The Vital Ingredients Adults learning maths Sue Southwood and Linda Dixon February 2012

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Contents

1. Introduction

2. Methodology 3. Recommendations from practitioners 4. Case studies 

Case study one: Embedding numeracy in fitness and outdoor activities

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Case study two: All prison staff working towards Numeracy Level 2

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Case study three: The Language of Maths

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Case study four: Numeracy in the workplace

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Case study five:

Blended Learning approaches with Fire Brigade Union

members and their families

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1. Introduction On behalf of the Skills Funding Agency, NIACE used its networks to ask providers to share their practice in adult maths learning and make recommendations for innovative approaches that supported and developed mathematical understanding. This short report summarises our findings. It is part of an ongoing strategy to highlight effective maths learning and share practice to improve teaching and learning.

Numeracy, as adopted within the Skills for Life strategy, has been overly focussed on the need to improve skills levels, rather than to develop mathematical thinking, understanding and behaviour. Ofsted’s survey into adult numeracy learning (2011)1 recommends that national organisations responsible for quality improvement should ‘focus on improving tutors’ skills in developing learners’ understanding of mathematical concepts and helping them relate their numeracy learning to everyday and work contexts. Making the transition to Functional skills will support an approach that prepares people to understand and use maths in daily life, giving learners a practical grounding in how to apply skills in everyday situations and focus on independent problem solving and transferring skills to different situations. The challenge for providers and teachers is to make maths relevant, interesting and enjoyable as without these ingredients, adults will simply continue to cope with their existing skills. Research by BIS2has found that effective teaching happens where teachers make creative use of ICT; promote reasoning and problem-solving over ‘answer-getting’; expose and treat misconceptions as a subject for discussion and build on knowledge learners already have. The case studies outlined in this report show how providers have helped learners to overcome their fear of maths and offered relevant, embedded courses for maths learning; their experiences will help others to reflect on their approaches.

2. Method For this research, NIACE sent out a request to its database of organisations in the third sector offering adult maths learning, asking them to provide evidence of effective, innovative approaches to teaching and learning in adult numeracy. This report includes some of those responses and covers a small range of settings and approaches. The following recommendations are from those providers. This represents a very small sample of providers but hopefully will stimulate others to 1

Tackling the challenge of low numeracy skills in young people and adults, Ofsted (2011) Review of research and evaluation on improving adult literacy and numeracy skills – BIS research paper 61. (2011) Vorhaus, Lister, Frearson & Johnson. 2

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begin their own action research into what works in practice for adult maths learners and to share those findings with other providers.

3. Recommendations from practitioners Amongst respondents, there appears to be a broad consensus on what providers and teachers feel is important in maths teaching for adults. Below is a compendium of responses.  Complete a full skills audit, including literacy skills that may impact on maths learning.  Learners already use maths; build on what they already know and use real maths problems that are relevant to learners’ lives.  Encourage learners to make decisions about the maths needed and the strategies to be used so they can tackle a variety of problems independently.  Teach and discuss the language of maths to help understand and solve problems. Discuss processes and share methods.  Make it interesting and fun; make use of online materials where possible. 

Monitor progress and check knowledge as you go along.

 Develop logic and thinking skills in learners alongside standard maths skills

4. Case studies The following case studies are from organisations in a range of settings who are making maths a priority and trying out new ways of engaging learners with maths. The approaches may stimulate thinking about how you approach maths for adults in your organisation. Questions to consider after reading each case study are: 

What are the strengths of the approach?

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Are there implications for improving your practice?

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Is there something you can use or adapt with your learners?

Case study one: Embedding numeracy in fitness and outdoor activities Endeavour Training Limited works nationally with young people aged 16 – 19 to build personal and social skills to develop their full potential as individuals and as members of society. These include young people who have recently arrived in the country and missed the opportunity to enrol at school, young people who are in danger of dropping out of school and those who have dropped out.

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Young people are referred from Youth Offending Teams, Refugee Council, Connexions, Careers Advice and schools with some being self-referred. The emphasis is on building personal and social skills and confidence by taking part in outdoor activities, such as canoeing, climbing and caving.

