Analysing teaching resources

A number of groups of teachers have found the AAMT Standards useful in their planning of units of work, through to their whole curriculum at the school level.

They have started by considering the Standards (particularly Standards 3,2, 3,3 and 3,4) to identify aspects of mathematics teaching pedagogy that they believe should be incorporated into the classroom. Discussion among the group has resulted in the identification of some key elements that they can agree are important in, for example, engaging the students in their particular school. Often they have had different language from that in the Standards to express these; and in some cases there are specifics that they add to the elements that emerge from consideration of the Standards.

They have then created a matrix in which the rows are the sequence of learning activities and the columns are these key desirable aspects of teaching — their agreed pedagogical priorities. Each learning activity is then analysed to see which of the desired features in present. This is recorded on the matrix.

When the matrix is analysed the teachers can take action to address any holes that emerge by either changing the existing activities or searching out new ones.