Vol. 12 no. 1 / June 2018 / Special issue on Mathematics Education in Malta

Teachers choose to take up professional development courses for different reasons. This paper reports on the motivations of a small group of Maltese secondary school teachers of mathematics in joining a continuing professional development (CPD) programme aiming to support them in Learning to Teach Mathematics through Inquiry (LTMI). During mathematical inquiry, students assume a central active role – wrestling with ideas, asking questions, exploring and explaining meanings – supported by the teacher as a facilitator. This paper also explores teachers’ understandings and their reported experiences of programme effectiveness. A qualitative design using thematic analysis was used to investigate views, experiences and accounts of LTMI features that teachers believed to be effective for their professional learning. The data reported here was taken from a focus group held with teachers at the end of the CPD programme, and three interviews held with the same teachers before, during and after their participation in CPD. Findings reveal intrinsic factors motivating teacher participation, namely: (1) teachers’ will to develop knowledge about teaching; (2) their beliefs about the benefits of inquiry; and (3) their need to change classroom practice. The key aspects that teachers voiced as effective throughout their CPD experience were learning by being part of a community, active learning and immersion in practice-based understandings.

This paper presents the story of John, a mathematics teacher, who embraced ‘change’ at a rather advanced stage of his teaching career. As part of this development, he managed to transform his largely traditional practices to practices that advance inquiry-based learning, a pedagogical approach that is aligned to the reform visions for mathematics teaching and learning. Moreover, John is now also committed to promote this ‘new’ approach among other mathematics teachers. Drawing on narrative research, his case was studied to shed insights on what facilitates or hinders teacher learning and change. The narrative was co-constructed between John and the author in the form of a ‘conversation’ that originated from a number of Messenger chats on Facebook. The thematic analysis of the data revealed four distinct phases, so far, in John’s journey towards becoming a teacher. The journey through these phases is of particular interest to anyone concerned about the impact that different teacher education initiatives have on teacher learning and change. Overall, John’s story suggests that teacher change, while possibly not linear and enduring, can happen and appears to be facilitated by certain factors. These include willingness and capacity on teacher’s part to change, the availability of opportunity to change, the development of a professional learning community, and the presence of someone at school who is capable and willing to lead and support teacher learning among colleagues.

Irrespective of the branch of constructivism they advocate, many constructivists argue that constructivism is a theory of learning, not of teaching, and therefore one cannot speak of such a thing as ‘constructivist teaching’ (CT). Others equate CT with a student-centred teaching methodology such as teaching for inquiry-based learning. From a radical constructivist perspective, I argue that both of these views are only partially true. The former seems to disregard the fact that teaching and learning are so interlinked that it may be virtually impossible for a teacher who strongly believes in the constructivist notion of learning not to reflect some of that belief in her/his teaching approach. The latter does not seem to acknowledge that even the most traditional and teacher-directed teaching may bring about learning, and that if learning occurs, it happens through the active construction of knowledge in the minds of the learners. Drawing on a local case study of a group of six low-performing Year 7 students (i.e., 11-year-olds) to whom I taught mathematics, I show that CT is a possibility in any classroom where the teacher is sensitive to the constructivist notion of learning. The framework I used to investigate the data was the Mathematics-Negotiation-Learner (M-N-L) framework. I devised this framework to help me to define CT and analyse the extent to which I maintain it in my lessons

This paper describes how a Primary school teacher in Malta used Maltese and English to teach her 8-year-old pupils meanings for the money-related English words value, cost and change. Classroom interaction data is presented to illustrate how the teacher drew on the pupils’ previous knowledge of money, using related Maltese vocabulary and then introducing the English translations. My observations support international evidence of the richness of bilingual educational contexts. The translanguaging is discussed in relation to whole-class scaffolding strategies as conceptualised by Anghileri, and by Smit, van Eerde, and Bakker. I conclude that while the observed teacher appeared to be successful in her aims, her teaching style appeared to limit the potential generation of conceptual discourse on the part of the pupils. I highlight the need for research to be carried out on how scaffolding through translanguaging might pan out in learning contexts that aim to increase pupil engagement with mathematical discourse.

Mathematics Learning Difficulties (MLD) are of international and national concern. International research estimates that between four and seven percent of any population struggle with the learning of mathematics (Geary, 2004). Nonetheless, locally this field of research is still not adequately researched. Moreover, no numeracy assessment has been standardized with children in Malta. Consequently identifying children with MLD is based locally on using assessments which have been developed and standardized in other countries, in particular the U.K.. My doctorate research project aimed at finding effective strategies that help children to overcome their difficulties in Mathematics. The study was conducted with Grade 5 (9 to 10 years old) learners attending seven Catholic Church schools for boys. Six case studies were carried out with pupils attending the same school, who were selected to follow an intervention programme. The programme aimed at supporting learners with MLD to master the numeracy components that are fundamental for mathematics learning. This with the hope of finding effective strategies that would help learners struggling with mathematics to make the desired progress in the subject. This paper describes the process of sample selection. Three tests, which have been standardized in the U.K., were administered to a sample population of 352 boys out of the 704 boys attending Church schools for boys in Grade 5 and norms were established. The tests were then administered to all the boys attending Grade 5 at the school where I taught (50 pupils). The established local norms were then used to identify the boys with MLD who would participate in the intervention programme.

There is no abstract available for this commentary.

There is no abstract available for this article.