A Sideways Look at the Mathematics Problem (Duncan Lawson)
Throughout the 1990s there was a growing feeling that all was not right in mathematics education. Professional bodies and learned societies published reports including “Tackling the Mathematics Problem” and “Measuring the Mathematics Problem”.
The Government set up a national inquiry into post-14 mathematics education which reported that ‘it [is] deeply disturbing that so many stakeholders believe there to be a crisis in the teaching and learning of mathematics in England’. The number of students taken mathematics post-16 were in sharp decline.
Mathematics entered the new millennium with an image problem but at least the problem was beginning to be recognised and action taken at local and national level. This lecture describes a number of actions being taken in Coventry and nationally which suggest that the gloom over mathematics in the 1990s might give way to hope for a brighter future in the 21st century.
Lecture date: 7 June 2006