Teaching and Learning Research Programme - Widening Participation

The Stories Students Tell About Maths

Tammy (pseudonym)

Tammy is currently studying AS maths having completed Use of Maths last year. She has previously attempted AS maths but was moved into the Use of Maths class part way through the first term. She feels this was because she had only done intermediate level GCSE whilst most of the students on the AS maths course had done higher level: “they had a lot more understanding of what was going on, and I was just like thicko, right don’t know what I’m doing, can you explain that again, right I’m not asking that again”. Tammy achieved grade C for Use of Maths (B Algebra, B Calculus and an E in Statistics) and was then allowed to do AS maths again.

Tammy’s main motivation for doing maths is to be a mathematics teacher (“ever since nursery or so…”). She explains it as follows:

“I want to be a maths teacher, to teach maths. And to help other people in the same situation I was, and show that it is not all about, to be brainy, to be smart, it’s all about… if you can do it and you want to do it, do it”.

It was her experience of learning mathematics at high school which influenced this career choice (to prove lots of her teachers wrong by showing that she can do maths and become a teacher - “I can go to University and prove the point that I can actually do this”):

“Because I had a teacher in high school turned round to me and said ‘You’ll never be a maths teacher. You are crap at maths’. My intermediate teacher at GCSE turned round and said ‘You can do maths!’, you know, you’re one of the smartest people in this class, to do it, and had a result that I got, one of the high scores on intermediate level.” 

This career choice has been enhanced by her experience of helping other students with their mathematics:

“And they’d come…you know, if they couldn’t find Miss, they’d come and find me.  It’d be like, ‘explain this to me,’ ‘How’d you do it?  How do you apply?’ Well, I am not going to use your question, but I will use a different one. It was like ‘I am not giving you the answer, try. Go away’. It was like, so…when especially two of the people who I worked with every lesson including maths, UoM lesson, they got As as well so it was like, ‘Got an A. I feel like I’ve helped you!’ (laughs) But then I was gutted when one of them got higher than me. ‘She got higher than me. It’s not fair. I got 47 and you got 48. But I am OK’, you know, I’m fine”.

Helping others is also seen as valuable in terms of her own learning too:

“(…) because by helping them I remember again, I’m remembering what I’ve learned, before them”.

In describing her experience of learning maths, Tammy stresses the importance of having a fun atmosphere while learning:

“Education isn’t about being dull, but having fun, come on! It’s laughing, you know.
You know you work chatting and having fun, you got all of it. (…) I mean at the end of the day… we are all human beings, you know, we are still teenagers. We do need to have a bit of fun, in order to learn something”.

Tammy summarises mathematics as being about “getting a reward of like, ‘I know what I’m doing’, not the grades or whatever, just making someone happy that they’re being accepted into something that they can understand…”

Mathematics was Darfor’s favourite subject at primary school because he was good at it:

“I always used to finish the work before the other kids and I always used to get good grades in the tests”.

He particularly liked the fact that they were split up into two sets “one for bright people and the other one for other people” and that “helps people, it’s better if you are on your own…with people at your own level of intelligence”.

At secondary school he also liked maths and was again in the top set - “…I liked solving practical problems like in real life situations”.

However, maths at college is a lot more difficult:

“ Well, recently I am not being as good as I was in the past because I find it more difficult and so…there is people who will do a lot better than me in class. But I think if I study, which I started doing revising for my AS level and I get a lot of practice, like I’ve done in the past, then I can do really good.”

He describes maths at college as:

“…you have to read a lot more and study a lot more to be good at it”. “ [Maths] is probably more difficult [than other subjects] because other courses are just knowledge and this you have to actually work out the problems. At Biology and Chemistry we are just learning the facts”.

Darfor’s approach to learning mathematics emphasizes writing it down, (rather than using computers which is not doing ‘proper maths’) because he gets better practice for the exams. 

He also likes working alone. He says for him it’s better to “practice on my own and at my own speed, rather than trying to stress on….” It seems that his current teacher’s style suits this preference, because it’s more organized and “leaves us to ourselves in the actual practice”.

Darfor’s preference for working alone is an important aspect of his decision to do maths since he feels he is not good at communicating as might be required in other subjects:

“…if someone is being in the same lessons as me and they don’t understand it I could explain it to them again, but I couldn’t teach it from scratch because I am not that good at communicating with words …”

“… I think that’s [communication skills] more related with studying English language at secondary school, because we had to give sorts of presentations and the maths is basically …for me it’s just working on my own. I just get the exercises and do them on my own.”

One of his reasons for liking mathematics earlier in life was because he was shown how it could be applied to real situation.  However, now he says it’s not like that anymore:

W: We get a problem and you have to solve it, they show us how to solve it and we have to solve it. Well, I guess it could, some of them, some of like differentiation, we can put that into a real life problem and solve it.
MP: So there is a connection to the real…?
W: There is a connection but we don’t actually study that. We just study the basics [what’s on the syllabus]

Lee says that was one of “the clever ones” at primary school, with Maths as his strongest subject. When asked if he liked maths, he says:  “Yes. I was always good at maths, pretty much. (…)  I never struggled in maths, it was pretty easy. I got like top levels and stuff, in primary.”

