Category Archives: Uncategorised

This blog post was written by Staff Tutor and Senior mathematics lecturer Katie Chicot.  MathsCity marks a first, major step towards creating a first National Mathematics Discovery Centre for the UK. MathsCity opened to the public on 4th October. For … Continue reading →

There has been so much change over the past year, especially in educational settings. At the Open University we know about distance and remote learning – it’s been happening for over 50 years! But even those students who did not … Continue reading →

Last September I came back from maternity leave, mid pandemic, to reclaim my role as external engagement lead for the school of mathematics and statistics. I had particularly missed this aspect of my job: organising events with our academics, hosting … Continue reading →

A personal viewpoint from Cathy Smith, Mathematics Education lead at the Open University. Ofqual and DfE are currently consulting about their proposals for giving students GCSE, AS and A level grades this summer, a change of plan from the problematic … Continue reading →

Generalising in Mathematics by Philip Higgins     One of the most revealing aspects of ME625 and ‘Developing Thinking in Algebra’ (Mason et al 2012) is that algebra is the search for the general rule and that this generality can … Continue reading →

Developing Thinking in Learning and Doing Geometry.   You might have thought the title of this blog is unnecessarily complicated! It is a hybrid of the names for the current Open University geometry module (Developing Thinking in Geometry) and the … Continue reading →

One of the lockdown conversations that has stuck in my mind was with a colleague whose 8-year old does not really want to go back to school. One of his reasons is a tribute to her homeschooling arrangements: he has … Continue reading →

Rebecca Would is  a year 12 work experience student who has visited the Maths and Stats department of the OU. She interviewed Karen Vines, a senior lecturer in statistics, to find out about her and her work Maths and Stats students at the … Continue reading →

Dr Cathy Smith, who leads the maths education team here at the OU, has recently had a paper published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education – congratulations Cathy! In a nutshell (if it’s possible!), the paper concerns the … Continue reading →