Thank you very much for inviting me, I'm just going to say something about me first, because
I'm aware that a lot of people on this zoom call here, in this room and a lot of you probably don't
know anything about me, so if that's all right 30 seconds about me, well I was one of those people
who did math degree and decided that I wanted to do something else before I became a teacher
but I didn't find something else, so I became a teacher so straight into teaching,
a few years in school time off for a family and then I sort of fell into an fe college I thought
I was just going to you know see what was going on down there after I'd sent my cv and said you've
got any work they were basically trying to make me do the job they were so short of math teachers
so I'm sure other people have been in similar situations by the way if you want to put - your
images back up on the screen it's really nice if I can see a bit of an audience, but you don't have
to if it's going to make life difficult for you - so there was and I found myself teaching maths
and physics to beauty therapy students I hadn't a clue why they were learning math and physics
and and then a bit of you know gmbq brickwork students or something like that and it was great
fun but it was a bit challenging because I really wasn't used to that sort of thing,
after 20 odd years I think I got a bit used to it and now it's still home when I go back,
but after 20 odd years I did find the something else and I went to university of Nottingham did
a PhD in maths learning and functional skills and then have stayed there ever since working
on various research projects so that's me so what have we done today, well I'm going to ask you a
question first which is, what have you learned today? Not what have you learned about, we can
all go back through the program saying what we've learned about but what have you actually learnt?
So not just what you've learned about, that sounds like a good idea you might take that,
what you learned about you and your teaching and your college and your classroom, that actually is
going to make a difference to the way you go forward, it's going to change your practice,
well I don't know and I could ask you to put lots of things in the - oh teaching fe is hard
somebody's already put something in the chat yeah it is hard this guy's only yeah there's all sorts
of potential to do all sorts of interesting things teachers and learners are difficult well you know
as a manager I did find one or two tricky teachers but everyone's got the students interests at heart
at least everyone here I think has got the students interests at heart and that unites us
even if we might rub each other up their way from time to time have different ideas, so,
lots of things that we might have learnt, apart from what we've learned about,
so first of all I'm going to just make a few comments about the different presentations
you might be in this room all the time and heard them all you might not but um here in this room um
we started with Elaine and Sam from Christ the king sixth form college
really interested in that it was about motivation engagement if there's one thing that
everyone wants to know about it's motivational engagement and getting these students to attend,
if you can't get them to attend how on earth are you going to teach them, so if they're
not going to come how do you engage and how do I actually get them there but I like the way
you extended this now and to look at student confidence and link it to their retainment,
that question about, what aspects help most is a really tricky question that you brought up
because actually you're looking at a whole package of things
and inevitably in action research you want to do more than just one thing,
and when you're dealing with typically a social problem, you can't just separate things out,
so you looked at different approaches in an outside class and this whole idea of mentoring
and supporting students in different ways with different approaches is important it's
something that came out something earlier I did that a mentoring a support a coach that sort
of role alongside a math teacher, can be really effective, so thank you for bringing those things
to our attention Elaine and Sam there's some really useful things in there to think about,
and we went on then with Margaret from Stamford to look again at the different models or ways
in which things might work, and this is a combination of using software and study mentors.
Now this is again really important to think about what exactly you need to do to get the right
impact so you did mention some caution about LSA's and that it was better when people had a maths
specialism but they actually could contribute more that way so the general support the LSA
gives is important but the maths specialism is important too if you want to take it further
but we have got a problem haven't we where do we get all these people from
that are also math specialists, so we're always limited by the context in which we're working
and that's important for number two there's some things we might want to do really really can't do.
So again we we're thinking about that supporting students we moved on to Leigh at Grimsby and some
really detailed work there on re-engagement techniques using the maths motivator,
and one of my questions about a maths motivator when I first heard about it was what is that role
how did you define that role what is one of the most important bits of that role?
I could see that a huge amount of work has been done building on what you've done before
careful tracking and the interesting bit about what students like, and what they found was of
most benefit to them, and you know sometimes you have students what they like and actually they
just like to go home they don't want to be there anyway so you know that's what they really like,
and so asking about the things that they like is often asking them about the things they're
comfortable with, but we all know that in order to learn you have to be a bit uncomfortable as
well so you can't you can't just think about what what's nice and comfortable, there is a
point in which we need to put people in a comfort zone so that they can develop confidence but you
have to expand beyond that some really important principles there I think that you know come out of
the work on zpd and that have been translated into this sort of environment so thank you very much
Leigh there for bring those things out Laura Tameside yours was was very much focused on
the A03 questions using some of those techniques that we've all read about about growth mindset and
how to use group work effectively but orientated very much with examination and that raised
question in my mind which I'm gonna return to at the end about, what we do this for.
We are doing it because they need to pass an examination but is that all we're doing.
