Exciting news! Maths Pathway has been selected from a group of amazing applicants to be part of the first HundrED Victorian Spotlight. We’re one of 10 innovative education products that will be part of a travelling showcase around Australia, during which HundrED will share the amazing results Maths Pathway partner schools are achieving. We hope the showcase will inspire more schools to join our community, and the revolution to improve maths education for all Australian students.
Who is HundrED?
HundrED is a not-for-profit organisation from Finland that aims to ‘seek and share innovations in education’ around the world. They want to improve education by promoting educational innovations that are pedagogically sound, and that are helping drive a revolution to bring education into the 21st Century.
In the first line of their manifesto, HundrEd points out that the purpose of education is to help every child flourish, which is something we identify strongly with here at Maths Pathway. We believe that every child has the right to an amazing maths education, and that having a good maths education opens a multitude of doors for students as they move through their lives.
HundrED Spotlights
This year HundrED are running two ‘Spotlights’, one focused on Sustainability (based in California), and one in Australia to showcase the amazing education innovations that are coming out of Victoria (in partnership with Education Changemakers). You can learn more about the spotlight, and HundrED at https://hundred.org/en
HundrED announced that Maths Pathway is included in the Innovation Spotlight last night, to a packed room at the Hundred Spotlight Summit as a part of the EduChange Festival. It was a great night, and great to see some of the other awesome education innovations coming out of Victoria!
If your school doesn’t currently use Maths Pathway, but you’re looking for a way to deliver truly differentiated mathematics education to your students from a provider with proven impact, check out our 2018 Impact Report to see data that shows the incredible outcomes our partner schools are achieving. Alternatively, book a chat or demo through our website so that we can show you what we have to offer! mathspathway.com
January is a wonderful time for reflection and existential questioning. These articles give precisely that:
What’s the number one unexpected wow moment you had when learning maths? Check out other people’s responses in this lively twitter thread.
There’s something special about symmetry in mathematics, from geometry to algebra to number properties and beyond. Read on.
Pedagogy and practice:
Let’s talk teacher education:
On the topic of play…
What’s the difference between checking for knowledge and understanding? Why does this distinction matter? And how do you assess for understanding? Read on.
What’s stopping more women from getting into STEM careers? According to the CIO of Tabcorp, maths should be made more fun, general maths courses at a senior level should be compulsory, and greater parental education on career possibilities is required. The missing piece here though, is making changes to the STEM-industry itself so that it’s more attractive to women. What are your thoughts?
Chances are, the name Eddie Woo is not new to you. The YouTube-ing maths teacher has just been named Australia’s Local Hero. Listen to or read the speech he gave in his Australia Day Address.
Teacher, Karen Nottingham, on the challenges schools face and the policy implications: “ I started my working life in the Australian Regular Army in the mid ’90s and I did a stint as a police officer in far north Queensland. … But, I’ve got to admit, teaching high school in the suburbs of Sydney is a tough gig.”
What do St Christopher’s Catholic Primary School and Dapto High School in N.S.W. have in common? They are the first two Australian schools to be powered solely by renewable energy.
The CSIRO is partnering with Victoria’s Tech Schools to “help develop new Tech School programs, offer specialist expertise and, where possible, provide access to CSIRO equipment, researchers and educators”.
Schools of Opportunity is a project that recognises “public high schools [in America] that work to close opportunity gaps by creating learning environments that reach every student.” Here are the 2017 awardees.
What better way to celebrate the end of 2017, than with an Education Pop Quiz? Go on, I’m not stopping you.
And now, looking ahead in 2018, what can we expect in education policy? Read on.
Some N.S.W. news:
Well-being grants are being provided to Principals in the N.T., as part of the N.T. Principal Well-being Framework which was launched in 2017.
What does the year ahead look like for Principals in S.A.? Read on.
The minimum ATAR needed to study undergraduate teaching in Victoria has been raised to 65. Previously, the ATAR needed for some education courses had been as low as 30. This year has seen a 22% decline in the number of first-round university offers made.