Recent work has been to raise awareness across the organisation about numeracy content in all activities. This has been successful for the young people who are able to see the reason and purpose of maths learning in a context that is useful and of interest to them. Many of the young people have failed GCSE maths and have preconceived ideas about approaches to maths and negative attitudes towards maths learning. Teachers return to basics, re-building confidence. Initial and diagnostic assessments mean that teachers can start from the beginning and then quickly move forward with young people who are further on with their understanding of maths. Peer-assisted learning is encouraged. The teachers ask young people who are more confident in specific aspects of maths to lead the group for a few minutes on that particular topic, explaining how they work it out. This encourages the other young people who are less confident to ask about the elements of the calculation they don’t understand and so creates a safe environment for exploration of maths. Teachers point out that young people have strengths in different things and that those less confident in maths might excel in the outdoor activities and visa versa.

The lessons focus on practical and relevant skills, embedding maths in the other activities. For example, some of the young people on Foundation Learning are interested in joining the Forces which has motivated them to improve their fitness and to measure their progress. As part of their sports activities, young people measure and monitor their own fitness. They prepare graphs of their fitness progression and learn about measuring speed by comparing their running times and working out and measuring heart rates, oxygen intake and pulse rates.

Endeavour work with many girls from the Roma community, whose English is often limited. As part of the PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) syllabus the tutors have used their interest in cooking as a vehicle to develop numeracy skills. The girls plan a meal, go out and buy the ingredients required, and take turns to cook for each other. This includes many maths skills such as managing money, weighing and measuring, working out quantities of food required for the number of people eating. Endeavour employs a Slovakian translator and uses the skills of a colleague who is an artist and uses drawings to describe and explain situations. Additionally, the language barrier is overcome by having translation dictionaries available and using Google translation.

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Other activities that easily embed numeracy are rock climbing and taking part in canoeing trips. Rock climbing requires the young people to work out body weights, thickness of ropes, tension needed and weight distribution. The Foundation Learning group take part in canoeing trips for which they have to map read to plan a route, work out costs for travel and food, the buoyancy of the canoe carrying people and provisions and how to deal with pitfalls, for example, having to take alternative routes to the ones planned due to bad weather.

The Functional Skills tutor has only 2 ½ hours per week with the Foundation Learning group so it is vital that numeracy is made relevant by embedding in the other activities they undertake. One volunteer has an interest in boats and this led to a teaching a session on ratio where he brought in models and pictures of boats for the young people to measure, the smallest being a matchstick model and the second biggest, a kit boat built by his father. The volunteer also had a keen interest in DIY and was able to lead a 10 minutes slot on scale and area. The tutor encourages other staff to embed numeracy for example, on days out in the local area, to think about shape and size of buildings, to look at road signs and to look at notices about sales in the shops.

Particular challenges have included fitting in with awarding body assessment windows, where young people’s lives are chaotic and unpredictable and the changing attitudes towards maths learning that has previously been seen as irrelevant and not useful by the young person. Endeavour staff start where the young person is in their learning rather than following a set syllabus and have persuaded other staff to promote numeracy through their activities.

Successes 

Start with the young person’s interests

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Make learning relevant, useful and interesting for young people

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Work in small groups, providing individual support

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Make the most of volunteers’ skills and experience.

Case study two: All prison staff working towards Numeracy Level 2 The Prison Officer Association Union learning centre at HMP High Down is for staff working in prisons, courts, probation and NOMS. This can include staff working around the prison such as doctors, nurses, plumbers, electricians and probation staff as well as Prison Officers. As well as supporting numeracy learning, it delivers a broad range of courses from “Playing the Bagpipes” to Spanish, Arabic and Criminology degrees. 14 learning centres are scattered around England and

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Wales and work flexibly to accommodate shift patterns of all grades of staff whether uniformed or civilian. All staff at High Down are required to be qualified to Level 2 in literacy and numeracy or work towards it. New staff visit the learning centre as part of their induction process whilst others learn about the centre through the weekly prison newsletter.

Personal Learning Goals are negotiated between learners and teaching staff at the centre and always link to the learner’s role in the establishment. For example, Personal Learning Goals for the Pharmacy staff have considered the calculations of different strengths of medicines to work out how many pills they would need to correctly dispense if they did not have 40mg but had 20 mg of a particular medication. For an officer in charge of 180 prisoners, how would they estimate the number of meals required in a week taking into consideration, court calls, bailed prisoners and receiving new prisoners as well as food wastages? The centre relies predominantly on online learning, this means that staff work long shifts can therefore work from home at anytime, however there is a strong ethos of individual support for learners who need additional help. Online learning (LearnDirect resources initially, but recently changing to Tribal Advanced Learning Zone) provides tools to carry out initial and diagnostic assessment and recommends an Individual Learning Programme. It also list useful resources for the learner, all of which are curriculum referenced. If learners are struggling with one particular skill in maths, it provides printable worksheets that can form the basis of additional learning support from staff who use this alongside more interactive and visual resources.

