Raising Achievement in Secondary Mathematics

This book argues for changed attitudes towards low attaining students in secondary mathematics. Certain social groups regularly underachieve in mathematics, so attainment is seen as an issue of social justice. The way that assessment, testing, teaching and grouping decisions in mathematics can confirm a cycle of low attainment is carefully described with well-founded arguments based on many years' experience and research.Anne Watson offers an alternative view of attainment and...
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This book argues for changed attitudes towards low attaining students in secondary mathematics. Certain social groups regularly underachieve in mathematics, so attainment is seen as an issue of social justice. The way that assessment, testing, teaching and grouping decisions in mathematics can confirm a cycle of low attainment is carefully described with well-founded arguments based on many years' experience and research.Anne Watson offers an alternative view of attainment and capability, based on real classroom incidents in which 'low attaining students' show themselves to be able to think about mathematics in quite sophisticated ways. She argues that teaching could be based on learners' proficiency, rather than seen as correcting, or confirming, deficits in knowledge and behaviour. She describes how a group of teachers who believed that their students could do better with higher expectations developed a range of principles and strategies which supported their work; the students showed significant progress, and the teachers felt they were doing a better job.This book is for anyone who is in a position to challenge existing practice in mathematics teaching, either in their own classroom or in the broader cultures of teaching. It offers the arguments, the knowledge and the support for changing practice in a non-judgemental, practical but well-founded way.