At the recent La Salle Maths Conference there was a session labelled the “great mastery debate” (don’t … do you hear me? … don’t say it quickly!) where Bruno Reddy, Alan Patel and Amir Arezoo debated the whole mastery thing. The idea being that the three guys would debate “what is mastery? Is it an approach that works and is it anything new?” I’m not going to try to do the session justice as Amir does a fab job of describing it on his blog here> Teaching at the Edge of Chaos
Let me say that I am not against a “mastery” curriculum. No seriously I’m not … in fact what we do probably has a “touch of mastery” to it especially now that we’re teaching in a year 7-11 school (having previously taught years 9 -13). Having these two lower years has, I believe, given us the opportunity to ensure that all the students have the prerequisite numerosity skills and knowledge without the need to rush through the curriculum as we know that we have loads of time in years 9 to 11 to teach them “stuff” and they will be better equipped to apply that knowledge if they are most importantly numerate but can also understand the “general case” often through the use of algebra when appropriate.
It is obvious that Mastery means different things to different people and having lost hours of my life to reading about it I’m a little bit jaded and thinking that maybe most of the strategies are aimed at changing the way maths is taught at Primary because I felt at times like I’m just saying “yep … I do that!” or “that’s not new!” over and over again, and it’s all too much like the “emperor’s new clothes” to me. Mastery is being presented as “new” and at the opposite end of what is known as the spiral curriculum when in fact it is so much more (less! … oh … I don’t know!) than just a scheme of work to follow whereby you teach in bigger chunks of time.
The crux of the “mastery debate in general (now I’m talking about in the UK and not “the” conference debate) is that it means different things to different people and most of it really isn’t “new” .. Well not “new new”, especially within Secondary education. This is why I have major concerns about a recent speech and a few comments made by members of the “Maths Aristocracy” but before I go on please divulge me and let me digress for a minute … you’re ever so good you know letting me do this!
Have you ever wondered where the marking frenzy started that led to Ofsted having to publish clarification HERE about what they expect to see when an inspection takes place? Some would suggest that the trigger may have been a report in 2011 from Ofsted called Making marking matter: St Marylebone Church of England School or possibly The Sutton Trust in their ‘Pupil Premium Toolkit’ (2011) but it whatever it was, it was closely followed by affirmations in school inspection reports and speeches made by various people in positions of responsibility. Given the power that Ofsted have and the fact that so much is at stake if a school is given a certain grading from them is it no surprise that Head Teachers/Deputies/ AHTs and Heads of Department spend time reading reports trying to glean strategies that have received praise in reports from schools that are Good or Outstanding?
I promise I will relate that to the following at some point … just bear with me!
So anyway …. The NCETM published an article on their website about a speech given by Jane Jones HMI, Ofsted’s National Lead for Mathematics at a Maths Hub event on mastery teaching in primary schools. You need to read it … go on … READ THIS …. I’ll wait right here for you …. **waits**
Ok you’re back and probably have some thoughts about it … I know I do. Not that much about the “content” to be honest but a couple of comments about specific points:
Bearing in mind that the audience was primary education based I suspect that many of the comments about what constitutes “mastery” and the differences to current practice aren’t really applicable to me in secondary. I may be wrong and I’ve thought that maybe I missed the memo several years ago but I already use a “whole class teaching model” which apparently is “key feature of teaching for mastery”. (Big tick for me! yay!)
Additionally but much more pertinent I fail to see the difference here: “differentiation was often achieved by a teacher preparing different activities or worksheets for different groups of pupils. Now there are other ways” … which “could include giving pupils differing amounts of time using concrete resources to help them grasp concepts, and giving what she called the ‘rapid-graspers’ more challenging questions and problems to work on, and reason about”.
Despite the previous minor points, in general I think that this article and Charlie Stripp’s comments run the risk that Ofsted are looking for a ‘mastery’ curriculum & thereby reducing it to tick boxes. (BINGO! There’s the link with the marking frenzy! All we need now is for it to be in a report and we’re off!). Including advice for head teachers to prepare a “single sheet of paper to give to the inspector (and/or talk to the inspector)” outlining their approach to mastery is really not helpful in moving away from the fact that education and teaching cannot be reduced down to a series of boxes to be ticked. In fact I can hear the email pings from across the country as HODs are being asked to prepare such a sheet.
As a result of “mastery” being packaged as something that is “shiny and new” it may assume an aura of being slightly mythical and almost panacea like … and this is my concern. I fear that people will rush into making changes where they aren’t really necessary as much of what constitutes “mastery” is just plain common sense or even worse schools will make whole scale changes without understanding what “mastery” means especially if they are making the changes for the sake of Ofsted.
Like I said at the “mastery debate” I have a fear that we may look back at Maths education in 30 years time and think WTF. Let’s have change. Yes … but let’s have change that is rooted in research and what works in practice – that is not to say that “Mastery” doesn’t work … THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM SAYING… I am saying that we need to make carefully thought out changes and not wholesale sweeping changes. I would add a couple of provisos: (1) we will not throw the baby out with the bathwater and (2) we don’t try to reduce good teaching any further into a series of boxes to be ticked … it is soooo much more than that!
PS: The image is a homage to Ed’s magnificent sense of humour!
