Learning Environments
Learning environments
Incidental opportunities for learning
Dr Johnston’s research has explored mathematical language with infants and toddlers in their everyday play and care-giving experiences. In doing so, she found that mathematical language is infrequent and often used unintentionally. This provided the opportunity to research alongside stakeholders such as educators, families and pre-service teachers to identify these opportunities for learning and to investigate ways to become more intentional in building early numeracy ability.
If you want to know more about this study, you can find more information about it here.
Dr Johnston’s current research involves working with key stakeholders to identify ways in which children can be supported to build foundational mathematical knowledge, develop positive dispositions towards mathematics and to see themselves as strong mathematical thinkers.
Dr Sweller’s research examines the inter-personal learning environment, in particular non-verbal communication, namely gestures. She conducts research into the benefits of observing and producing gestures in learning across a variety of tasks, with the aim of identifying the conditions which can best facilitate learning and communication.
She has an interest in both verbal and non-verbal tasks, including problem solving and maths. In addition, she examines the interaction between gesture use and individual characteristics of the learners, as well as characteristics of the gestures themselves. Dr Sweller’s work has shown that not all gestures are beneficial, and not for all learners. Identifying which gestures are most beneficial, and for whom, will help to fine-tune the best learning environments for students.
If you are interested in learning more about this research or being actively engaged as a participant in the research please contact Kelly at kelly.johnston@mq.edu.au or Naomi at naomi.sweller@mq.edu.au
Home mathematics environment
Previous research has shown that mathematics activities that take place at home impact early math achievement, and that different types of activities could differently impact math achievement. Several factors have been proposed to influence the relationship between math activities in the home and mathematical development, but the findings are inconsistent.
Dr Bull’s research has explored different types of math activities that take place in the home and what factors help explain their influence on mathematics achievement in a kindergarten sample from Singapore.
Her research found that more advanced activities, but not basic ones are related to growth in math skills across the kindergarten year and that only children who at the beginning of the year had average or better skills benefitted from these activities. Furthermore, maternal education, but not family income predicted the frequency of math activities at home. However, family income did independently predict growth in math achievement.
If you want to know more about this study you can find more information here
If you are interested in learning more about this research or being actively engaged as a participant in the research please contact Rebecca Bull at r.bull@mq.edu.au
Development of mathematical and statistical literacy for secondary pre-service teachers in Vietnam
Mathematical literacy relates to the ability to realise, understand, and use mathematical knowledge efficiently when solving real-world situations. It is one of the competencies that individuals should develop to be adaptive to their lives and researchers suggest it is different from mathematics.
Dr Tran has led a project to develop mathematical literacy to teach mathematics contextually for secondary preservice teachers in Vietnam funded by the NAFOSTED (National Foundation for Science and Technology Development – Vietnam). The project integrates tasks at different levels of authenticity throughout the course to expose the preservice teachers to the learning opportunity before working on their pedagogical content knowledge to teach mathematics contextually.
Dr Tran is leading a NAFOSTED funded project focusing on developing teaching capacity for teachers to teach statistics and data meaningfully in Vietnam. Using a quasi-experimental design and collecting quantitative and qualitative data, Dr Tran investigates the impact of participating in professional development, focusing on developing statistical literacy and reasoning on teachers’ attitudes towards statistics, teachers’ statistical reasoning, and their students’ statistical literacy. The professional development design is informed by research and recommendations by statistics educators and statistics education researchers that integrate statistical investigations with real data and technology to support data analysis and interpretation instead of focusing on calculation.
If you are interested in learning more about this research please contact Dung at dung.tran@mq.ed.au
Mathematics sophistication on collaborative mathematics problem solving
Dr Tran has collaborated with researchers at the University of Melbourne and other international scholars to investigate the social aspect of learning. Drawing on data from a laboratory class set up at Melbourne University, Dr Tran has focused on operationalising and measuring the groups and individuals' mathematics sophistication on collaborative mathematics problem solving and linking it with student agency.
If you are interested in learning more about this research please contact Dung at dung.tran@mq.ed.au
Feedback to the new K-2 Mathematics curriculum
Centre members Dr Dung Tran, Prof Joanne Mulligan and Susan Busatto together with Associate Professor Michael Cavanagh from the School of Education responded to the NSW Government request for feedback on the new mathematics curriculum for Kindergarten through Grade 2. You can find their full response here.
Centre-funded projects
Teachers' verbal and non-verbal communication during mathematical instruction
Centre members Naomi Sweller, Rebecca Bull, Kelly Johnston and Iain Giblin are working on a project together with researchers from Singapore’s National Institute of Education with data from the Singapore Kindergarten Impact Project.
The research team will analyse videos to examine aspects of teachers’ verbal and non-verbal (gestural) communication during mathematical instruction with pre-schoolers. Language and gesture content from the videos will be linked to both concurrent and later mathematical achievement. This research will have valuable implications for early mathematics education, highlighting the aspects of verbal and gestural language that can best facilitate children’s later achievement.
This project has just received funding from the Centre to start coding the videos for language and gestures.
If you are interested in this project please contact Naomi Sweller at naomi.sweller@mq.edu.au
Initial teacher education students' attitudes, beliefs and dispositions towards mathematics
Candle members Kelly Johnston, Susan Bussato and Rebecca Bull are working on a project to extend their understanding of initial teacher education student's attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions towards mathematics. The team has an ongoing study with earlychildhood initial teacher education students that is now being extended to primary cohorts.
Insights gained from the study will inform development of stronger and more effective mathematics units in the initial teacher education programs at the Macquarie University. Theunderpinning aim is to focus on acknowledging the skills and strengths that initial teacher education students bring, anin pre-empting the challenges they may face.
If you are interested in this project, please contact Kelly Johnston at kelly.johnston@mq.edu.au