Oxford Australia Blog

Sharing our love of education, language, and books

Tag: Maths

  • Strategies you can count on to reconnect your students with maths

    Strategies you can count on to reconnect your students with maths

    Maths can be a polarising subject – students either love it or hate it. But this line has become somewhat blurred in 2020 with the necessity of remote learning and a whole new approach to how we teach and engage students.

  • There is still value in learning the times tables, even in the smartphone era

    By Brian Murray, co-author of Oxford Mathematics At the start of trivia night I recently attended, the organisers requested that all participants’ smartphones should be switched off. This was not because the phones might cause a disturbance, but because those running the quiz could not trust us to resist the temptation to cheat. In this,…

  • Forget about Maths experts, Australian schools need well-supported teachers

    Forget about Maths experts, Australian schools need well-supported teachers

    By Brian Murray Hardly a year seems to pass by without some survey or other exposing a slip in numeracy standards in Australian schools. In late 2016, Education Minister, Simon Birmingham, said he was “embarrassed for Australia” because of the way Year 4 students had fallen behind other countries in Maths. Bodies such as the…

  • Maths skills need to serve students beyond the next 30 minutes

    Maths skills need to serve students beyond the next 30 minutes

    By Peter Sullivan, Professor of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Monash University.  A lack of consensus about what works can make debates about education frustrating. This is especially true for the teaching and learning of mathematics. Not only is there a high level of disagreement about the teaching of the subject, but even the most…

  • How to make maths memorable

    How to make maths memorable

    By Annie Facchinetti Recent research in the area of neuroscience has revealed that the brain has a greater ability to change and adapt than was previously thought. However, brain changes are generally not instant. For lasting neurological pathways to be built, much like wearing a physical pathway between one place and another, they need to be…