In a recent speech the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, once again raised the profile of mathematics on the basis that ‘our children’s jobs will require more analytical skills than ever before’. Such pronouncements are ubiquitous from political leaders who see education as a solution to an economic problem; or as David Cameron once described it: ‘the best inoculation against unemployment’. The latest policy approach to this problem is Teaching for Mastery (TfM) – a widely enacted, and government endorsed, programme of professional development led by the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics.
TfM provides teachers with structure and guidance, and the positive message that all children can succeed at mathematics. Its approach focuses on teaching classes together rather than grouping by ability, and on honing down mathematical ideas so that teaching is focused on
the most important conceptual knowledge and understanding that pupils need as they progress … [which] provide a coherent, linked framework to support pupils’ mastery of the primary mathematics curriculum.
(DfE, 2020, p. 5)
This government guidance asserts the kind of management of learning mathematics that is de rigueur in modern classrooms, where teachers’ primary responsibility is to demonstrate their control of pupils’ progress. However, in our recent article in the Curriculum Journal we question whether such a confident, objective, linear view of learning mathematics makes sense.
