Math teachers wanted for new curriculum feedback

How primary school teachers around New Zealand are managing the new Mathematics and Statistics Curriculum in their daily classroms next year is the focus of a new survey from the University of Auckland.

Led by educator Associate Professor Fiona Ell from the University's Faculty of Arts and Education, alongside co-investigators Lisa Darragh, Hana Turner-Adams and Megan Clune, 'We Count' is the first survey of its kind in New Zealand to gather real-time, quantitative data on managing a new curriculum at the coalface.

The latest curriculum is part of a ‘refresh of the refresh’ of the 2023 Te Mātaiaho Curriculum and has landed controversially with the profession so far.

She says feedback about how teachers feel and what they do is often gathered well after the fact, or is anecdotal, and contains “a lot of assumptions” that don’t really provide the overall picture, which won’t be a uniform set of experiences.

“Some will love it, some will dislike parts of it, some will use it closely, others may rely on their resources instead; but understanding the whole variety of responses is central to understanding the impact of curriculum change.”

Ell says the project will focus on how teachers choose to use and deliver the curriculum and how experiences might vary, depending on teaching background, class level, school type and region.

And there’s no hidden agenda, she says

“We simply want to amplify teachers’ experiences, with all their nuance and differences. It’s not ideologically driven; it’s a chance to gather real evidence to help mathematics education in Aotearoa.”
 

The information gathered will be highly valuable for policy makers, the public, and teachers themselves, she believes.

“We intend to use it to generate short reports, providing rapid feedback to the system as change occurs.”

Ell says the aim is attract thousands of participants to get a rich picture to feed back to the Ministry of Education.

Participation involves answering one short answer question a day, four days a week during school terms. Participants can also access a live dashboard to see how their experiences compare with colleagues across the country.

“Participants need to be classroom teachers of year 0-8 year-levels in New Zealand who teach mathematics and statistics as part of their role," she says.

"They will be widely recruited from throughout the country, using a mixture of social media advertising, direct advertising and snowballing.”

Ell says responses will be collected using REDCap, a secure University of Auckland survey tool capable of handling large, longitudinal dataset, and it will be held behind a University firewall for data protection. Respondents are anonymous.

Anyone interested can access full details through the participant information sheet (PIS), available by clicking a link on the ad. If participants decide to take part, they can follow the instructions for downloading an app to their phone (MyCap), available on the link.

For more information, contact Fiona Ell on f.ell@auckland.ac.nz