“We have lost all notion about the beauty of maths,” said Professor Marc Schäfer, currently head of Rhodes University’s education department, and recently announced at Rhodes University Senate as a FirstRand Foundation (FRF) Chair in Maths Education. “I would like to think that maths has a soul, it has a beauty, a philosophy . . . . and I am going to look for teachers who buy into that.”
The FirstRand Foundation South African Maths Education Chairs Initiative has a R60-million budget and is a targeted research and development intervention that hopes to impact on mathematics teacher education and learner performance in targeted secondary schools around South Africa.
The objectives of the project are: to improve the quality of teaching and learner performance at secondary schools; to research sustainable and practical solutions to South Africa’s maths problems; and to provide leadership and increase dialogue in maths education.
The R60-million project is primarily funded by FirstRand Foundation, with the Rand Merchant Bank Fund contributing a lump sum of R30-million, and the Department of Science & Technology contributing R500 000 to each chair’s annual subsidy of R2-million. The project and its funds will be administered by the National Research Foundation. Other key partnerships which are seen as crucial to the success of the project and have been secured on a national level are the local Department of Education and the teacher unions.
Professor Schäfer and Wits University professor, Jill Adler, currently director of the Marang Centre for Mathematics and Science Education as well as the chair of Mathematics Education, Kings College, London are the first two out of a possible six university professors to chair the national project.
The five-year project has a very clear development agenda, making these particular research chairs quite unique with the research undertaken and the intervention programmes implemented working together with the ultimate aim to improve matric maths results.
“But there’s a far more complex agenda to it,” said Prof Schäfer. And that is to address teaching methods in schools. Prof Schäfer explained that one of his objectives is to develop a symbiotic relationship between Rhodes, the teachers, and the learners at the schools; this in order to develop conceptual knowledge, facilitate fluent teaching methods and to understand the learners and their classroom contexts. “It is of primary importance to change their disposition towards maths and to instill a passion for the subject,” he said.
“It is not just about developing content knowledge. It is also about developing pedagogical knowledge that is appropriate to the school environment,” Prof Schäfer explained the importance of providing teachers with the confidence to deal with maths in the classroom. “Good practice follows naturally.”
Within the national context, the Eastern Cape had one of the worst matric results for maths in 2008. Prof Schäfer, however, cautions making solid conclusions from these results without taking into account rumours about adjustments to the exam papers and the impacts of changes in the curriculum. But the figures do indicate that there is a problem with maths education. He further cites uncertainty about the curriculum, a lack of expertise in schools and a low morale among the teachers as challenges faced by maths education. “We have reduced it to a technical subject,” explained Prof Schäfer. “The soul of maths is absent and we have lost its language.”
The first phase of the project is to recruit schools and to encourage not only their participation but to get them to buy into building a new philosophy behind maths teaching that will instill a passion for the subject in the teachers and their learners. Working with at least 10 schools within a 150km radius of Grahamstown, Prof Schäfer intends to link the programme to the already rich network of maths education projects such as Rhodes University Maths Education Project (RUMEP), Association of Maths Education South Africa (AMESA), Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (SAARMSTE), Grahamstown & District Relief Association (GADRA-Education) and other existing intervention programmes such as the Mathematics Centre at St Andrew’s College.
Further collaborations will be secured with Departments within Rhodes, development intiatives at Rhodes such as Khanya Maths and Science Club and the Makana Schools’ Project, the universities of Fort Hare and NMMU and the other five FRF Chairs in the country. The Chair will also absorb the Mathematics, Information Communication Technology, Science and Technology (MIST) education initiative at the end of 2009 when its Carnegie funding contract comes to an end.
Once these relationships are secured, the serious work will begin to improve maths pass rates against agreed targets set with the teachers.
Work on the project begins in November when Prof Schäfer steps down as Head of the Education Deparment. In the meantime he will need to recruit a project manager, a Doctoral student as the project coordinator, Postdoctoral students will be appointed as the main researchers while part-time maths teachers will be recruited to deliver the programme, which will have a big training and mentoring component.
As one of the first two chairs to be appointed to this national project, Prof Schäfer says his appointment is a vote of confidence in the Grahamstown region and he hopes to provide an example that can be used elsewhere to address South Africa’s maths crisis. “The maths education community is very small and I have been involved in national initiatives such as SAARMSTE for a long time,” said Prof Schäfer. “Rhodes is seen as strong in mathematics education and it was taken for granted that I would apply.”
With a diversity of schools ranging from private institutions to poor rural schools already engendered with a sense of community and having formed their own outreach intitatives such as the maths centre at St Andrews, Grahamstown forms a microcosmic model of how maths education can be developed for the benefit of South Africa as a whole.
The initial challenge is to get the schools on board as this project is not incentivised but is rather about growing school maths departments by working with positive, willing and passionate teachers but Prof Schäfer is confident: “If we can’t make it work here, where can we?”
Story by Kerry Peter (Rhodes Communications)