Most of the staff learning at the centre, have volunteered to learn, however, numeracy has been more of a challenge for many who have a fear of maths from school learning. This is overcome by reflecting together with the tutors as part of introductory advice and guidance on what they have learned before and how much they already know, which builds on confidence and motivation. This is followed up by a progress review every 3 weeks to discuss what has gone well and what has been more challenging and how they feel about what they have achieved. The form for the progress review is produced by the online software package being used. This is used as a basis for one to one discussion and planning further work.

Staff taking part in learning has had an additional benefit for the Prison. The HR dept working with the learning centre found that there had been a reduction in sick leave amongst staff taking part in learning. Staff had gained confidence which had helped them to deal with difficult situations at work.

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Successes 

Promote numeracy as widely as possible

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Link numeracy to the individual’s learning aims and job role

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Offer one to one support to engage with numeracy and stick with it.

Case study three: The Language of Maths Leicester Adult Skills and Learning Service (LASALS) is the adult education arm of Leicester City Council. It provides a city-wide service across 19 different centres, including schools, community colleges and centres and workplace and delivers a range of part time courses under the headings of Learning for Life, Learning for Work and Learning for Leisure. In total, the adult learning service will enrol approximately 2,000 learners to Skills for Life, Functional Skills and ESOL courses in the next academic year. LASALS has a strong team of tutors including 5 numeracy specialists.

ESOL and maths The teaching team at LASALS and 5 other local providers piloted ESOL and Maths courses for learners at entry level to help understand the language of maths. The term ‘maths’ is used in all marketing, in preference to numeracy as most potential learners know what this is. The teaching staff believe that building concepts in maths is of key importance and that these are related to real life activities, for example, shopping for bargains, checking ‘BOGOF’ offers, measuring for DIY. Their teaching of maths has developed to include much more discussion about the language of maths and to be more active, avoiding worksheets in favour of ‘realia’, such as shopping leaflets. They have dictionaries readily available for any terminology that learners might struggle to understand. An example of a term and concept that learners have struggled with is ‘data’. Following a discussion about statistics, learners worked to complete a research questionnaire online about adult learning, with the understanding that the ‘data’ collected would contribute to the research. Discussions with learners have included how maths is taught in different countries and this has helped parents in the class to understand how their children learn at school.

Dyscalculia awareness One of LASALS’ dyslexia specialists has enrolled on a PGCE course with Loughborough University which has recently developed a screening tool for dyscalculia. This involvement has inspired initial research into the needs of learners who might be dyscalculic. Teachers had noticed that some learners were having particular difficulties with number and met to exchange experiences. The team were able to win a small grant from LSIS to draw a focus group together to take this further. The

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focus group included teachers from FE and Adult Learning Services in the three local counties. The teachers looked at existing research and shared strategies that would work with learners. They all found that learners generally struggled with traditional learning approaches, for instance using number lines so teachers used multisensory resources, tailored to individual needs. The group members continue to share practice and ideas. The teachers found that some learners particularly struggled with the anxiety of poor experiences of learning maths at school. As a result LASALS has delivered short 5-week courses as a stepping stone to maths Entry level learning, encouraging the development of personal coping strategies, for example, telling the time, to support those learners in mainstream provision. This has helped enormously in building confidence. The courses are non-accredited and follow the RARPA3 approach and the majority of learners have gone on to accredited courses. The team have found this approach particularly useful for learners at Entry level or experiencing mental health difficulties and have worked in partnership with a local provider who offers informal learning, formalising opportunities to gain numeracy accreditation. They have developed Get Ready for Maths courses as a stepping stone to Get On in Maths. This has provided learners with the chance to get used to working in pairs rather than in isolation.

