I’m Sue Forsythe, the latest member to join the Mathematics Education team at the Open University. I have worked in Mathematics Education all my career, first as a secondary school teacher of Mathematics and latterly as an Initial Teacher Educator of Secondary Mathematics. I understand the need for Mathematics to be taught by teachers who have a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and a secure pedagogy to be able to develop these concepts in their students. The Smith review recommends the near universal participation of 16-18 year olds to continue studying Mathematics. As a result there will need to be increased capacity in the teaching profession to deliver this. The OU Honours degree in Mathematics and its Learning has huge potential to develop this capacity, both within students taking the whole degree and with specific modules available for those teachers in schools and colleges who change to specialise in teaching Mathematics.
My doctoral thesis, completed in 2014, used a Design Based Research methodology to explore whether a task in a Dynamic Geometry Environment could be the catalyst for the development of the concept of inclusion in 2D geometry in 13 year old students. The research allowed me to make a fine grained study of how children think about shapes and develop understanding of important mathematical concepts such as inclusivity. One important finding from the study was the affordances of the dynamic figure at the heart of the task which includes the facilitating of a narrative through which students can construct meanings. This makes reasoning in a dynamic environment qualitatively different from reasoning in a static (pencil and paper) environment. Generally, how learners reason in a dynamic environment could be an immensely fruitful area of research to help us understand how best to create effective online learning.
This lends itself very obviously to the learning of mathematics online which should be more than simply an electronic workbook, even if the computer provides instant feedback. I believe that further research is needed in how to make the most of the affordances of interactive maths software.