Teaching Approaches to Promote Consistent ... - Learning Wales

On the matter of teachers’ knowledge about how to teach (pedagogic knowledge ofmathematics and English), a number of opinions were offered (again, these were notdirectly sought). One head teacher (school G, group Ma) said“The large amount of training for NLS/NNS frameworks has been valuable.”Other heads’ comments endorsed this. However, one (school C, group Co) said that“Pedagogical knowledge is poor both in English and mathematics and bothstrategies are presenting problems.”Another head (school I, group Ma) described subject pedagogy as now “much betterthroughout” but complained that “teachers don’t seem to notice when children speakungrammatically.” This school had experienced significant staff turn-over in the lasttwo years and the head thought that new teachers needed training, but was notunhappy with the LEA’s provision.4.3 Subject co-ordinators’ perceptionsFinding 8: Subject co-ordinators showed considerable perceptiveness inidentifying problematic areas for teachers and pupils. They gave detailedinformation about challenges in the curriculum.Some subject co-ordinators cited specific aspects of the curriculum that were found tobe challenging to teachers and pupils. In mathematics these included longmultiplication and division, fractions, shape and space, and problem solving. This isinteresting because there are different issues here: the first is related to the idea ofchallenge in the learning opportunities presented to pupils, the second to technicallydifficult mathematical processes.Despite the natural tendency to avoid talking about teachers individually, coordinatorsdid understand individual staff and their subject strengths and weaknesses.One Literacy co-ordinator said that staff had difficulties with grammar and non-fictiontexts. In focussing on their colleagues’ experience of the curriculum, threemathematics co-ordinators hinted at problems:43