Australian Mathematical Society

Submission from the Standing Committee on Mathematics Education

Leigh Wood, Chair, Standing Committee on Mathematics Education (leigh.wood@mq.edu.au)

Dann Mallet, OLT Project Leader, Threshold Learning Outcomes in Mathematics (dg.mallet@qut.edu.au)

29 April 2013

School Mathematics

The main change in school mathematics that will affect members of the Australian Mathematical Society in the next decade is the implementation of the national curriculum. This will mean that students around the country will be studying the same mathematics level and content. The effects are predicted to be:

• More mobility. Students will be able to move between states for university study (already noted)
• In states like NSW, fewer students will do advanced mathematics options due to the deletion of the 3 unit component
• Universities will need to revise their first year mathematics offerings due to the school curriculum changes

University mathematicians will have the opportunity to provide professional development to school teachers particularly in the areas of statistics and financial mathematics.

University Mathematics and Statistics Learning and Teaching

Trends

The current trends will continue. Mathematical Sciences departments will continue to have large numbers of students in first year and this may increase with the implementation of the national curriculum. This is no bad thing as departments are able to use the large numbers of students to induct them into good mathematics learning habits and more applied approaches to mathematics especially using technology such as Excel. The Mathematical Sciences should use this captive first year audience to enthuse their students about mathematics and convert these students to studying more mathematics/statistics at higher levels.

Mathematics departments will come under funding pressure and need to make their teaching products applicable to the areas they are servicing (such as engineering) and the industry they support.

Regardless of appropriateness or otherwise, the MOOC revolution will impact on large class teaching as university administration seeks to reduce costs. Academics should seek to understand and exploit the benefits of MOOC-style teaching as well as be prepared to write off that which is not applicable or beneficial for use in their own teaching.

TEQSA and Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs)

There will be more government oversight of the outcomes of our mathematics degrees and programs. Students will be required to demonstrate achievement of program goals, and demonstrate threshold learning outcomes using an assurance of learning process (below). A project, led by Dann Mallet, has developed TLOs for mathematics. These TLOs can be used as part of a whole-of-program approach to demonstrate alignment of student learning and program goals with standards such as these Discipline learning standards and the requirements of the Australian Qualifications Framework for different levels of degrees.

Assurance of Learning Process

PhD education

The committee welcomes the variations and extension of PhD programs to eight years to include higher level coursework. Models such as 3+2+3 (eg Macquarie, Melbourne) and 3+1+4 including industry internships give students greater flexibility and choice in their research programs. Collaboration on offering some high level subjects will make these viable.

Future

Mathematics learning at university will move closer to the way statistics is taught with integration of technology reducing the need for repetition and rote practice. Students will move to engage in higher level modelling and more practice-based and case study learning to reflect more authentic preparation for the use of mathematics in higher degree research and in the workplace.

Online assessment and some teaching will become an essential part of mathematics learning at university. The development and use of good online automated assessment, such as STACK (http://stack.bham.ac.uk/moodle/question/type/stack/doc/doc.php/) will be commonplace.

There is a real danger that universities and private providers (such as Pearson) will close in on the mathematics space using online learning. Mathematics is always seen as an area to be exploited for online learning due to the impression of a linear and rote nature of the learning. As we all know this is so far from the truth! However, we need to ensure that mathematics learning is not able to be wholly mechanised by seeking to produce learning experiences that add value over simple, mechanical online courses.

Professional Development: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning in the Quantitative Disciplines

Many universities now require (new) academics to engage in programs of professional development, some to the level of Graduate Certificate/Diploma. In 2010, an on-line professional development unit was developed under an ALTC grant, which is equivalent in workload to one unit of a Graduate Diploma, and which is currently housed at the AustMS web site and run by members of the Standing Committee. The unit provides a 12 module program with assessments and those who complete receive certification by the AustMS.

While it covers general theories of teaching and learning, it particularly focuses on how these are worked out practically in quantitative disciplines and specific issues to do with how students learn in these disciplines. It provides an introduction to the language and literature of teaching and learning, and mathematics education research. The enrolments have been very small, but among them have been a number of people have been able to use this either as credit towards a graduate certificate or with permission as a replacement for the less specific program required by their institution. This resource was created for the benefit of the discipline, but is currently underutilised.

We see this as an important initiative and particularly feel that the connection with the professional society is very beneficial for mathematical sciences teaching staff and ultimately for the benefit of learners of mathematics.

In the future, it is likely that governments and universities will mandate professional development for all university teaching staff and so this initiative of the Australian Mathematical Society will support that requirement with discipline specific learning (http://www.austms.org.au/Professional+Development+Unit).

Mathematics Education Research

Research into university level mathematics education is strong in Australia. There are around 50 articles published each year by Australian authors – mostly Australian mathematicians – about learning and teaching in Australian universities. There is a compilation of this research for the past four years in:

Barton, W., Goos, M. & Wood, L.N. (2012). Growth and new directions? Research in tertiary mathematical science education. In Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia 2008-2011. (pp. 245-266). Rotterdam: Sense Publishing.

However, the funding support and recognition for this work is uncertain. Funding from the ARC is extremely difficult to obtain, if not impossible. Support from the Commonwealth Office of Learning and Teaching (formerly ALTC), while currently healthy, is in constant threat. The choice of educational research as a career path is also a risky one for a young academic. The fact that so much income for mathematics departments is derived from undergraduate teaching, coupled with the important work undertaken by mathematics education researchers in improving such teaching and its outcomes, means that more will need to be done to ensure that academics are able to pursue this line of work.