28 March 2007
A ground-breaking project designed to improve maths teaching is set to be launched by Monash University, working in partnership with several other key education institutions.
Professor Peter Sullivan, one of the chief investigators on the project, said it would investigate the best ways to use classroom tasks in student learning.
"Currently some mathematics teaching in the middle years is repetitive, boring, and neither connected to reality nor other curriculum areas. We aim to explore alternate ways of teaching mathematics," Professor Sullivan said.
"One practical example of these tasks might be to examine the proposal to increase the width of a soccer goal by the diameter of the ball and how this might change scores in the game.
"Our goals are to describe in detail how the tasks contribute to mathematics learning, the features of each task type, constraints that might be experienced by teachers, and teacher actions that can best support student's learning."
The academics will work with middle years' teachers (Years 5 to 8) from volunteer clusters of schools, and focus on different potentially successful "task types". The school clusters are the Berwick South Cluster, the Merging Minds Cluster in Malvern, and a group of Catholic schools around Geelong.
What: Launch of "Examining the relationship between the documented curriculum, classroom tasks, and the learning of mathematics"
When: Thursday 29 March, 10-11am (most appropriate time for media)
Where: Monash Conference Centre, Level 7, 30 Collins St, Melbourne
Professor Sullivan said the project - a research partnership between Monash University, the Department of Education and Training, the Catholic Education Office (Melbourne), and the Australian Catholic University - had the potential to significantly improve the way mathematics is taught in Victorian classrooms.
Professor Peter Sullivan is available for interview on +61 3 9905 5400. For more details contact Mr John Watts on +61 3 9905 9201 or 0448 574 148.
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