” world, and argue that this relationship is an uneasy one. Through exploring the causes of this unease, I aim to expose some problems in the ways in which context is used within mathematics education, and argue that the use of context does not ensure that the purposes of mathematics are made transparent. I present and discuss a framework for task design that adopts a different perspective on mathematical understanding, and on purposeful mathematical thinking

School Achievement and Labour Market Outcomes

Achieving well in school, and completing Year 12, have significant employment and earnings outcomes for young people a decade or more after leaving school. Early school leavers have less chance of securing full-time employment, and a problematic early start in the labor market can be difficult to overcome.LABOUR MARKET ; EDUCATION ; SKILLED WORKERS

Building and assessing subject knowledge in mathematics for pre-service students

In planning and teaching curriculum courses for pre-service primary teachers, both within a one-year Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) programme, and in a four-year undergraduate degree leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), we have always been aware that mathematics presents particular problems because of the experiences and attitudes students bring to the subject. We have always tried to balance students’ learning about how children learn mathematics in school, with reflection on their own experiences as learners, and with understanding of the mathematical content of the curriculum. In the past, mathematical content has generally been approached indirectly through discussion of activities and materials appropriate for the primary classroom. However the recent introduction in the U.K. of a National Curriculum for Primary Mathematics in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) which places considerable emphasis on students’ subject knowledge, has meant that we have had to rethink the balance within courses, and to place much more overt emphasis on developing students’ mathematical knowledge. In this paper we describe the way in which we have approached building and assessing mathematical knowledge during the pilot phase of the ITT National Curriculum, examine some of the students’ responses to our approach, and discuss the issues this has raised

The construction of meanings for trend in active graphing

The development of increased and accessible computing power has been a major agent in the current emphasis placed upon the presentation of data in graphical form as a means of informing or persuading. However research in Science and Mathematics Education has shown that skills in the interpretation and production of graphs are relatively difficult for Secondary school pupils. Exploratory studies have suggested that the use of spreadsheets might have the potential to change fundamentally how children learn graphing skills. We describe research using a pedagogic strategy developed during this exploratory work, which we call Active Graphing, in which access to spreadsheets allows graphs to be used as analytic tools within practical experiments. Through a study of pairs of 8 and 9 year old pupils working on such tasks, we have been able to identify aspects of their interaction with the experiment itself, the data collected and the graphs, and so trace the emergence of meanings for trend. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers