News

Our school has really immersed itself in the kinaesthetic style of learning! We love it and it has completely changed the way teachers, students and the community view maths as a subject now.

Hi Doug,
I am back from three weeks in South Africa and Malawi. I used several of the ideas inherent in Maths300 and the Mathematics Task Centre with three groups of primary or secondary teachers during that time, and I want to report that an approach using group work, cooperation, hands-on material and problem solving works brilliantly with teachers - and they tell me, it will also work with students - in Africa. There is an active interest in a new approach to teaching.

Outside of Australia there are more teachers, more schools and more districts in Sweden excited by working like a mathematician in best practice classrooms than anywhere else in the world. Mathematics Centre has just completed a nine day tour of Sweden involving 13 presentations from two hours to one day. At every one of them we met teachers wanting to sharing experiences of:

• modelling what it means to work like a mathematician,
• inviting students to apply the model for themselves, and
• meaningfully developing the toolbox skills of a mathematician.

Teachers in Sweden are supported and encouraged by a new national curriculum, applicable from next August, that has major strands of reasoning, communication, justification and problem solving. A positive development from which many other countries could learn.

We extend our thanks to Leif Lundgren, JL Utbildning, who organised this tour which brought us into contact with 550 - 600 professional colleagues over such a short time. Our thanks also go to long time supporters Per Berggren and Maria Lindroth, who arranged our initial meeting with Leif in November last; and to Ulla ヨberg who initiated our work in Sweden back in 1996 and has continued to nurture it throughout the years.