Teaching strategies

Six key principles for effective teaching of mathematics are outlined in Peter Sullivan’s Teaching Mathematics: Using research-informed strategies (2011). These principles draw on work from a range of researchers in this field, including Good, Grouws and Ebmeier (1983); Hattie (2009); Swan (2005); Clarke and Clarke (2004); and Anthony and Walshaw (2009).

The six principles are articulating goals, making connections, fostering engagement, differentiating challenges, structuring lessons, and promoting fluency and transfer. Explore teaching strategies aligned to the principles below.

Identify key ideas that underpin the concepts you are seeking to teach, communicate to students that these are the goals of the teaching, and explain to them how you hope they will learn (Sullivan, 2011).

Build on what students know, mathematically and experientially, including creating and connecting students with stories that both contextualise and establish a rationale for the learning (Sullivan, 2011).

Engage students by utilising a variety of rich and challenging tasks that allow students time and opportunities to make decisions, and which use a variety of forms of representation (Sullivan, 2011).

Interact with students while they engage in the experiences, encourage students to interact with each other, including asking and answering questions, and specifically plan to support students who need it and challenge those who are ready (Sullivan, 2011).

Adopt pedagogies that foster communication and both individual and group responsibilities, use students’ reports to the class as learning opportunities, with teacher summaries of key mathematical ideas (Sullivan, 2011).

Fluency is important, and it can be developed in two ways: by short everyday practice of mental processes; and by practice, reinforcement and prompting transfer of learnt skills (Sullivan, 2011).