Two weeks ago, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the results of a trial involving Year 7 and 8 students who were at least a year behind in maths. Nearly 1,400 such students received small-group tutoring four times a week for 12 weeks. In that time, they made an average of two years’ progress.
Students in a control group did not receive the small-group tutoring. They were, however, taught using the new curriculum by teachers who had had professional development in teaching maths effectively. These students made an average of a year’s progress over the 12 weeks.
On the day she announced the results, Stanford was interviewed on Newstalk ZB. On the following day, there were two articles on RNZ. Both featured criticism of the trial by an academic with a history of opposing Stanford’s reforms. The same academic was interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report.
That was it for mainstream media coverage. Nothing on television news. Nothing in the New Zealand Herald or on Stuff.
It is surprising that the trial did not receive more attention. If it is credible, it signals a game-changer for maths education. If the trial was flawed, the public deserves to know that too.
So, how confident can we be in the results? There were two plausible criticisms of the trial.
First, only some aspects of the curriculum were taught and tested. The trial focused on number concepts, including multiplication, division, place value, proportions and fractions. It did not include algebra, geometry or statistics.
If only some aspects of a curriculum are taught and tested over 12 weeks, students might be expected to make more than 12 weeks’ worth of progress on those specific aspects.
Second, the students in the intervention group received special tutoring. Students given small group tutoring should be expected to make more progress than those learning in a business-as-usual classroom.
These criticisms raise legitimate questions about the intervention's effects. But the control group students were taught in a normal way, albeit by upskilled teachers using the new curriculum. Yet they still made impressive progress. This is the real story, but journalists largely ignored it.
The students in the trial caught up with the programme in just 12 weeks. How long will it take the media?
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
On the day she announced the results, Stanford was interviewed on Newstalk ZB. On the following day, there were two articles on RNZ. Both featured criticism of the trial by an academic with a history of opposing Stanford’s reforms. The same academic was interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report.
That was it for mainstream media coverage. Nothing on television news. Nothing in the New Zealand Herald or on Stuff.
It is surprising that the trial did not receive more attention. If it is credible, it signals a game-changer for maths education. If the trial was flawed, the public deserves to know that too.
So, how confident can we be in the results? There were two plausible criticisms of the trial.
First, only some aspects of the curriculum were taught and tested. The trial focused on number concepts, including multiplication, division, place value, proportions and fractions. It did not include algebra, geometry or statistics.
If only some aspects of a curriculum are taught and tested over 12 weeks, students might be expected to make more than 12 weeks’ worth of progress on those specific aspects.
Second, the students in the intervention group received special tutoring. Students given small group tutoring should be expected to make more progress than those learning in a business-as-usual classroom.
These criticisms raise legitimate questions about the intervention's effects. But the control group students were taught in a normal way, albeit by upskilled teachers using the new curriculum. Yet they still made impressive progress. This is the real story, but journalists largely ignored it.
The students in the trial caught up with the programme in just 12 weeks. How long will it take the media?
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
7 comments:
The Coalition is in charge of improving the biased coverage of their efforts via msm - notably Nat ( Goldsmith, Broadcasting Minister). No real improvement to date since new managememt posts were announced . Why not?
Algebra, geometry and statistics were not significantly in the pri curriculum years ago. Nor Venn diagrams which, although intriguing, very few consciously use. I would like to see an experiment where all te reo, maori and Treaty related references and activity are rduced to the levels of the 1960s and prior.
And the ‘maths professor’ who in the media opposes Stanford’s changes is NOT in fact a mathematician, but only an educationalist in a School of Education. She has no PhD in maths, no maths publications, no mathematics research. That needs to be made clear.
A very typical scenario in educational research involves teaching a group of kids to do something while not teaching a control group to do that something, and then showing that the kids in the experimental group are better at doing that something than the ones in the control group.
It comes down to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When my mother,in the 1970s and 80s , doing individual tuition in intensive phonics with students who were failing with Whole Language (WL,) reading method it caused quite a concern to the educational establishment who were hell bent at the time in the 1980s, on ridding the system of the pesky intensive phonics. The antagonism was because she was succeeding and had so many students.
The PM at the time Jack Marshall requested an educationalist visit my mothers' schoolroom and after a short visit this educationalist wrote an article in the 'Listener 'expounding the virtues of my mothers'
tuition but concluding it was all down to just individual tuition. The educationalist , an academic at Victoria, knew little about phonics and had probably never taught a single child to read.
It has taken 45 years to restablish phonics back , officially into our schools. Ironically it was Clay's individualised tuition, Reading Recovery (RR) that revealed the ineffectiveness of WL , as a reading method. Henry May a US statistician, researcher and WL supporter , using 100, 000s of students, was very surprised to have his research reveal students who were given RR were worse off than those who didn't get RR. .
Over the 40 years, including from the very beginning WL was introduced there have been mountains of research , and thousands of voices of teachers of reading who have observed the same results as May's but the Progressive camp just dug themselves into their ideology even deeper.
My conclusion from this experience is that when WL was exposed the whole of constructivist teaching in our schools was also condemned because that was the overarching ideology but people have not had that explained to them.
I have been a maths and reading tutor for over 40 years and studied progressivist teaching ( constructivism) and state that every aspect of progressivism is guaranteed to produce failure being based in rhetoric and a wrong evolutionary theory
What I am fighting is the reluctance to acknowledge that recent research , including neuro and cognitive science, confirms traditional teaching we had before progressivism was introduced . This is because teachers in 'the olden days' did not have their heads stuffed up with ideology but were focused on academic achievement. Progressivisn is actually antagonistic to intellectual development.
Barend, in this case it's not as simple as teaching an experimental group "to do something while not teaching a control group to do that something." Both groups were being taught from the same maths curriculum. Whether they were being taught exactly the same parts of that curriculum during the trial is unclear, but both were tested on the same strand - number knowledge. Even so, 'halo effects' are common in this kind of research, so the two-years-progress-12-weeks claim about the experimental group should be taken with a grain of salt. But as I say in the column, the year's progress made by the control group in 12 weeks is the real story here. The control group teachers had been equipped with the new curriculum and trained to use it, as nearly all primary teachers are now. The baseline 'year's progress' is what was typical with the old curriculum and without that training.
The results of the trial give us every reason to be optimistic and should have been praised much more in our media.
In addition - of great concern are the very nasty social media attacks on certain people who are leading our re-development of education and creating our national curriculum.
Let us encourage constructive criticism of education policy or aspects of the draft curriculum and listen to educators who express concerns. Indeed, we do not want a Eurocentric curriculum and indeed we do want an education environment that is inclusive and where all students feel a sense of belonging. Of course, Minister Stanford and her team are very aware of these issues and there should be no reason for concern.
But we see far too much destructive criticism, attacks on people's characters and material that damages reputations and, potentially, careers. Anyone who stands up to them will be on the receiving end of further nasty attacks. It's cowardly stuff because these influencers and their followers know that they remain safe from legal action.
Let's continue to support the current work on education. Right now it looks vey promising. David Lillis
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