Mathematips - January - professor Margaret Brown

Welcome to episode one of Mathematips - the Tes Maths Podcast with teacher and researcher Lucy Rycroft-Smith

You may never have heard the name Professor Margaret Brown, but for several decades now she’s been working on researching aspects of maths education in the UK – not only trying to find out what the current picture is, but crucially how to help make it better.

Her work has focused on multiplicative reasoning, one of the significant keys to mathematical understanding at all ages. (You pronounce it multi-PLIC-ative reasoning, for the record.  Margaret talks about pronouncing ‘matrix’ wrongly – like ‘mattress’ – for years until someone corrected her).

It is all about the deep understanding of multiplying and dividing, rather than just learning times tables or performing calculations, and starts with recognising when you actually need to use multiplication. It’s the basis for some very fundamental mathematical ideas, and can be a real sticking point for pupils who can’t then fully access other parts of the curriculum. It’s also, she says, "surprisingly under-researched".

Margaret mentions:

Patrick Barnby’s work on arrays  (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14794800008520169)  

Julia Anghileri’s work  (https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/anghileri/)

Dietmar Kuchmann’s work  (https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/dietmar-kuchemann(24527c88-0d0a-47bd-854d-9a88e19a1617).html)

The ICCAMS project (http://iccams-maths.org/) (investigating ways of raising students’ engagement with mathematics) 

The IMAP project (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/low-attainment-mathematics-investigation-year-9-students) looking at low attainment in mathematics

 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to episode one of Mathematips - the Tes Maths Podcast with teacher and researcher Lucy Rycroft-Smith

You may never have heard the name Professor Margaret Brown, but for several decades now she’s been working on researching aspects of maths education in the UK – not only trying to find out what the current picture is, but crucially how to help make it better.

Her work has focused on multiplicative reasoning, one of the significant keys to mathematical understanding at all ages. (You pronounce it multi-PLIC-ative reasoning, for the record.  Margaret talks about pronouncing ‘matrix’ wrongly – like ‘mattress’ – for years until someone corrected her).

It is all about the deep understanding of multiplying and dividing, rather than just learning times tables or performing calculations, and starts with recognising when you actually need to use multiplication. It’s the basis for some very fundamental mathematical ideas, and can be a real sticking point for pupils who can’t then fully access other parts of the curriculum. It’s also, she says, "surprisingly under-researched".

 

Margaret mentions:

Patrick Barnby’s work on arrays  
Julia Anghileri’s work 
Dietmar Kuchmann’s work 
The ICCAMS project (investigating ways of raising students’ engagement with mathematics) 
The IMAP project looking at low attainment in mathematics

 

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.