Angela O’Sullivan, Chair of the ANTF and Leisa Nichols-Drew, Chair of the CATE-Net group
The 2024 ANTF symposium was a great success with inspiration and enthusiasm abounding amongst the hundreds of delegates. As Chairs of CANTF and CATE-Net, we presented AddEd Value, the NTF/CATE colloquium mathematics project.
We were not surprised that our session was attended by a select few. The very word ‘Mathematics’ can be a dampener for many people. Flashbacks of school days and difficult concepts and calculations haunt many of us. Do you remember being baffled by mnemonics like ‘Oh Has She Any Hot Cakes Or Apple Tarts’, without the context of Sine, Cosine and Tangents? But what do we need them for anyway?
Authentic assessment is becoming more and more embedded in education, but behind this it is essential for there to be authentic learning, using real world examples. We believe that this is a key factor in engaging learners in mathematics. We need to start with a reason to know, for example, the length of the hypotenuse. This might relate to computer screens, fabric, garden patios or whatever the individual is interested in. Then we need to introduce the concept of Sine, Cosine and Tangent to solve the query, not a formula for the sake of it.
If we could all learn mathematics linked to subjects that we enjoy, we believe it would be more engaging. The concept of a parabola is the same regardless of if it is about football, netball, basketball or hockey, but your mind is likely to relate to one of these sports more than the other. So, our idea is to do just this, introduce the Level 2 (GCSE equivalent) mathematics curriculum through a free online platform that enables the learner to choose the context of their learning. Once they have grasped the concept it is much easier to transpose this knowledge to a different subject area.
Many academics have already produced online mathematics resources, but they are disparate and difficult for learners to find. Our aim is to encourage NTFs and CATE winners to deposit or develop resources in an online AddEd Value repository which can be edited to fit with different and diverse real-life examples which covers the whole curriculum.
But we have to start small and hopefully, grow quickly, supported by the community. A Jisc mail call for interested parties attracted eight colleagues to an inaugural meeting and the symposium presentation attracted three more delegates. Now we are asking the community again, would you like to join us? It doesn’t have to be in a big role, we can weave together all our examples and expertise to make this cover all resources. This will hopefully give everyone the chance to look at areas of mathematics that they don’t understand and master it once and for all. You don’t need to be a mathematics teacher, we just need to know where mathematics is in your subject area and what you have done, or would like to do, to master it. Or you might be able to help us with setting up an online platform.
This is the beginning of a project that we hope will become a household name, AddEd Value, let us add value to education and break the mathematics stigma with our united enthusiasm and expertise.
Please contact Leisa in the first instance if you are interested: leisa.nichols-drew@dmu.ac.uk
Image: mathematics-math-pythagoras-theorem-teaching-formula.jpg (910×648) (pxfuel.com)
