Numeracy needs attention
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Senior Lecturer Peter Hughes, from the School of Science, Maths and Technology, has raised concerns about a lack of numeracy among high school students.
His comments come as a follow up to a Young Enterprise Trust secondary school survey released earlier this month, which found an alarming lack of understanding of basic financial concepts.
Peter has designed a numeracy test, to be done mentally, to demonstrate the standard of numeracy which all students starting secondary school should be able to pass. He says data shows only about a third of students leaving year eight for high school will be able to pass this test.
“Before adults get carried away with tut-tutting about what they see as “standards” they might try the test. Many will fail,” Peter warns.
“What is true about the innumeracy of students is also true for the adults. New Zealand has a serious problem across the whole population.”
Peter’s concerns have been reported widely in the media, including in the New Zealand Herald and on Nine to Noon on Radio NZ.
Peter says the process of teaching mathematics in schools, and the concept of what being numerate means, needs to be addressed, in particular as the Government prepares to introduce national standards in numeracy into schools. Peter says the problem lies in students being taught methods of calculation and sets of procedures to solve problems, without having an underlying understanding of the numbers. This lack of basics is continued in high school, where students can gain NCEA Level 1 by following the rules for algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and statistics, without fully understanding the underlying numbers.
“Many parents send their children off for tutoring in extra maths, which is mainly number work – methods of calculation. They are likely to be wasting their money because concentrating on methods of calculation is low-level thinking – in fact it is not thinking at all,” he says.
“The most important notion in numeracy is the ability to detect errors in the results of calculation whatever method - pencil and paper, abacus, or calculator – is used. Given the high rate of error, especially by mis-entering numbers and operations into a calculator, students and adults crucially need approximation skills to detect errors.”
Teachers are the key to any improvement in students’ learning, Peter says, and he welcomes professional development to improve the maths content knowledge of all teachers.
Peter has taught in secondary schools in New Zealand and England for 14 years, including six years as Head of Mathematics at Glenfield College, Auckland. He spent two years at the Cook Islands Teachers College as lecturer in Mathematics Education and has been a lecturer in Mathematics Education at the Faculty of Education since 1987, except for a year spent at Palmerston North Teachers College. He has co-authored 17 mathematics textbooks published in four countries plus an innovative series of 12 booklets published in the United States.
Download the full length Numeracy Test (245KB PDF)
Peter is involved in the delivery of several graduate and postgraduate courses to help teachers develop their understanding of numeracy, including ‘Understanding and Extending Mathematical Thinking’ and ‘Development of Numeracy Practice’.
