Developing Primary Mathematics Teaching
Reflecting on Practice with the Knowledge Quartet
- Tim Rowland - University of Cambridge, UK
- Fay Turner - University of Cambridge, UK
- Anne Thwaites - University of Cambridge, UK
- Peter Huckstep - University of Cambridge, UK
- making sense of foundation knowledge - focusing on what teachers know about mathematics
- transforming knowledge - representing mathematics to learners through examples, analogies, illustrations and demonstrations
- connection - helping learners to make sense of mathematics through understanding how ideas and concepts are linked to each other
- contingency - what to do when the unexpected happens
Each chapter includes practical activities, lesson descriptions and extracts of classroom transcripts to help teachers reflect on effective practice.
This is a very useful text which develops a strong focus on teacher knowledge in the context of teaching mathematics. A strength of the book is the way it connects to concrete examples of lessons and is supported by video clips. A significant issue is that the CD Rom is NOT provided when buying the book from some online retailers and the video materials are NOT open access. Publishers need to smell the coffee and increase their sales by making multi-media resources open access.
Highly relevant text for those wanting to understand and improve their own practice, or the practices within their school.
This is a wonderul book that is a great read for new and established colleagues in the sector. Insightful
This is a valuable book to support students' understanding that subject knowledge is much more than just knowing about maths and being good at it.
The CD is extremely helpful - reassuring for students to see teaching in practice. Good to discuss what we've watched too.
The commentary on the observations is also helpful.
The range beginning from reception is brilliant for my module (3-7s) but I would have liked more on reception teaching and also on the CD as this is a fundamental stage in teaching (and learning) maths - if this bit isn't right some children never recover.
A great book to help reflect on primary teaching.
Inpressive text relating to 'The Knowledge Quartet' as a reflective tool for developing primary mathematics teaching. Excellent recommended readings at the end of each chapter. Will be recommending to students this year and will consider making it a core text in the future.
This book 'works' at so many levels and is written in a readily digested format. Each chapter includes subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge which are clarified within the context of real lessons. But the book is so much more than this - it supports teachers and trainees to critically reflect on teaching and learning and to develop this as fundamental aspect of practice. I particularly like the way the individual lesson video clips can be analysed at different levels - purely based on observations, after reading the discussion, and with the authors' informed reflections. For me there is a sense of a more knowledgeable other scaffolding this process and providing a clear framework.
Clear links throughout the book explicitly model how research informs practice.
I find this book valuable as a teaching tool and plan in the first instance to use some of the video clips to encourage critical reflection of teaching approaches and the importance of trainee teachers' subject knowledge. The adoption of the Knowledge Quartet framework will naturally follow on from this.
Good use of video for examples in lectures.
This is recommended to teachers on our CPD courses and to mathematics subject specialists in particular. The Knowledge Quartet provides a useful framework to focus observation and feedback on teaching practice, focused on mathematics. We have used the classroom clips successfully with both student teachers and school experience mentors to initiate discussion on assessing the mathematical aspects of teaching practice.
Essential reading for the Primary Mathematics Specialist Teachers Post Graduate Certificate Year 2