Successes 

Use real-life activities for maths learning

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Discuss maths language

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Offer short courses as a stepping stone to Entry maths

Case study four: Numeracy in the workplace Stoke on Trent College offers a broad range of further education courses from short half day courses to full year courses as well as university level courses and apprenticeships, with vocational courses being the most popular. In addition, they have an Employer, Training and Services Dept which works with local businesses to deliver literacy, numeracy and IT to companies in the North Staffordshire area. This provision is well established and they have worked across a wide range of companies and organisations. All of the learners are employed and cover a varied range of occupations, such as warehouse workers, clerical workers, hospital clinical staff, college staff, firefighters, care assistants, call centre workers, teaching assistants, supermarket staff, delivery workers and manufacturing operatives. They all complete an initial and diagnostic assessment and follow an individual learning plan with SMART targets which are reviewed at regular intervals.

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Recognising and Recording Progress and Achievement

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Workplace programmes are typically shorter than college courses and adopt a skills focus and practical approach using SMART targets and individual learning plans. Classes are generally either a group taught session of 20 hours in total and a roll on roll off programme where learners might be studying any of the three skills, English, maths and IT and any level and at different stages of their course. This structure has meant successful maths learning. Programmes are contextualised to learner needs and set in the context of the learner’s employment or everyday life, trying to ensure that the preferences of every learner are met. Wherever they can, the tutors use kinaesthetic approaches such as card based activities looking at different types of measurement, metric and imperial. This encourages discussion about maths and the use of maths language and facilitates questioning of key concepts and assumptions, for example, when you multiply a number by another one, it always gets bigger and when you divide a number by another one, it always gets smaller. They encourage learners to evaluate their own individual approaches and application of logic.

One of the tutors has developed a strategy to help learners improve their thinking skills by developing a set of resources around the idea of problem solving and verbal reasoning. The resources she uses are logic puzzles that involved developing a range of skills that include skimming and scanning for relevant information, working out what calculations are needed and then application of the necessary number skills. She has used the puzzles with mixed maths and English groups and this has worked well and has helped engage literacy learners in maths.

The evidence that this approach works presents itself in the number of learners recruited, where the number of numeracy learners often is higher than literacy learners, for example: classes organised for the company, Churchill China – 59 in numeracy and 42 in literacy over 4 years; DHL Sainsbury’s (distribution) 58 in numeracy and 31 in literacy over 3.5 years. The team believe that whilst literacy is the first interest of employees taking up learning, maths proves to more popular over time.

Successes 

Talk about maths, question assumptions about maths, use maths language

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Develop logic and thinking skills in learners alongside standard maths skills

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Engage a range of learning styles, make particular use of kinaesthetic approaches.

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Case study five: Blended Learning approaches with Fire Brigade Union members and their families The FBU has two Learning Centres located within Northumberland and Cleveland Fire and Rescue Service that deliver courses and learning opportunities across the North East Region. The Centres are part of the Unionlearn network U-Net centres, offering a range of courses and recognised qualifications in IT, Maths, English and Business and Management. Courses vary from short taster courses to extended programmes of learning that learners can work through at their own pace towards nationally recognised qualifications. The team have recently identified an online course which is more user friendly than their previous one. From the initial assessment tool it itemises and references each area of the curriculum that the learner needs to improve on which helps inform the diagnostic assessment. It also provides underpinning assignments for each course which a lot of learners like to take away and work on independently at home. The tutor designs her own assignments contextualised to the person’s interests/hobbies or a practical activity such as comparing weights and prices for items the learner wants to purchase. Online courses allow the option of learning in the centre, at home, at work or anywhere there is access to the internet - and at a time, day or night, that suits the learner.

The centres provide learning for anyone who is a member of a trade union, their immediate family, an employee within a company where trade unions are recognised and the wider Fire and Rescue Service Community. All recruits to the Fire Service and those applying for promotion, undergo a Skills Audit which includes initial and diagnostic assessments for numeracy. They noticed that FBU members who were already engaged in learning were more motivated to improve their maths than community members and feel this is because they can see its relevance at work. Many learners have a fear of maths from previous experiences of maths learning but once they have completed a diagnostic assessment, are very often surprised by the amount of skills they already have.

If learners struggle with any of the online content for numeracy, the Skills for Life tutor works with them by contextualising the learning to their role in the Fire Brigade. She develops resources to help explore any difficulties with maths they may be having. Maths is embedded in the entry exam in duties such as being called to an incident, dealing with casualties, writing a report, collecting data and handling equipment. The centre also provides learning for community members and for this, lifestyle resources are developed that are relevant to the individual person, for example, a budgeting task or working out quantities of paint and wallpaper needed to decorate a room. Successes

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Contextualise maths activities

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Focus the diagnostic assessment on what maths skills learners already have

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