Transcript Slide 1

Investigating sustained NDP
practice
Dr Fiona Ell
University of Auckland
• What is the nature of the organisational
dynamic operating in schools that sustain
the numeracy development?
How can we see this?
• Practice framed by systems
• Desired change at the level of teachers
and children
• What supports ongoing quality practice in
teaching numeracy within a school?
2005 study
• Three levels – documentation and resourcing
(lead teacher interviews, collecting materials),
teacher interviews and video of lessons.
• Participants: two schools: urban, contributing, 20
teachers; rural, full, 7 teachers
• Five teachers at each school – lead teacher and
four others
• Two teachers at each school volunteered to be
videoed (selection issues)
Summary from 2005 study
• The two schools had contrasting approaches to
sustaining the project at a school level
• The teacher interviews confirmed the
importance of adequate resourcing and the
support of peers and lead teachers
• Videoed lessons suggest that confident teachers
are continuing to use superficial programme
elements as a framework for continuing to
explore children's thinking
• Further work on sharing of strategies and
refinement of strategies may be of benefit to
these teachers
2006 study
• Participants: two schools: urban,
contributing, 20 teachers; rural, full, 7
teachers
• Two Intermediate schools – one Auckland,
one Waikato
Participants
• City School
• Country School
• Two teachers interview and video of
a class lesson
• Six teachers
interviewed
• One of the teachers
had been interviewed
the previous year
• Two teachers videoed
– same teachers as
last year
What does it mean to ‘sustain’?
• Maintain and sustain
• Ongoing development and increase in skill
rather than ‘wearing off’ or reverting
• Staff continue to question, to engage with
numeracy, to be excited about their
teaching of mathematics
Top Down and Bottom Up
• Contrast between City School and Country
School in implementation
• Country School has now done policy and
formalised assessment procedures and the
sharing of data / setting of targets
• City School has continued to focus on
supporting staff who are new to the project and
on resourcing the teaching of numeracy.
(whiteboards)
City School Themes
• Interest in numeracy teaching and learning
has continued
• Staff turnover, training and support
• Simplification of processes
• Integrated curriculum
City School
• New staff involved in NDP contract
• Revised their assessment procedures and
recording requirements for teachers –
simplification
• Lead teacher doing observations and class visits
to colleagues – peer support
• Staff turnover a challenge – training profile
City School
Issues for the new teacher
- Children deviating from
the suggested script with
ideas that are
‘conceptually quite
difficult’
- ‘coming to grips with
actually explaining’
- Managing effective group
rotations
Issues for the experienced
teacher
- Finding manageable
ways to get teachers to
plan, assess and report
- Teaching the parents and
getting them on board
- Fitting NDP into an
integrated curriculum
approach
Country School - Themes
• Interest in numeracy teaching and learning
has continued
• Planning – meeting children's needs
• Strands
• Being creative and generative
Country School - Planning
• Five of the six teachers mentioned
planning as the hardest part of continuing
the project
• They reported spending half an hour to an
hour a day planning maths alone
• Planning issues linked to issues about
creativity and being generative
Planning
“At least half an hour a day just thinking
about…yes, we are doing this and how am I
going to teach it and what activity am I going to
have to support for that group, then the next
group that is their activity and the game that’s
going to help them support what they learnt and
then the third group I mean really I think you
plan six sessions at once and I find that really
hard. Sometimes you think ‘oh no…’ and I think
you have to plan it or it goes to pieces and it
doesn’t work.”
Teacher D
Planning
I am not sure whether planning is the right word
either, it’s just knowing where to go from here to
there and if they have been on that level for a
month, what’s a different thing I can do that I
haven't done before that is still teaching the
same strategy or the same knowledge. There
isn’t a book that says start here and keep going
and you’ll be fine…with the juniors you can do
today we will use cars and tomorrow we will sue
teddy bears so the kids don’t know they are
learning the same thing, but with the seniors you
can’t do that.
Planning
I have found that the planning of maths has become so
onerous…if you had asked me three years ago what
subject would I most like to give away it would not have
been maths abut now it is, simply because of the
planning. Everyday you have to think where are we at
today and where are we going tomorrow and it’s just
huge and I expect it to be getting less and it’s not…I can
relate to schools and individual teachers that have said
this is too much. I can relate to that. I’m not saying
anyone here would do that, and I certainly wouldn’t do
that but I can understand, and if I hear someone say that
I don’t knock them down, I think, OK, well I understand
where you are coming from.
Teacher A
Country School - Strands
• PAT profile – strands lagging behind
number knowledge; number knowledge for
children who had attended Country School
was very sound
• Decided to do blocks of strand work in
2006 – in 2005 had not addressed how to
do this
Strands
• Two teachers on video taught measurement
• Lesson features: warm up number games, use
of scrapbooks, grouping based on pre-test
results, small group strategy teaching,
questioning, pair-sharing, active exploration by
independent groups
• Change from previous practice
Strands
“I love the numeracy project but then I think maybe
it doesn’t incorporate the other strands. We just
stopped and did a four week block on
measurement and I find now that I have to get
back into the numeracy project all of a
sudden…they could blend in because you know
measurement is all counting and doing things
like that but it’s quite separate.”
Teacher F: newly trained in NDP
Strands
“We have reconsidered our policy at the school here to
ensure that we get coverage of the strands. In saying
that they have to know the number strand and I think
strand teaching is basically teaching vocab. I did a test
on the children and they had to measure the perimeter of
something. Because they didn’t know the perimeter they
got it wrong. Teach them the word perimeter and they
can add the numbers together or multiply them so they
still have their number knowledge. Its just getting them to
transfer what they know into different aspects of their
daily lives.”
Teacher D, experienced in NDP.
Country School – Generating new
Ideas
• The role of the resource in sustaining the
project
• Initial task framed as coming to terms with
the resource - relying on the ‘book’.
• Concern over time about repetition,
boredom, needing more material, not
knowing how to ‘make things up’ that fit
Summary
• Both schools are continuing to engage with
numeracy as a key focus
• Both schools still have staff involved in training
• City School interviews and observations
highlight the challenges of having a larger staff
and keeping everyone going, but also the
benefits of experts and novices within the same
school
• Country School interviews and observations
reveal planning and generating ideas as key
concerns for teachers. Consideration of other
strands has been a focus for this school.