An action research investigation into the implementation of the New National Curriculum (2014) in mathematics, in one primary school in the South West of England, and the changes and effects it provokes on children’s learning, with a focus on the operation of division.

Abstract

In this action research study, I investigate and explore the changes and effects of the implementation of a New National Curriculum (2014) with respect to the primary mathematics curriculum. I focus on the operation of division and investigate both informal and formal methods. The aim is to gain a better understanding of learning and teaching strategies so that they can be enhanced in future practices. The investigation was conducted with teachers and children from my current workplace, a primary school (children aged 7-11 years).

I look at the work of Anghileri (2005), Thompson (2012) and Richards (2014). They suggest that division, in the primary arithmetic curriculum, faces the most challenges and criticism, needing a progressive structuring of children’s methods. I review literature concerning the operation of division to see where the confusion and problems lie, sorting strategies used by teachers and children into categories, using an adapted framework (Chick and Baker, 2005a) of procedural, conceptual or mixed approaches.

Key research questions, responses to which are gathered through interviews, questionnaires, test analysis and documents are:
Q1. How do teachers perceive the changes in the 2014 new National Curriculum as affecting their teaching of division in primary mathematics?
Q2. What is an effective progression of concepts and processes in the teaching of division?

Key findings are that the implementation of the National Curriculum has provoked significant changes in children’s approaches to division, with far fewer purely procedural methods in the last years of the study compared to the first. There is evidence that children move from idiosyncratic methods, which show an understanding of the concepts, to methods which continue to display understanding but also use of an efficient procedure. A key output from the project is a progression chart for teaching division across the primary school years, which has been implemented across my school.

Date of Award	28 Sept 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Laurinda C Brown (Supervisor) & Alf T Coles (Supervisor)