However, at secondary school he says he lost interest:
“No, it’s not something that interests me. I am good at it, but it didn’t interest me. I don’t see the point of it.”
“I had the same teacher all the way through secondary school, and just didn’t like her. [for 5 years] …. Because … I don’t know. I just didn’t feel she liked me so I didn’t like her. If someone doesn’t like me then I don’t like them.”

Like Tammy, Lee started the year doing AS maths but then moved to Use of Maths because the teachers said he was struggling and Use of Maths was an easier option:
“I chose maths, like the maths Pure and Decision. At the beginning of the year I started doing that, […]…I wanted to do like a traditional subject, that would look good for University kind of thing. And when you are getting quite good grade to GCSE you are able to do it. And I was doing .. all right in maths, and then I just…I don’t know. I was like that in all subjects because when you…like do a step up to college, it’s quite different to secondary, isn’t it? [ …] Because it’s more work, it’s like less time spent on one particular way, […] And I just weren’t used to it. […]  So it was like December, November time, he said ‘I think it’s best if you do UoM which is like this course’, so I was like ‘Oh, it’s way too late now’. He said ‘you’ll do all your exams in May, June, whenever it is’, and he says ‘you will do it at the Uses and you should do coursework, someone like you will do that easy and pass quite easy’. […]

Lee says that he thinks the reason he struggled with AS Maths was because he did not keep on top of the workload.
Because I felt, I probably felt that I could just go through the course and pass it like I …quite easily like I did at GCSE. And then I got under and it was like, loads of homework, and I just couldn’t cope with that.  So it’s my fault pretty much, for not going over my notes and stuff. But I didn’t think I had to do that because I didn’t have to do that at secondary.

Use of Maths has also been problematic for Lee:
So when I came here [UoM] I wasn’t interested in the first place and then it was harder, I wasn’t interested. [  ]…I think if I’d really gone on on it [ASTrad] I would have been able to pass at least, but then I got told that this course is …you were going to get UCAS points and stuff, and that it was quite easy…

Lee particularly identifies his isolation from the rest of the class and the lack of time pressure in Use of Maths as central to his negative experience:
 “[…] like I sat over there, because that’s where my chair was because all other sits were taken, I am just sat there and it’s like just pop in alone, day dream, because it’s no like nobody to tell you, you’ve got to…work kind of thing. Because there is no pressure to finish.”

“[…]  Up until the last couple of weeks where it’s getting closer to the exams, there was no like, proper pressure. [ …].   And then you’ve got 4 exams in it, I don’t see why you got to do 4 exams. I am just not interested in it at all”

He also claims that maths has no relevance to his life:

“Like, they say it’s real but I don’t want to know about how much coffees and coffee, …[ ] No, it’s not relevant to me. I don’t need to know that. [  ]  But I don’t need to know how to do trigonometry, in everyday use. So I don’t see that as real life context. Unless I am going to be like…whatever you need to use it for. Because maths is just like equations and stuff like that, and numbers, […]…you either like maths or you don’t. I don’t like it, so…that’s how I see it.

Kirsty had chosen maths to fill up the gap in her subject choices [to go alongside chemistry and biology]. She got a B at intermediate GCSE “but doesn’t know how”. She is a year behind her contemporary age group as she had started a BTEC in forensic science the year before and dropped that in favour of AS/A levels.From an early age she found maths difficult, especially mental maths, which she still finds difficult. However, she is going on to A2.

Kirsty says about herself “I’m not the best student in the class but it doesn’t matter because I enjoy it” “I enjoy maths and I’m not going get a grade and that doesn’t matter its not an A or a B [she’s expecting an E grade]... I think maths looks pretty good”. Kirsty recognises that maths has status as a hard subject and goes on to say:

  “I am only doing it cos I want too, but also doing it so my Mum and my family has got something to be proud of.”

Additionally, Kirsty sees maths as helpful and useful:

 “It helps business studies and biology and chemistry, it don’t phase me when we have formula.. and also makes you think and be able to take a step back and think things through” 

“I always ask what does this get used for and why do we use it. I think it was logs. I always want to know why. I get a bit bored with stuff, if there is no point, if it was just for passing the exam and that’s it.”

For Kirsty, learning maths is about solving problems for yourself and being creative in finding possible solutions: “you do it yourself, rather than being told what to do”. She says maths is “not black and white, there is always more than one way of solving the problem” “you can find your own way to do it”.

She says this is different from other subjects [like Chemistry] where they are simply told knowledge.

“Maths is different is a bit different to my other lessons. Cos every lesson it’s a challenge, you find out like yourself whereas in..you just get told. In chemistry you do experiments, but only what they tell you to do, whereas maths you do it yourself.” 

Kirsty also emphasizes the sociable atmosphere in her maths class. This seems important to her experience of learning maths. To begin with she “didn’t know anyone in the class, cos like I was the year below then after the first lesson we were helping each other and talking. It was quite relaxed in that respect”.

“Yeah, actually, usually I get along better with girls… you just sit and talk to them but I was on this table with two boys and I really made good friends with Jeff and Mike and then there’s other people that you just see in college and you talk to them about the lesson or stuff like that and cos we move around we’re always talking to different people, so it’s quite good, you always know the faces and stuff like that, whereas  in other lessons you don’t even know them ..you don’t even know they’re in your lesson, so it’s [maths]  really good.”

She also states that the sociable classroom is a means for support in helping her learn - “working with John [who is strong at maths].. can ask others… cos its quite relaxed”.  As such, she believes its OK to be wrong and she can get help when she needs it.