Specialist Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics – Primary Early Career Teachers

Project Outline:

NCP 21-28a: This project is designed to support primary early career teachers (teachers in their first two years of teaching) in developing specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics, thus enabling them to understand, teach and support pupils in maths in the classroom.

NCP 21-28b: This project compliments the ECT project above and gives an opportunity for mentors to develop their own specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics whilst supporting ECTs in their development.

What is involved?

At a local level, the Cambridge Maths Hub Work Groups will explore designing effective learning and teaching in maths with a focus on multiplicative reasoning. Participants will work deeply on this area of maths, drawing on the associated pedagogy, and activities and will include lesson analysis and lesson design. This programme will take place online across the equivalent of four days.

Who can take part?

This programme is designed for primary early career teachers (those in their first or second year of teaching).

What are the benefits?

ECT participants will:

  • plan and teach a carefully sequenced and coherent area of maths
  • appreciate the key ideas underpinning the area of maths being taught
  • understand key principles and approaches associated with teaching for mastery
  • understand approaches to assess pupils’ prior learning, so that learning sequences take this into account
  • make appropriate use of representations to expose the structure of the maths being taught.

Mentor participants will:

  • support the ECTs as outlined above
  • deepen their own subject knowledge
  • have opportunities to share and collaborate with other mentors
  • develop their own coaching skills
  • influence the teaching of mathematics outside of their own classroom

Cost: The SKTM – Primary Early Career Teachers project is fully funded by the Maths Hubs Programme so is free to participating schools.

Expectations of participants and their schools

Participants and their schools must be able to commit to the full academic year’s programme. All sessions will take place online.  There will be relevant intersessional tasks between sessions; these are designed to support ongoing development of teaching.  ECTs will be asked to keep a reflection journal that will support their development and contribute to their ECT Framework. Participants will be contributing members of an online community hosted on Basecamp. Participants will contribute to the national evaluation (through an online survey) after the Work Group has finished.