Notre Dame receives federal grant to boost maths

THE University of Notre Dame Australia has been granted $165,000 by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to investigate how technology tools, including mobile technologies and software programmes can enhance the learning and teaching of mathematical concepts to promote understanding.
Developing digital information and communications technology educational (ICTE) resources for mathematics is just one branch of the groundbreaking $7.8m Teaching Teachers for the Future Project.
The project, the largest of its type ever undertaken at  a tertiary level in Australia, sees current pre-service teachers from 39 universities and higher education institutions combining together to build up their ICTE capacity. Fremantle Campus School of Education lecturers, Associate Professor Jean MacNish and Ms Lorraine Day, are project leaders in this branch of mathematics education.   They will investigate current best practice of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching mathematics.
The results of their research will guide their recommendations on how the use of ICT can be incorporated into mathematics curriculum to improve student learning in conjunction with the new national graduate teacher standards.
Ms Day, a former President of the Mathematical Association of WA, will work alongside teachers in their classrooms to assist both staff and students in their use of ICT resources, ultimately enhancing the delivery and their understanding of mathematics curriculum. “I would like to see mathematics teachers make their lessons more concrete, more visual and more kinaesthetic so that the students will be engaged and have an understanding of what they’re doing,” said Ms Day, who will ‘team teach’ primary mathematics units in second semester with one of UNDA’s other maths educators. “We have revamped these units to include the use of technology throughout. We haven’t changed what we’re teaching, but we’ve changed how we’re going to teach it,” she said.