The Effectiveness of Professional Development in Mathematics Essay

The Effectiveness of Professional Development in Mathematics - Essay Example Numeracy is one of the most important part of pre-school and school learning. "It is our skills in numeracy that allow us to read a bus timetable, estimate the cost of a basket full of groceries, and transfer a 2-dimensional plan into a 3-dimensional reality. In the future, our children are likely to need higher levels of numeracy as adults than we do today" (2). We live in the twenty first century - it is time of globalization, high technologies and great information values, so it is very important children to possess appropriate knowledge of processing information, large part of which are figures, graphs and diagrams. It is necessary for children to develop numeracy skills since childhood - these skills are determined in their further mathematical education and development. 2. The problem is methodological approach to the numeracy strategy teaching in schools and pre-school institutions. "The Archdiocesan Numeracy Strategy focuses on ensuring that children develop their numeracy skills and understandings from the earliest years of schooling and that a love and enjoyment of numeracy is fostered" (2). The first phase of the system focuses on children up to four and their learning of the number system. "Assessment Guided Learning is a key element of the Archdiocesan Numeracy Strategy. Assessment Guided Learning means that teaching and learning is informed by what the child can do" (2). Quality teacher learning is tightly c... The main focus of the review is the teachers' professional development in mathematics and its application in numeracy strategy implementation. The teacher who works with the numeracy strategy must be very competent as he teaches small children, and numeracy skills are determined in children' further mathematical development. The growth of competence and expertise in classroom teaching is clearly crucial for teacher's professional growth and for the effectiveness of the whole Mathematics teaching system. A teacher must know how to teach well. Teaching numeracy, he must develop his own teaching skills such as: knowledge, comprising the teacher's knowledge about Mathematics, pupils, curriculum, teaching methods, the influence of teaching and learning of other factors, and knowledge about the teacher's own teaching skills; decision making, comprising the thinking and decision making which occurs before, during and after a lesson, concerning how best to achieve the educational outcomes intended; action, comprising the overt behaviour by teachers undertaken to foster pupil learning.Using numeracy strategy, lesson planning and pr eparation must take into account the specificity of the subject thought. These skills are involved in selecting the educational aims and learning outcomes intended for a lesson and how best to achieve these. It would be better if a lesson has the following structure: "Introduction - Warm up, revision/questioning, concept and language development, statement of goals and/or outcomes; Middle Phase - Activities in groups or pairs, hands on, extension, graded, levelled or open-ended tasks; Final phase - Sharing, reviewing and consolidating" (3). These phases are very