Abstract
AbstractThis paper makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates over the direction curriculum reforms should take. It challenges claims that progressive pedagogies can exclude disadvantaged learners from gaining access to powerful knowledge and argues that greater attention needs to be given to learner agency and subject didactics. It reports on the findings from the Visible Maths Pedagogy research project, which aimed to develop and evaluate strategies for making progressive pedagogies more visible to mathematics learners. Evidence collected from student surveys and interviews suggests that these novel strategies were successful in heightening students' appreciation of the teacher's pedagogic rationale for employing progressive teaching approaches. They appeared to have a positive impact on students' mathematical engagement and awareness of how to achieve success in the secondary school mathematics classroom, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The findings highlight the potential of progressive pedagogies made visible for establishing an alternative didactic situation based on socio‐mathematical norms associated with ‘sense making’, rather than ‘answer getting’, which can help develop students' individual and collective agency. We argue that such a didactic situation offers a pathway towards a more equitable mathematics curriculum that enables wider access to powerful knowledge, and which forms an integral part of a school curriculum designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges currently faced by our global society.
Highlights
IntroductionThis paper reports on a participatory action research project carried out collaboratively by the authors (an academic researcher and two teacher researchers) in Stoke Newington School, a non-selective state secondary (age 11–18) school in London
This paper reports on a participatory action research project carried out collaboratively by the authors in Stoke Newington School, a non-selective state secondary school in London
|2 develop students' individual and collective agency. We argue that such a didactic situation offers a pathway towards a more equitable mathematics curriculum that enables wider access to powerful knowledge, and which forms an integral part of a school curriculum designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges currently faced by our global society
Summary
This paper reports on a participatory action research project carried out collaboratively by the authors (an academic researcher and two teacher researchers) in Stoke Newington School, a non-selective state secondary (age 11–18) school in London. This study explored the impact of adopting strategies for making progressive pedagogy more visible on students' learning. We consider the implications of the project's findings for contemporary debates around curriculum reform, those relating to powerful knowledge and learner agency. We explore the potential contribution that progressive pedagogies can make to developing an equitable and empowering mathematics curriculum capable of addressing contemporary challenges facing society. Given its apparently contentious nature, we have been advised on several occasions to avoid using the term ‘progressive’ in describing the focus of our study and in disseminating its findings. When we talk of ‘progressive pedagogy’, we are referring to collaborative, discursive, open- ended, problem-solving teaching approaches, which recognise multiple solutions to problems and embrace challenges, errors and misconceptions as learning opportunities (Boaler, 2008; Swan, 2006)
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