In late 2017, the W.A. Government announced budget cuts to education including closing down the School of The Air. Following a backlash, this decision has now been reversed.
An online guide with key links to school education sites relating to policy, funding, data and government departments is now available thanks to the Parliament of Australia.
An incredible amount is spent each year by Australian families with children at private schools. Of 500 families surveyed in a recent study, only half are paying for fees using disposable income. See the chart on left for a breakdown of how parents pay for fees.
U.K. & elsewhere: Results from a survey of 20,000 primary school children internationally examines children’s career aspirations and the influential role played by gender stereotypes, socio-economic backgrounds and by TV, film and radio.
U.S.A.: The United States is ranked 35th out of 40 O.E.C.D. nations in addressing child poverty. However, two recent actions by Congress are not helping to turn this around.
The World: The World Bank has released its first ever report focusing on education. A critique by Pasi Sahlberg suggests that its analysis falls short in “ its use of the human capital view to analyze teachers’ work; its narrow view on teacher policies; and the mixing of facts and myths about Finland.”
What’s the attrition rate for early career teachers in Australia? Well, funny you should ask…
“Quoting a single, overall proportion of attrition suggests that it is possible to have an overview of the entire teaching population. …It would be disingenuous to claim that any single figure could refer to teachers leaving the profession because data are available which show that teachers move between states and sectors, and also leave and return”.
Paul Weldon’s article on defining and measuring teacher attrition in Australia is a must read. And you don’t need to look far for an example of the statistical use that Weldon describes.
2018 isn’t just the year, it’s a number with so much mathematical meaning…
“ [T]he simple problems I like don’t require much background to get into them. I like things where I can just start working. I’m impatient….I like to just get my hands dirty and start right away.” — mathematician Richard Schwartz.
On the mathematics of decision making:
Science that’s not to be missed: #1 Ice-diving drones are setting out on a risky Antarctic mission. #2 Carbon dioxide emissions from lighting were reduced by about 570 millions tons in 2017 thanks to LEDs. #3 Lithuania gave Pope Francis a nanoscale 3D printed nativity scene for Christmas. Just wow. #4 There’s a new dinosaur in town, and it’s 60 million years old. The Mansourasaurus was recently discovered by palaeontologists from Mansoura University in Egypt. #5 If you love maps or the Apple vs. Google debate, this is for you. #6 Is there a difference between female and male brains? Here’s what neuroscience research says.
Field collisions:
Ok, so I’ve saved one of the best pieces of news til last: a NEW PRIME NUMBER has been discovered. It has more than 23m digits. That’s not 23 digits — but 23 million digits. Oh, and it was found by Jonathan Pace, a 51-year old electrical engineer from Tennessee as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. My pleasure.
This list of mathematical headaches is more appetising than it sounds. The document, compiled by Dan Meyer, presents knotty questions and problems designed to compel students and create ‘intellectual need’. Speaking of the mathematically culinary, these geometry snacks from Alex Bellos are something to feast on.
This small change to how mathematical formulas and their descriptions are presented, has a massive influence on how easily you interpret them.
A study with bilingual speakers has found that the way you think about and solve maths problems, changes when using your mother tongue versus the second language. When problem solving in a second language, there is a greater reliance on visuo-spatial, rather than verbal pathways.
From a teacher on his decision to go ‘gradeless’, and the implications of assigning numbers:
By its very nature, accountability limits our focus to that which can be counted, ignoring the existence of anything unmeasurable or subjective.
What will it take for us to start thinking of accountability, not as a numerical concern, but as a responsiveness to the students in our care, a reciprocity that cannot be mediated by measurement?
Every year, the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training releases cohort analysis data showing the completion rates of higher education students over extended time periods. Here’s the latest.
The 34th International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education was recently held. Here are seven highlights from keynote speaker, James Arvanitakis.
Angelina Arora has found a way to turn discarded shellfish into biodegradable plastic. Arora has written 67 pages, detailing her work and maps of the atomic structure of a key protein involved. Oh, and she’s 15.
Well, not a school, but a recent report authored by 19 year-old Cassie Boyle and 16 year-old Brooke Johhnson gives voice to children and teenagers from Alice Springs and the worries they have growing up in the town.
