An Analysis of the Teaching for Mastery reforms in Mathematics in the United Kingdom

• In Event: Poster session I
  In Poster Session: Poster session 1

Proposal

In 2016, the Department for Education in the United Kingdom announced £41 million in funding to introduce and develop a mastery approach to mathematics teaching in primary and secondary schools, based on South-East Asian methods of pedagogy. This paper will explain the context of this reform, its goals, and explain how successfully it was implemented to help British children improve at Mathematics. Furthermore, it will investigate to what extent these reforms have stayed faithful of the intent of predecessor frameworks implemented in China and Singapore. The Teaching for Mastery reforms were designed as a reform to raise the understanding of Mathematics in Bloom’s taxonomy model; from understanding to synthesizing knowledge and applying it practically.
Building teacher capacity is the heart of the implementation strategy of the Teaching for Mastery reform in the United Kingdom. This paper will examine the strategy for teacher preparation and it aligns with the reform’s goals. The central goal of the NCETM is ‘to ensure that all teachers of maths ... have easy access to high quality, evidence-based, maths-specific continuing professional development’ (NCETM).
The NCETM’s ongoing professional development programmes address four elements of teaching practice: strengthening teachers’ subject knowledge, developing pedagogy to reflect the mastery approach, practice for student support and differentiation, and lesson planning and assessment. These changes are delivered through six strategic diffusion methods: the creation of 35 Maths Hubs nationally to spread best practice, the training of Mastery specialists, teacher work groups, an annual teacher exchange with Shanghai, the design of high-quality resources for teachers, and the provision of training to accompany the use of new Government approved Mastery textbooks. Professional development will be examined in relation to how it implements the goals of the reform and how it aids teachers to develop cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills in line with the twenty-first century competencies (21CC) determined by Hilton and Pellegrino (2012).
Speaking at a conference on Teaching for Mastery in 2017, Jane Jones HMI, Ofsted’s National Lead for Mathematics explained that the new curriculum ‘stressed that an objective of teaching was to create deeper understanding rather than to accelerate pupils into new content’ (Maths Hubs, para. 4). However, as the NCETM (2014) importantly recognized, ‘for many schools and teachers the shift to this ‘Mastery curriculum’ will be a significant one. It will require new approaches to lesson design, teaching, use of resources and support for pupils’ (p. 2).
To implement the teacher professional development programme, the NCETM set up 35 Maths Hubs, as part of ‘the wider development of school-led system leadership in England’ (Maths Hubs, para. 1). The Maths Hubs function to disseminate professional development from the NCETM at a regional level through a local outstanding school or college. Their primary aim is to ‘help schools and colleges lead improvement in mathematics in education’ by harnessing and developing mathematical leadership in the area to ‘develop and spread excellent practice, for the benefit of all pupils and students’ (Maths Hubs, para. 1).

Authors

• Christopher Gyngell, Harvard Graduate Schools of Education

• Hannah Blausten, Harvard Graduate Schools of Education

• Hannes Aichmayr, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• Natalie Spengler, Harvard Graduate School of Education