Numeracy

‘One of the biggest challenges facing educators is to find better ways to meet the learning needs of the many students who fall behind in our schools.’ In her latest Teacher column, Dr Sue Thomson explores the issue in an Australian context, and the progress made in recent years.

Research indicates that Indigenous children’s participation in organised sport leads to an increase of two to seven months’ learning in numeracy. Here, we look at the findings and the implications of this research for closing the learning gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Video gaming and non-academic internet use can improve student achievement, but moderation and timing are key, according to a new Australian study by researchers from the University of Southern Queensland and UNSW Sydney.

‘Evidence shows that both young people and adults need to have both sets of skills and knowledge – numeracy and mathematics are different, but mutually beneficial and critical. Hence the critical need to connect the two, and not ignore either.’

It’s well understood that highly effective school leaders promote the use of evidence-based teaching practices throughout their school. A new resource aims to support principals, learning leaders and teachers in thinking about their priorities and student needs in mathematics, and what the research says.

In Leading Improvement in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Emeritus Professor Peter Sullivan curates high-impact teaching strategies and practices to help school leaders achieve improvement goals. This extract for Teacher’s bookshelf is on choosing classroom tasks.

The International Mathematical Modeling Challenge asks students to work collaboratively on a mathematical task related to the real world. Here, Ross Turner, who leads Australia’s involvement in the challenge, describes this year’s task.

An international mathematical modelling competition, open to secondary students in Australia, has seen senior secondary students work collaboratively on a complex, real-world mathematics problem. Here, we speak to two teachers who guided students through the competition.

Young people are growing up in a world where they are required to be financially literate in order to perform common tasks in their day-to-day lives. A new report from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 focuses on financial literacy. Here, we take a closer look at the results.

Determined to lift the literacy and numeracy results of students at her school, special education teacher Jessica Colleu Terradas and her colleagues developed an intensive, individual instruction program for lower performing students.