Teacher, Matthew Dunne, on his work with ‘at risk and vulnerable youth’:
It’s very difficult to picture the students who attend this sort of school. Their experience of poverty and trauma makes them invisible to most other Australians. It’s easy to define them by the most shocking dot point list of their life, but that’s reductionist and crude.
The annual Closing the Gap report has been published. Of the seven targets related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, education and employment outcomes, only one (halving the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020) is on track to be met. Another report, Family Matters, has revealed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children “are now nearly 10 times as likely to be removed from their family as non-Indigenous children — a disparity which continues to grow.” Media are calling this the ‘second stolen generation’. New research out of the University of Sydney has found that, under the Northern Territory intervention, “birth weight dropped by 100 grams on average, and that school attendance fell by an average of 4 per cent in dozens of communities”. The Northern Territory Empergency Response was launched by the Federal government over a decade ago.
Approximately 65% of students in Tasmania currently complete Year 12. To turn this around, the state is changing the way high school is structured, with plans for all public high schools to be offering Years 11 and 12 by 2022.
Gonski 2.0: the fight continues. On realising that Commonwealth funds would stop coming in if they did not sign on, S.A. is now on board. Victoria has also reluctantly committed to the deal, but only for one year at this stage. Speaking of education expenditure, the Mitchell Institute is not impressed with the approach that has been taken by successive governments in over a decade. In a new report, they explain: “We see ad hoc, piecemeal spending across the system, suggesting that governments are not looking at Australia’s education system as a whole when deciding reforms.”
Over in W.A., budget cuts are being made to education in 2018. Regional and rural students are likely to be hit the hardest, with the School of the Air closing down, and six camp school sites being shut.
China (Shanghai): What’s the Chinese education system like from the inside? This interview dives in.
France #1: Compared with 50 years ago, parents around the world are now spending twice as long each day with their children — except in France.
France #2: The French government has imposed a ban on students using mobile phones in schools. Implementation and enforcement of the ban has not yet been decided.
Japan: What is the Japanese lesson study, and how is it used in initial teacher education? Read on.
New Zealand: To address declining levels of educational achievement, the New Zealand Government has announced that from 2018, “reporting will focus on children’s progress, rather than measuring them against arbitrary National Standards.”
O.E.C.D.: In many O.E.C.D. countries, for people born between 1985 and 1988 “the difference in the standardised scores between children with tertiary-educated parents and those without a tertiary-educated parent increases” between the ages of 15 and 25–28. For the data presented below, what do you notice? What do you wonder?
Source: OECD Education and Skills Today
United Nations: Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Underlying this is a challenge to ensure that quality and comparable data is collected at national levels. A new report describes what countries can do to make this possible.
Education research is complex and not at all static. So how can schools use research to better inform teaching practice? Read on.
Greater Data Science: There’s a difference between statistics in practice and statistics in teaching and learning. As this blog explains, the former includes data exploration, data transformation, computing, modelling, visualisation, and science of data science. The latter generally does not.
You thought ‘Chief Visionary’ was an interesting job title? An IT services firm has identified 21 occupations of the future. Amongst my faves: Ethical Sourcing Manager, Master of Edge Computing, Genomic Portfolio Director, and Fitness Commitment Counselor. Eat your heart out.
The case of the ‘cursed curve’: A team of mathematicians has just “identified the rational solutions for [this] famously difficult Diophantine equation”, a culmination of over 40 years of work.
We could all do with more Islamic art in our lives. Meet Engare, “a game of motion and geometry which draws on the mathematical principles of Islamic design”.
Looking for some summer holiday podcast listening? Intrigued by the idea of extraordinary stories from the world of numbers? Sum of All Parts is your one-stop shop.
The 2017 prize for the nerdiest, cutest twitter thread goes to @solvemymaths, who asked “What’s the coolest / rarest mathsy thing you own?” Please enjoy.
From the succinct and witty Ben Orlin, ‘Epitaphs in the Graveyard of Mathematics’:
