Over the last 20 years or so the UK government has attempted, through various strategies, to reform the curriculum and lesson planning. Throughout this period lesson planning has been based on suggested format of consisting of three parts starter, main and plenary (John, 2006, p. 439). Teachers enact this lesson
structure in mathematics
1. A starter - perhaps an oral and mental one taking 5 to 10 minutes 2. A main segment of whole-class teaching and/or paired or group work
(25 to 40 minutes)
3. A final plenary (5 to 10 minutes) to round off the lesson (Jones and Edwards, 2011, p. 73).
This standard three part lesson was seen to be important by all trainee teachers surveyed in the questionnaire (table 4.9a; question 16) and also by all the study school teachers, possibly because this lesson structure had been recently discussed in the training lectures prior to the survey. However, by the time the trainees had become substantive members of the mathematics department they had changed their views (tables 4.9h and 4.9i; question 16). Their views were
170 now more in line with the departmental consensual view that a lesson did not
have to be in three parts. Nevertheless younger teachers in the department were still, in the main, framing their lessons in this three part structure.
A total of 29 lesson plans were collected. A typical lesson plan from teacher A (appendix 23), a professionally inexperienced but mature member of the
department, seems to be taking the view point that a lesson is framed in a three parts structure (starter, main, plenary) which was the style used during her school years. The lesson plan (appendix 23) is moving towards a more episodic lesson style and this lesson style (short, single learning focus, timed learning
experiences) is completely different to the structure of the lessons she
experienced whilst at school. The less restrictive episodic style of lesson is more receptive to the idea of lessons framed in terms activities, skills, exercises and tasks to those conforming to the three part structure.
The teacher’s use of the term activity in the lesson plan (appendix 23) suggested to me that her own school mathematical experience is an influence on the
selection of lesson design features. Her use of the terms tasks and skills indicates some influence of her training (where tasks and skills had been discussed) and her use of literacy elements clearly shows the influence of departmental views and practice relating to lesson structure. This teacher did describe lessons from her own schooling that had a similar structure to lesson in appendix 22; however, in a conversation with the teacher she described her typical lesson as being
Lesson structure needs to be a starter with learning objectives and keywords, an introductory activity, a main activity, a plenary. Class teaching occurs only in the introductory activity, in the main activity – the main body of the lesson pupils ‘do’, i.e. practice, the learning in the lesson and this is where the pupils get to stretch themselves. Formative assessment should be used to inform planning and teaching.
This idea of a lesson almost exactly mirrors departmental policy, yet the teacher still felt able to design and deliver lessons with a structure more akin to those from her own schooling. Yet the very same teacher in an interview after the research lesson was able to express views about the restrictive nature of the three part lesson structure (appendix 12, lines 457 – 511) and critically comment on pupil learning when an alternative lesson structure was being used.
171 To summarise, I had conjectured that teachers’ beliefs about lesson structure
would be influenced by their school experience of mathematics lessons.
However, my analysis of the survey questionnaire responses, lesson plans and interviews suggested that their school experiences had limited effect on their beliefs and only marginal effect on lesson planning. Whilst all trainee teachers did consider the practising of mathematics skills as an important element in the
teaching of mathematics (tables 4.3.2a row 1), they also articulated the need for the curriculum to be task based. Teachers educated after the removal of
coursework attach less importance to practising skills than those educated during the task based curriculum era (appendix 12 lines 282-314). Recently educated trainees, in the main, take the opposite viewpoint to their older colleagues that skills practice should only occasionally be used as a method of teaching (and learning) mathematics (from the questionnaire – table 4.3.2e rows 1 – 4 and the interviews appendix 12 lines 293-298) .
Moreover there was an absence of what might be considered as activities, skills, exercises, and tasks in the lesson plans and in the lessons I observed,
suggesting that recent training had also had little effect. What did emerge from the analysis was an unexpected factor around the level of influence that whole school policies have on the design and management of lesson planning. This will be explored later. In the next section I consider the effect of a teacher’s degree subject on the beliefs expressed in lesson plans.
4.3.5 The influence of a teachers’ academic qualification on lesson design and teaching
It was my initial conjecture that the content of a teachers’ degree (ie. whether it was a mathematics degree or not) would have an influence on the respondents’ beliefs, views and lesson design. Findings from the questionnaire were that 48% of the 201 respondents had mathematics in the title of their degree, with a
difference in the percentages for females and males (44% and 53% respectively). The relevance of subject academic qualifications was noted in 2004. The then government set a target for 2014 that 95% of mathematics lessons were to
be delivered by mathematics specialists. The aim of this target was the belief that better subject qualifications would lead to better teaching. By 2013 only 45% of the 33300 active mathematics teachers held a relevant degree qualification
172 (Governors, 2015) a statistic that is almost exactly mirrored in the study survey
sample. However in the school participating in the research only one male and one female (ie .2 out of 11 teachers – just 18%) had mathematics type degrees (one mathematics and one astrophysics) and this finding is replicated in over 60% of 220 partnership schools. If, as hinted at by the government,
mathematically qualified mathematics teachers improve the quality of teaching and lesson design, then this is an issue that is worthy of further investigation.