Pat Drake

Grasping at methodological understanding: a cautionary tale from insider research

This article offers an account of a doctoral insider research project that became problematic. The project was investigating mathematics teaching in a university in the UK, and by contrasting the research account with research diary entries pertaining to two interviewees, different interpretations of the interview data are evident. These differences offer illustrations of four aspects of the problematics of interviewing as follows: (1) personal relations and expectations position everyone in the interview; (2) the motivation for the research affects what the researcher learns; (3) the same material generates accounts that emphasize different things; and (4) things happen in people’s heads during the interviews that are not recorded. The argument developed by considering the examples is that authorial voice is constructed out of decisions regarding the data together with considerations regarding the researcher’s position. The validity of insider research requires reflexive consideration of the researcher’s position, and this is especially pertinent in the case of research undertaken by practitioner researchers on professional doctorates.

School‐based Teacher Training: a conservative practice?

ABSTRACT Mentor development work is the focus for an examination of the effects of reform on school‐based teacher training. The work took place within the well‐established school‐based Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) partnership course between Sussex University, and schools in East and West Sussex, England. A pilot project provided a development programme for new and experienced mentors. Analysis of the data collected in the academic year 1991‐1992, reveal the changing nature of both the partnership and the work of the mentor within it. The authors argue that implementation of the Education Reform Act (1988) and school‐based training throughout England and Wales, will not adequately prepare teachers for a complex future.

Mathematics and All That Who Teaches the Number Stuff

Much is currently made of mathematics being a genericskill in higher education. What has not been establishedsystematically is what this means in terms of who teaches it. This opinionarticle draws on an attempt to find out who is teachingmathematics in one university. As suspected, individuals who would notdescribe themselves as mathematics specialists undertake much ofthe mathematics teaching. Indeed, many teachers learned theirmathematics independently in order to address specific problems,for example, related to research, and others learned and continue tolearn from their teaching. For most people, mathematics learning issituated in the contexts in which it is applied, and teaching is onesuch context. Exploring the experience of learning mathematics inorder to teach can provide specific insight into the successfullearning of mathematics per se.

Becoming Known through Email: A Case of Woman, Leadership, and an Awfully Familiar Strange Land.

This project explores women and educational leadership from the perspective of an individual who moved from the UK to Australia in order to take up the position of Dean of an education grouping in a university. Emails sent by the Dean to the group are analysed after nine months in post and categorised according to the requirements of the position description. The large volume of over 6000 emails in itself was such as to deny the possibilities of meaningful categorisation, but sorting through these digital communications enables discussion of the interplays amongst gender, emotional labour, rapid organisational change, and the speeding up of administration through the use of technology.

Assessing ‘functionality’ in school mathematics examinations: what does being human have to do with it?

This article analyses aspects of the process of developing ‘functional’ assessments of mathematics at the end of compulsory schooling in England. A protocol that was developed for scrutinising assessment items is presented. This protocol includes an indicator of the ‘authenticity’ of each assessment item. The data are drawn from scrutiny of 589 assessment items from thirty-nine formal unseen examinations taken by students aged sixteen, and the article illustrates ways that mathematics is presented in different contexts in examinations. We suggest that currently the ‘human face’ of the questions may serve to disguise routine calculations, and we argue that, in formal examinations, connections between mathematics assessments situated in context and functional mathematics have yet to be established.

Time for curriculum reform: the case of mathematics

Mathematics education is rarely out of the policy spotlight in England. Over the last 10 years, considerable attention has been given to improving 14–19 mathematics curriculum pathways. In this paper we consider some of the challenges of enacting curriculum change by drawing upon evidence from our evaluation of the Mathematics Pathways Project (MPP). From 2004 to 2010 this project, which was directed by Englands Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, aimed to improve the engagement, attainment and participation rates of 14- to 19-year-old learners of mathematics. Our particular focus is upon the temporal problems of piloting new curriculum and assessment and we draw on Lemkes discussion of timescales, heterochrony and the adiabatic principle to consider the interlocking and interference of various change processes.

“The cut and thrust of industrial relations” – bullying by another name?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a feminography, that is a “narration of a female self in a feminist age” (Abrams, 2017) by presenting a conceptual analysis, derived from experience, of email providing a form of discourse – that the author calls finger-speak – through which unexamined gender positioning caricatures a person’s identity. In so doing, the paper provides an illustrative case of a female manager being positioned through email to “know her place, perform it and feel it” (Hey, 2011). Design/methodology/approach An analysis of email foregrounds “finger-speak” as a form of digital conversation and through which people in universities may be positioned publicly but without their consent in relation to unexamined norms and assumptions. For women, it is argued, these norms are ageist and sexist. In this paper, fragments of finger-speak are collated to provide a reading of how mixing gendered norms with apparent differences of opinion constructs, via unexamined sexism, a public identity and then undermines it. Findings Through the case presented, the author argues that, because of a shared but unarticulated shadow over women as leaders, email lays the ground for subsequent scapegoating in such a manner that the woman takes responsibility for structural challenges that rightly belong to the organisation. Originality/value The contribution that email makes to constructing female identity in public is new, complementing other work that publicly characterises women leaders, through film (Ezzedeen, 2015), and through published writing such as autobiography (Kapasi et al., 2016). Emotional work undertaken by women in university leadership is so far under-represented in public, and email is a site through which this work becomes visible.

Testing Teachers: Perspectives on a pilot numeracy skills test in England

From May 2001 all teachers qualifying in England must be successful in computer-based skills tests in numeracy and literacy. The first test to be developed was the QTS Skills Test in Numeracy, which was a paper and pencil test taken on 1 June 2000 by approximately 22,000 trainee teachers. In this article I argue that the pilot test signals an unjustified departure from performance-based assessment, provides an example of inconsistency between national imperatives and teacher certification and was not robust. A small study of trainee teachers of secondary English was undertaken to explore perceptions of professional numeracy in relation to their experience in training, what was tested in the skills test and what is known about testing mathematics through questions set in pseudo-real contexts. I conclude that theoretically it would be difficult to devise an appropriate examination type test of professional numeracy and that in the event the pilot test was not successful.