1. Concept: What is Numeracy and why is it important? Specifically, we are exploring this relationship with learning and content through the lens of 'numeracy'. Before we can explore how we 'feel' as learners, let's unpack how numeracy is defined. Numeracy complements literacy and is sometimes called 'mathematical literacy'. Both skills are needed in order to function fully in modern life. Being numerate means being able to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts and to apply these in a range of contexts and to solve a variety of problems. https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/what-numeracy ...students become numerate as they develop the knowledge and skills to use mathematics confidently across other learning areas at school and in their lives more broadly. Numeracy encompasses the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that students need to use mathematics in a wide range of situations. It involves students recognising and understanding the role of mathematics in the world and having the dispositions and capacities to use mathematical knowledge and skills purposefully. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/numeracy/introduction/introduction Numerical skills emerge during infancy and the preschool years when children are exposed to different quantitative and spatial relations in everyday activities. http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/numeracy To be numerate is to use mathematics effectively to meet the general demands of life at home, in paid work, and for participation in community and civic life. In school education, numeracy is a fundamental component of learning, discourse and critique across all areas of the curriculum. It involves the disposition to use, in context, a combination of: • underpinning mathematical concepts and skills from across the discipline (numerical, spatial, graphical, statistical and algebraic); • mathematical thinking and strategies; • general thinking skills; and • grounded appreciation of context. October 1997 report of the Numeracy Education Strategy Development Conference cited in Numeracy Policy - AAMT www.aamt.edu.au/content/download/724/19518/file/numpol.pdf Therefore, an ideal learning world, we should see numeracy across all areas of the curriculum, in multiple contexts and bringing forth a range of skills and ideas with confidence. It could be a case of learning numeracy through another discipline e.g dance. Number Duets: dancing times tables from Artis on Vimeo. You don't need to watch all of this video!! OR Teaching Dance through Numeracy You don't need to watch all of this video!! Assignment Idea: Where does numeracy fit in relation to your own teaching? Write some ideas about how you saw numeracy taught/learnered/included in placement (could be directly related to your photo), how you have taught numeracy yourself in the placement context (early childhood, primary or secondary mathematics), where it could be included in your method area (secondary other)? Which of the definitions speak to you in terms of how you see yourself as a teacher of learners? Numeracy as Policy - Primary/Secondary You have entered the teaching profession at a time when 'literacy' and 'numeracy' skills of teachers are being forefronted in education policy via the compulsory LANTITE testing attached to your degree. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/new-teachers-fail-to-meet-literacy-and-numeracy-test-before-entering-classrooms-20170130-gu1nn6.html So how did you feel about your own relationship with numeracy? Were you one of the confident group? Were you worried about your own numeracy abilities? Or was your fear or confidence related to previous success or failure in sitting tests? Our students in schools are asked to sit a numeracy test in every alternate year of compulsory schooling from Year 3. How might they be impacted by their own confidence around knowledge and skills in numeracy or ability to successfully sit tests? Testing times - 60 Minutes, 2013 A You Tube clip from 60 minutes, critiquing the NAPLAN system Assignment Idea: If our education in numeracy is 'hijacked' by high stakes testing (LANTITE, NAPLAN, PISA) - then what are the risks for the learner relationship with learning in/about/through numeracy? Or any other discipline? Read further p138-9 in Chapter 4: Understanding and motivating students in your Churchill text to learn more about the potential impact of standardized testing. 2. Creating a Cognitive Conflict Remember, Nottingham said that this is where we have two ideas that are in conflict with each other. For many learners, numeracy makes perfect sense. Coding and decoding, logic, patterns, problem solving - all of this makes perfect sense. For others, the thought of engaging with numeracy at any level brings on a shudder-inducing panic! Luckily, most of us fall somewhere in between. So a Cognitive Conflict might be:  Numeracy is an important learning area and therefore is something we should ALL do well at in our schooling  Teachers and learners have variable relationships with numeracy in their own teaching and learning and therefore NOT everyone does well Why is this? What about this as a Cognitive Conflict?  Learners who love mathematics can perform poorly at high stakes numeracy tests like NAPLAN or vice versa OR EVEN  Teachers who position themselves as co-learners in mathematics as part of their pedagogy might perform poorly in LANTITE tests Teacher who perform well in LANTITE might feel inadequate bringing numeracy into their teaching  Remember, when you create a cognitive conflict, it needs to be appropriate to the learning stage of your learner. In this video you can see a learner working with her teachers and her peers to extend her learning and solve a learning pit problem. While the numeracy concept is quite simple, it is an appropriate challenge for this learner, relative to her knowledge, skills and experience. Assignment Idea: Select or create a cognitive conflict around the theme of numeracy and/or learning that might become part of the discussion in Assignment 2. The conflict might be to do with: - your own learning experiences - think about your own attitudes to being in the learning pit in this course - something that you observed or were given feedback on from placement - your confidence in relation to certain learning content/methods How does such a cognitive conflict allow you to understand what your learners might be encountering in their learning? How can you connect your own cognitive conflict with how learners might dis/connect with learning or particular learning content? How can you connect it with your own confidence, beliefs and practices (potential or enacted) as a teacher? 