Scholarship of Teaching and Learning – Assessment patch

I love teaching mathematics and I love seeing children engrossed in working on problems and experiencing success no matter what their level of ability. I get the same buzz from seeing adults engaging with concepts that they may have struggled with at school, puzzling over a challenge or grudgingly enjoying ‘doing mathematics’. Teaching students how to teach mathematics tends to unearth either strong positive or strong negative feelings. Nevertheless, in regard to teaching, my main drivers are that I want what I do and the learning experiences I fashion to be purposeful, useful, meaningful and relevant to groups and individuals alike and…I want to make a difference (K2).

But what do I do that makes my teaching worth rewarding?

Making a difference to how my students feel about mathematics is probably the most important aspect of my work with them and it influences all of my inputs. It is important to me that I provide an inclusive learning environment and maximise ‘the outcomes of learning for all learners’ (Ashwin et al., 2015, p.306). Ashwin et al. (2015) describe the use of tricks and strategies to address identified problems in, for example, inclusion. They encapsulate the wider issue in education of teachers and politicians looking for new ways to ‘close the gap’ and improve attainment by introducing quick fix programmes to address deficiencies in literacy and numeracy, which provide teachers with scripts to follow and activities to do but leave little room for creating a curriculum to meet individual learners’ needs. In higher education we have an opportunity to create our curriculum, and particularly in ESW, I feel it is our responsibility to develop critically analytical students who can take what is good and praiseworthy from programmes of study and use them creatively in their context (V4).

When I plan an input I put myself in the position of the learner. I consider the difficulties in the learning and plan to mitigate against these through the activities and modes of teaching I employ (A1, A2). I organise my teaching to ensure that everyone is actively engaged in learning and that there is something that will interest, excite or challenge everyone by differentiating the learning and the questioning and utilising teaching strategies that create a positive, can-do-but-does-not-matter-if-you-cannot ethos (A4). However, three aspects that have a significant impact on student engagement in my classes are: my ability to communicate my enthusiasm for and knowledge of my subject; how I interact and show an interest in my students and their individual needs; and how I model the strategies I espouse to encourage them to participate and make them think (A4, K1, V1). Quickly building up a rapport and relationship with the students means they feel able to communicate openly and give me feedback, which enables me to craft learning experiences that meet their needs (V2).

Boyer (1990, p.15) describes the original meaning of scholarship to be ‘a variety of creative work… measured by the ability to think, communicate and learn’. He goes on to say that ‘knowledge is acquired through research, through synthesis, through practice and through teaching’ (Boyer, 1990, p.24). In considering Boyer’s description of scholarship, it is something that I am doing and is becoming more observably evident in my practice although, I am continually developing and refining my skills each time I teach (K1, V3).