Teachers’ views on mathematics curriculum materials developed in a structured pedagogy program

• In Event: Foundational mathematics programs at scale: Affordances and challenges

Proposal

Malawi, like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, experiences low learner achievement in mathematics in primary and secondary school. One of the main factors underlying this low achievement is the poor quality of mathematics teaching in primary schools. As part of the efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning mathematics, in September 2024 the Malawi government rolled out a new curriculum under a structured pedagogy program which has a new set of teachers’ guides and student workbooks. These new materials are based on a large body of research on how students learn, and they integrate “best practices” for high-quality instruction. The new materials stand in contrast to the older set of materials, which teachers used for several years.
In this paper we present findings from a study that, among other things, explored teachers' views about the new materials in comparison to the older materials, and in relation to their understanding of how children learn the mathematics concepts. We conducted qualitative interviews with grade 1 teachers, focusing on two core concepts in primary mathematics: number sense and basic addition and subtraction.
The findings reveal that some of the approaches to concepts in the new materials contrasted with what teachers believed to be effective to children’s learning. This highlights the importance of understanding teacher knowledge, particularly the knowledge drawn from teachers’ experiences of how children learn specific mathematics concepts - what Ball, et. al. (2008) call Knowledge of Content and Students. We argue that if we want to improve the quality of mathematics instruction in early primary, it is not enough to provide new curriculum materials with structured pedagogy and ask teachers to follow it; instead, we need to understand the interaction between teacher beliefs about how children learn and the curriculum and use this knowledge to inform development of materials. We then offer concluding thoughts and recommendations both for future research and for program design and implementation.

Authors

• Mercy Kazima, University of Malawi

• Yasmin Sitabkhan, Math Mosaic Global