3. Construct by Exploring the Relationships Further There is a possibility that our relationship with learning or learning content i.e. numeracy, has been compromised or enhanced by our personal beliefs, experiences and motivations as learners and this will impact our confidence as teachers of numeracy. Read these articles about teacher beliefs and the teaching of content. While the methodology sections are useful for your research training in this unit, you can skip straight to the 'stories' in both articles. Why were the stories about literacy qualitatively different to those about numeracy? What are your own learning stories in relation to numeracy? Or some other area of the curriculum where you might not feel very confident in your own abilities? As a music teacher, I have had a lot of students tell me that they aren't musical. How do you move the learners or yourselves beyond this negative conception of curriculum? Carol Dweck gives us some idea about what happens in relation to identities, beliefs and experiences as learners in her research on Growth Mindset. Pay particular attention to what she has to say about external rewards and Praise. Examine your own learning in this course to determine if you have a Growth Mindset. Now read the case study on p199-120 in Chapter 4 Understanding and motivating students in your Churchill text. What advice might you offer this teacher about her students? The rest of this chapter is pretty useful when you are thinking about your own practice as a teacher. What do you know about learner motivation? How will you create an inclusive learning-friendly environment where every child can fulfil their potential? How can you create learning experiences that encourage learners to take up further challenges? How prepared are you to challenge yourself? 4. Consider or SO WHAT? BEWARE: Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset' http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html Just because we say we're encouraging Growth Mindset doesn't mean that we're always doing what we say! You might want to consider the stories of these two teachers in relation to what you saw in your placement school/centre and in relation to how you are starting to envision your own pedagogical practice. Can you see that while both teachers are working in the same school on a similar curricula program, they are interpreting differently? Are they both right in their approach? What might the 'learning pit' be for the teachers? For their learners? Do they both create the opportunity for the 'cognitive wobble'? How would you connect their approaches to growth or fixed mindset? How motivated would you have been as a learner in their programs? Consider what it might 'feel' like to enter into both classrooms. Prescribed readings There are four chapters of your Churchill text that intersect in this moment as you think about learner confidence, the nature of curriculum and assessment and inclusive learning-friendly environments. We don't expect you to read them all again now but you might want to consider re/visiting some sections as you move toward your second assignment task. Chapter 4: Understanding and motivating students (hopefully, you've been engaging with this chapter on your way through this module) Chapter 6: The curriculum (a short but useful chapter that will help you to think about how you work with curriculum as a teacher on behalf of your learners) Chapter 8: Pedagogy: the agency that connects teaching with learning (we've used this chapter already in this unit) Chapter 9: Organising the learning environment (consider, specifically, the 5 pillars or Key Principles model - p303-319 - for organising the learning environment and how these might enhance the learner relationships with learning and with learning content) ‘Carol Dweck Revisits the “Growth Mindset” - Education Week’, retrieved from Churchill, R, Godinho, S, Johnson, NF, Keddie, A, Letts, W, Lowe, K, Mackay, J, McGill, M, Moss, J, Nagel, MC, Shaw, K, Ferguson, P, Nicholson, P & Vick, M 2016, Teaching: making a difference Third edition., Wiley, Milton, Qld, retrieved from Corey Drake ‘Storied identities: Teacher learning and subject-matter context’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, ‘Counting flowers - NQS PLP’, retrieved from . Enyedy, N, Goldberg, J & Welsh, KM 2006, ‘Complex dilemmas of identity and practice’, Science Education, vol. 90, no. 1, pp. 68–93. Nagel, M 2016, ‘Chapter 4: Understanding and motivating students’, in Teaching: making a difference, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, Milton, Qld, ‘NAPLAN 60 min 20 Sept 2013’ 25AD, retrieved from ‘RSA ANIMATE: How To Help Every Child Fulfil Their Potential’ 2015, retrieved from Recommended Reading/Viewing ‘Environments for learning - NQS PLP’, retrieved from Fleer, M & Raban, B 2007, ‘Early childhood literacy and numeracy: Building good practice’, retrieved from . Godinho, S 2015, ‘Planning for practice: connecting pedagogy, assessment and curriculum’, in Teaching: Making a Difference 3e, John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Milton, QLD, pp. 212–253, retrieved from Harris, Pauline; Chinnappan, Mohan; Castleton, Geraldine; Carter, Jenni; de Courcy, Michele; Barnett, Jenny ‘Impact and consequence of Australia’s National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) - using research evidence to inform improvement’, TESOL in Context, vol. 23, no. 1/2, pp. 30–52, ‘Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman’ 2009, retrieved from ‘Math dance: Erik Stern and Karl Schaffer at TEDxManhattanBeach’ 2012, retrieved from ‘Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Motivating People to Learn | Edutopia’, retrieved from ‘New teachers fail to meet literacy and numeracy test before entering classrooms’, retrieved from . ‘Newsletter 22: Being numerate - NQS PLP’, retrieved from . ‘Number Duets: dancing times tables on Vimeo’, retrieved from . ‘Numeracy Activities | Literacy and Numeracy Week, Australian Government’, retrieved from . ‘Numeracy videos’, retrieved from . ‘Numeracy | Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development’, retrieved from . ‘P–10 Literacy and Numeracy indicators and monitoring maps [Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority]’, retrieved from .‘What is numeracy?’, retrieved from