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- Associate Professor
- IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment
- UCL Institute of Education
I am a mathematician and teacher of mathematics by background, having spent much of my career based in schools but with substantial responsibility for teacher initial and continuing development across the curriculum.
I am widely involved in national and international education policy development, aiming to support mathematics education policy that is evidence-based. I have been vice-chair of the national ACME (Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education) and President of The Mathematical Association, and currently serve on several national education fora, including as an officer of the Joint Mathematical Council of the UK, in Royal Society mathematics education consultative groups, and on the APPG for the Teaching Profession. I therefore bring to UCL research, and to policy roles, an unusual profile of expertise: a substantial and successful background in mathematics education practice in schools, complemented by practice-saturated engagement with research in my role as teacher educator in universities and schools and, informed by those experiences, over twenty years’ active engagement with national policy. As such, I would conceptualise myself as a ‘boundary player’ across the worlds of education policy, practice and research. My research is focused on the enactment of mathematics education policy in the classroom, and issues around equipping teachers and learners to do that in ways which empower them to be active mathematics users and thinkers.
My professional motivation lies in optimising my contribution to a full and confident development of the mathematical potential of the range of young people - in this country and more widely.
My research focuses on initial and continuing teacher development for widely-valued, but
ambitious, policy change – in this country, but also in a variety of second and
third world jurisdictions: what is needed to teach mathematics effectively -
what knowledge, skills and affect, and how can that best be acquired in
different contexts? I am interested in the answers to those questions
particularly in relation to mathematics education, but also in how answers to
such questions differ across disciplines: what is it that makes disciplines, their
learning and teaching, unique - and what can we learn from approaches in other
disciplines? I have developed a national and international reputation for my work in mathematics and teacher education policy.
At present I lead a group of ten researchers studying teacher
classroom enactment of recent changes in mathematics curricula 5-18 in England. We ask what it is that teachers draw on, how is that shaped by the available
resources, assessment, and teacher professional development, and what impact do
those have on student learning? Those projects span year 1 to A-level Further
Mathematics, complementing recent research on the development of A-level
teaching, and build on my personal research showing the necessary centrality of appropriate
teacher affect for deep change. At present they have an additional focus on the responses of schools to the COVID pandemic, and the impact of that on young people's learning. Outcomes have been incorporated into a number
of ITE and CPD courses in schools and HEIs in this country, and are shared with a range of policymakers and influencers, but also applied in Uganda,
Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. I am, or have recently been, PI for several other studies, and am a national mathematics specialist for current iterations of the PISA and TIMSS international assessments teams.
With teachers and teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa I am
researching effective, affordable and sustainable ways of harnessing technology
for teacher development - and working with them and with policymakers to
identify approaches that have been successful in similarly
resource-challenged contexts for supporting teachers to discriminate
among, and apply, what is available in a mathematically-informed way. Where
possible I try to collaborate with local mathematics education researchers for
such purposes.
Within the KOSS network I am researching the nature of especially
subject-specific knowledge within the school curriculum: what its current
nature is in the intended, enacted, or received curriculum and what it should
be, especially looking to the future, the relationship of those to disciplinary
knowledge in universities and the evolving nature of such disciplinary
knowledge, and comparative aspects of those issues.
I have taught on a range of ITE
courses at IoE (HE-led and school-led PGCE, Graduate Teacher Programme, School
Direct Salaried, and Teach First) and also on the Masters in Mathematics
Education and AMTEC, a short course available face to face or as webinar, for
early career teachers wanting to teach A-level Mathematics. Many of my
erstwhile students have gone on to study for a Masters or Doctoral degree. Much of my current teaching is of M-level dissertation or doctoral students - at UCL and internationally.
I run the UCL 'masterclass' for early career teachers of
mathematics, jointly with the UCL Mathematics department. I also lead a variety
of masterclasses and workshops for school students and teachers, under the
auspices of The Royal Institution and other bodies. As department ethics lead, I am particularly interested in teaching and learning around becoming an ethical researcher, and ethical responses to unanticipated situations such as the COVID pandemic.
I regularly work with teachers, policy makers and teacher educators in developing countries to support growth of evidence-based effective mathematics education for the twenty-first century: in recent years I have worked in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Armenia and Jordan. I have written and edited a variety of resources for use in crowded, poorly resourced mathematics classrooms, and these have been published by CUP or are freely available on the web, e.g. at www.aimssec.ac.za. I also work with emerging mathematics education researchers in sub-Saharan Africa to enhance regional capacity for such work.
I choose to have an active role in early career researcher development, including mentoring early career second supervisors and contributions to researcher development events. I am happy to consider approaches from potential doctoral (EdD or PhD) students whose proposals align with my research interests.
UCL Research students:
Nabiul Alam PhD: ‘Bangladeshi
rural girls’ participation in Higher Mathematics’
Jessica Barnecutt EdD: ‘Student-led mathematics learning in project based approaches: challenges, opportunities, and student perspectives’
Claire Dunnet EdD: ‘The effectiveness of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum
training for developing mathematical reasoning’
Stephen Abe PhD: ‘The impact of the Millennium Development Goals Mathematics
training in Jos Province Nigeria’
Despoina Boli EdD: 'GCSE Mathematics retake: a painful year or a change of mindset?'
Justin Kit Chu EdD: 'Student engagement in university biology: teachers' perspectives on their approaches to support engagement'
Benjamin Biney EdD: 'The role of metacognitive support on autistic children's learning of key geometric concepts'
Sumeyra Tutuncu PhD: 'Formative assessment for multiplicative reasoning: teachers and curriculum materials'
Peps McCrea PhD: 'Developing a theoretical basis for a curriculum for teaching'
01-OCT-2018 | Associate Professor, Mathematics Education | IoE | UCL, United Kingdom |
2017 | ATQ04 - Recognised by the HEA as a Senior Fellow | University College London |