Bernard Madison talks about the need for college graduates and indeed all adults to become "critical consumers of numbers". He spoke at the Mathematics-Across-the-Curriculum/Quantitative Reasoning Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. You can find a video of his address at the previous link.
One thing that he said stood out to me and I paraphrase: It is not so much the level of mathematics, but the difficulty of the context that determines how well people do.
This is no only the case with the transference of maths/numeracy "skills" from academic to everyday/work contexts. It is also very much the case with the transference of "skills" among the various academic disciplines.
For example, students who have had a throrough grounding in graphical work in formal mathematics are still often unable to critically analyse and interpret graphs in other academic or everyday contexts.
Much of what Madison discusses in this video has great bearing on our understanding of adult numeracy performance in real-life contexts.
It also, once again, puts a question mark over the numeracy progressions and how they might be implemented. There is no doubt the as the progression are used by tutors, it must be in rich meaningful contexts.
However, there may be problems in trying to teach numeracy in rich contexts within classroom or institutional settings. Students, including adults, have certain expectations of what mathematics should "look like" and may well resist attempts to teach maths in highly contextualised ways.
Here is a 2006 paper by Ginsberg, Manly and Schmitt that addresses some of these issues.
Research
In the field of adult numeracy there are a plethora of reports, some of which claim a research base. However, most of these tend to be both dry and jargon laden. These reports circulate, no unlike a car spinning it wheel trying to get of of the mud and yet digging only deeper in into murkiness.
The purpose of this section is to only present clear cut empirical research into adult numeracy.
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This first piece of research takes a look into the fascinating world of probabilistic numeracy.
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Here is an excellent study by Gail FitzSimons which looks at situated numeracy practices in a workplace - aptly titled "Learning numeracy on the job'.
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This is a comprehensive piece of research by Jon Swain, Elizabeth Baker, Deborah Holder, Barbara Newmarch and Diana Coben in 2005. It employs a number of methods including ethnographical approaches, case studies, interviews, diaries, photographs and the like. It also looks at some of the theoretical orientations that informed the research.
The findings include the very important area of adult numeracy practices outside the classroom.
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This recent article by FitzSimons and Coben (2009) looks at the implications of recent research for the teaching of adult numeracy for work and life. It is certainly a very worhtwhile read and does not skirt around the hard theoretical questions.
***************
The purpose of this section is to only present clear cut empirical research into adult numeracy.
***************
This first piece of research takes a look into the fascinating world of probabilistic numeracy.
***************
Here is an excellent study by Gail FitzSimons which looks at situated numeracy practices in a workplace - aptly titled "Learning numeracy on the job'.
***************
This is a comprehensive piece of research by Jon Swain, Elizabeth Baker, Deborah Holder, Barbara Newmarch and Diana Coben in 2005. It employs a number of methods including ethnographical approaches, case studies, interviews, diaries, photographs and the like. It also looks at some of the theoretical orientations that informed the research.
The findings include the very important area of adult numeracy practices outside the classroom.
***************
This recent article by FitzSimons and Coben (2009) looks at the implications of recent research for the teaching of adult numeracy for work and life. It is certainly a very worhtwhile read and does not skirt around the hard theoretical questions.
***************
Review of "Numeracy for adults: Latest findings from teaching and learning research
This is a report published by the Ministry of Education and written by Gill Thomas and Jenny Ward. It is intended to be one of a series on "Literacy Language and Numeracy Research".
It is one of the very first publications in New Zealand (aside from the adult numeracy progressions) that actually removes numeracy from its usually coupling with literacy and language (as LNL and then later LLN) and looks at it on it own terms (more or less). The LLN bond still , however, appears quite often throughout the report.
The report was published in July, 2009 and to a considerable degree recapitulates information in a TEC (Tertiary education Commission) report of February, 2009 called Strengthening literacy and numeracy: Theoretical framework , which does not specify particular authorship. A key difference between the two reports is that where the February report use the expression literacy and numeracy, the July report simply uses Numeracy.
The situation then with these two reports is trying to figure which comes first (and thus which relies on which). The publication dates are not necessarily indicative of actual precedence in writing. Comparing the the two is not unlike comparing the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is known as the synoptic problem.
Anyhow on to the review.
The report looks at 3 main issues:
1. How adults develop their numeracy expertise.
2. The features of effective embedded numeracy provision.
3. Managing and sustaining change to achieve effective long-term embedding of numeracy.
It tackles these 3 in terms of a quick over view. It then looks at the three in turn in greater detail.
The claim that it offers the latest findings from research is somewhat overstated. Indeed, much of the material covered has been mainstay stuff in adult maths education for the last 20 years. One only has to be vaguely familiar with areas like situtated cognition and learning (Lave and Wenger), constructivist orientations, Piagetian theory and the socio-cultural work of Vygotsky to realise this.
The report offered no clear understanding of what is really meant by "embedding". It is a term, I fear, that has gained currency recently, but has yet to be defined and clarified.
It was important to see the issue of maths anxiety covered and the references to research on short term memory
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It is one of the very first publications in New Zealand (aside from the adult numeracy progressions) that actually removes numeracy from its usually coupling with literacy and language (as LNL and then later LLN) and looks at it on it own terms (more or less). The LLN bond still , however, appears quite often throughout the report.
The report was published in July, 2009 and to a considerable degree recapitulates information in a TEC (Tertiary education Commission) report of February, 2009 called Strengthening literacy and numeracy: Theoretical framework , which does not specify particular authorship. A key difference between the two reports is that where the February report use the expression literacy and numeracy, the July report simply uses Numeracy.
The situation then with these two reports is trying to figure which comes first (and thus which relies on which). The publication dates are not necessarily indicative of actual precedence in writing. Comparing the the two is not unlike comparing the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is known as the synoptic problem.
Anyhow on to the review.
The report looks at 3 main issues:
1. How adults develop their numeracy expertise.
2. The features of effective embedded numeracy provision.
3. Managing and sustaining change to achieve effective long-term embedding of numeracy.
It tackles these 3 in terms of a quick over view. It then looks at the three in turn in greater detail.
The claim that it offers the latest findings from research is somewhat overstated. Indeed, much of the material covered has been mainstay stuff in adult maths education for the last 20 years. One only has to be vaguely familiar with areas like situtated cognition and learning (Lave and Wenger), constructivist orientations, Piagetian theory and the socio-cultural work of Vygotsky to realise this.
The report offered no clear understanding of what is really meant by "embedding". It is a term, I fear, that has gained currency recently, but has yet to be defined and clarified.
It was important to see the issue of maths anxiety covered and the references to research on short term memory
*****************************************************************
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