COAG - Numeracy - a Review - And a Draft Submission From Two Guys Who Care. (July 23, 2007)

    Professor Hyam Rubinstein heads the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Melbourne while Jan Thomas is the executive officer of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute.  Together they have prepared, and made public last Thursday, a draft submission to the National Numeracy Review thereby inviting comment as regards the matters raised in the draft.

The National Numeracy Review is being undertaken by federal, state and territory governments under the auspices of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

Professor Rubinstein and Ms Thomas don't mince words, "[M]athematicians and statisticians have had few opportunities to be involved in school mathematics for a number of years. As a result serious misconceptions concerning modern mathematics are arising. This is particularly so concerning the role of foundation or ‘pure’ mathematics."

And in referring to the 70 page Background Paper which "was prepared in collaboration with Monash University and in particular, the National Numeracy Review Panel and National Numeracy Review Secretariat" they are unambiguous in voicing their concerns: "We are deeply disturbed by the failure of the Background Paper to address specific content, the apparent lack of knowledge of modern mathematical sciences, the inability to give examples of good practice documented from high-achieving schools, and failure to address Australian curriculum expectations compared to those of other nations, are all serious concerns. We can discern no logical way in which it could be used as a basis to accredit teacher education courses."

To bring home their point the authors refer to "a recent hearing [Brisbane 5/6/07] before the Senate inquiry into ‘standards’, [where] the President of the [Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, Thelma Perso] argued: 'From where I am sitting there is only a very small need for pure mathematics courses in this day and age, and that is really to service the high-end needs, such as people who work in the ABS and so on. It is all applied in the world that we are living in.'"

And as just one counter example they cite "Bioinformatics, a very new area of applied mathematics, using many techniques from pure mathematics and statistics."

Australia has just recently been invited to become an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL]. Without a sound mathematical infrastructure, Australian molecular biologists will be at a marked disadvantage when interacting with their European colleagues.

Clearly, Professor Rubinstein and Ms Thomas are appalled at what they perceive as the shallowness of thought and effort that have been put into the formulation of the Background Paper.

And in response to the AAMT president they write, "There is a more fundamental issue here—it is not possible to apply something [sensibly] unless you understand the fundamentals of what you are applying," while they point out to those who formulated the Background Paper: "Defining the content of mathematics expected of Australian students is a necessary first step in defining teacher standards. The Review [the National Strategic Review of Mathematical Sciences Research in Australia (http://www.review.ms.unimelb.edu.au/FullReport2006.pdf (p.53))] was greatly assisted by international reviewers who were able to give an objective, international perspective. As a matter of urgency, a similar process should be put in place to define standards for mathematics in Australian schools.

What are the concluding observations by the authors of the "Draft Submission"?

FINAL COMMENTS

As the above indicates, some areas are not well covered in the Background paper. Not covered here, or in the paper, is a significant amount of work in the US concerning teachers discipline knowledge e.g. Professors Wu and Milgram.

We reiterate that that we do not see how this project can proceed without a commitment to articulating what it is that students should know at specific year levels and that this reflect international standards. This should inform what teachers need to know.

A final comment concerning the National Review and teacher preparation

The international reviewers in the Review were unequivocal about what they considered to be ‘the neglect of the basic principle that mathematics be taught by mathematicians’ in Australian universities. This applies as much to education as it does to other disciplines. Clearly this means joint course development and probably shared appointments and teaching. The current director of AMSI was previously Head of mathematics as Delaware and his department taught 95% of the students. While education faculty members did some of the teaching, the responsibility for the courses was with mathematics.

If Australia is to develop the depth and breadth of mathematical knowledge it needs, many more university students need to be studying more mathematics. This includes students in education faculties as is exemplified by the data presented to the inquiry into teacher education by AMSI/ICE-EM.

Educational faculties face the same problem as schools—many of their more mathematically knowledgeable staff are reaching retirement and they will be difficult to replace. At the same time the increased funding for mathematics and statistics should enable new staff in mathematics and statistics departments. In the interests of Australia’s young, it would be very desirable if some of them could be new staff with a passion for the teaching of the next generation of teachers.

 

Attachment to the Draft paper