So a combination really although this exam orientated there was also this idea of a great
mindset and developing students confidence and ability to look further um we also had
growth mindset then with with Nadra, Judith and Barbara from Lakes and partners by the way when I
mentioned college I do mean partners and rather involved sorry for that, and the brainology
and highlighting things like fear of failure belief that you can't succeed and got a fixed
ability all those things we're familiar with those aren't we see it so often that students
can't believe that they could do maths they can't believe that they're going to succeed
and sadly when they do succeed and they pass the exam what's the best thing about passing exam I
once said to a group of students, 'we don't ever have to do maths again', oh but actually is that
really what I want that students come to the end of it and think great and never have to do maths
again, maybe not, so thank you for stimulating some thinking there around growth mindset and
sharing what you're doing, they're in actually in practical terms. Molli and Kai from Preston
work on neopod found that fascinating because I think about eight years ago I was involved in
a project where neopod was one of the digital technologies that was being used and there's a
paper on that somewhere this was what we did, was very much framed by how does it enhance formative
assessment how can you use something like neopod to get better formative assessment techniques so
I think that's raised a lot of interest, but an interesting there a different response to digital.
So a response to neopod that was quite positive obviously outside the classroom but
early on some of you said yeah the students were not that keen on century or whatever it was so
this again something that I've seen in my research the mixed responses to digital technology because
it isn't just the technology, it is the nature of the technology, but it's also how you use it,
and that influences how students respond to it they're not all going to respond in the same way
if it's being used differently so that's something to think about and finally Katie at Plymouth,
lovely presentation again about the environment in which math is being
taught, and the development of mathematics outside the classroom in a different environment, and,
reminds me again that environment is so important and even if you're not outside the classroom
what sort of culture and environment you create within the classroom is also important
so I found some really interesting stimulating things from all of those things I'm sure you found
different things as well but that's just from my perspective in me, so overall quick sum up,
I was really pleased to see the quality of the action research over time has improved,
I can see a better appreciation methodology and some really good use of exploring other
literature and other research before you look at your own context and what you can do there
with it. I can see resonance with a lot of larger scale research that I'm aware of
so you can see the same sort of things coming through and that's why it's good to read that
to see what's out there and then think how you really apply that in your early environment,
secondly - oh sorry that was my secondly, consistency with larger scale
research is really heartening to see that, that research is becoming a part of fe practice,
and that's one of the best things we can do to become those reflective practitioners
that try things out but in a way that is a little bit more formal, a little bit more structured,
as a piece of action research in our context. What does come through though is this
idea of complexity, and the difficulty of get any sort of causal relationships between doing this
and the results and that is the nature of what we're doing here,
we're working complex environments, education, teaching and learning
is complex, and so we might not be able to single one thing out and say that caused that but,
the other thing I mentioned earlier about a package, on the whole we're not looking
at just one tiny thing, we're looking at how we might put strategies together
and when you start putting a package of strategies together if you get the right package together you
get a synergy and you achieve more than the sum of the parts so think about the package
that you put together and how the bits complement each other rather than trying to sling everything
at it all at once without thinking about how they fit together because I think that really helps us.
Finally - no not quite finally, the purpose of what we're doing is really important, so
one of the biggest problems is as you know is that students are coming with images of mathematics and
experiences mathematics that are not helpful and so if we can put them in a different environment
if we make the culture of classroom different if we can get them to move into the growth mindset
we can get them to be more resilient, then there's a chance of moving beyond that image that has had
in the past and one of my recent papers is about that very transition from the image of maths it's
quite common in society that it's unachievable it's for the elite people who can do math
it's not enjoyable it's a bit of a mystery moving from that image of math to an image of maths
with a can do yes this is for me I identify with mathematics in a positive way,
making that transition is important however we do it, so, changing attitude, confidence, behavior
so that they pass the exam and they go beyond it it doesn't just stop there. My final mention
I can't get away from this one at the moment is the whole idea of scaling up, you know you start
something small you think this could be better if you could do it on a bigger scale somehow,
I'm going to just throw one thought in your mind which is one that we're dealing with, with the
whole college approach at the moment and one of our key things about scaling up is that it
isn't just scaling up, scaling up is about elevating something from being a practice
to a policy, actually getting it not just embedded, but, addressed at policy level
as well, scaling out is about where you're increasing the numbers that are involved
and that's what a lot of you I think are wanting to do to get more people involved more teachers
involved or more students involved in what we've been doing but there's also an element,
a third dimension here, of scaling deep, scaling deep means fundamentally changing
hearts and minds beliefs and behavior and I guess that's really what we're
aiming for because that is if you can change beliefs you've got something more sustainable,
so I'm going to leave those thoughts with you because I've said plenty and my time times done
but thank you very much, and congratulations to everybody who's contributed, those who
have been presenting it's been fantastic listening to you and all those behind the scenes who have
been involved in your colleges as well and your partner colleges, so thank you very much.