Developing Teachers’ competence in teaching mental mathematics in Grades 2 and 3

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Foundational Numeracy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Research on improving teaching and learning in primary school

Proposal

A broad consensus arising out of a number of research projects in South Africa is that the overarching problem with early number learning is linked to the persistent use of counting in ones in many public schools. As an example, analysis by Hoadley (2007) of the scripts of learners in a high stakes assessment at the end of Grade 3 revealed that for the question: 214+12=⎕ , many of the learners attempted to draw 214 object and 12 more objects and then counted all objects in an attempt to arrive at the answer. This inefficient strategy – evident in both teaching and learning practices – hampers learners’ progression to more efficient calculating strategies and negatively affects their facility with working in higher number ranges. One consequence of this over-reliance on counting in the Foundation Phase – Grades 1-3 (6 to 9 years olds) – is that when students move into the Intermediate Phase – Grades 4-6 (10 to 13 years old) and beyond – , they have a poor grasp of the base-ten numeration system and the related understanding of place value. In fact, research into the state of primary education in South Africa has indicated that a good number of learners fall behind by as much as 2-3 years below their actual grade by the time they are in Grade 6. To attend to this issue of counting in ones, the Wits Connect-Primary (WMC-P) project embarked on a research and development project aimed at strengthening teachers’ ability to teach number sense through structuring numbers and calculations using base-ten. 60 mathematics teachers/mathematics departmental heads in each of Grade 2 and 3 (totaling 120) in one District in a Province of South Africa were trained on the Jump Strategy and the Bridging through Ten strategy for adding and subtracting in mental mathematics. Students were given a pre-test and post-test for both control and experimental groups. There was coaching support, and classroom observations for the intervention group. Preliminary results from the study indicate that our efforts in the professional development of teachers yielded fruits through students' swift retrieval of number combinations for adding and subtracting single and multi-digit numbers. Beyond promoting rapid recall and strategic computation, we also noted that our strategies promoted students’ understanding of the structural relationships between numbers without necessarily depending on determining exact solutions for calculations.

Reference
Hoadley, U. (2007). The reproduction of social class inequalities through mathematics pedagogies in South African primary schools. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(6), 679–706. https://doi.org/10.1080/002202707012611694

Authors

• Mmatsela Kate Sehowa, University of the Witwatersrand

• Anthony Essien, University of The Witwatersrand