‘Textbooks can help with the workload crisis’

We need more teachers to write textbooks – the experience will improve their teaching, writes one maths expert
24th May 2018, 1:37pm

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‘Textbooks can help with the workload crisis’

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/textbooks-can-help-workload-crisis
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Teachers spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel, creating their own resources and planning their own lessons. But using textbooks with accompanying lesson plans could cut this time in half and reduce workload for teachers overall. Actors don’t believe they always have to write the plays they’re in. Instead, they take good plays (already written) and make them their own.

In maths, there is another reason why textbooks could be more important than ever. Anyone working in schools will tell you there’s a chronic shortage of secondary maths teachers and primary maths leads. When one hands in his or her notice, panic is written all over the head’s face. Another subject specialist is lost, and more teachers “borrowed” from other subjects need to step in and fill the gap. For these non-specialist teachers, good maths textbooks could be just the support they are looking for.

After all, the planning of good maths textbooks starts with the latest studies in maths teaching and learning: they are based on detailed analysis of the maths curriculum and exam specifications; they plan and follow carefully ordered topics and concepts to ensure students progress in just the right way (in small enough steps to develop understanding, but large enough steps to ensure engagement and challenge). These maths textbooks don’t just include worked examples and exercises, but also develop understanding and fluency, offer rich problem-solving tasks, and encourage reasoning. (I should know - in the past 20 years, I’ve been involved in the production of over 50 textbooks and associated schemes.)

But all of this work takes a team. There’s the consultant(s), like me, doing months of research, curriculum design, ordering (then reordering) concepts, trialling with teachers and acting on their feedback. And then there are the writers -  the real talent: writing drafts, then final versions of chapters, getting them just right. These writers need to be good mathematics teachers - ones who know what it is that confuses students about particular concepts, ones who can write to address misconceptions and common errors, ones who are concise (thinking about every word and image that they use) and who are creative in their explanations, the questions that they ask, the thinking they provoke, and the tasks that they set. Yes, it is a tall order, but a gratifying one, too.

Immense benefits for teaching

In November last year, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, told us that textbooks are going to be vital for the continued success of the national curriculum. He may be right. However, for mathematics (and also for other subjects), textbooks are only going to contribute to success if they are written well, by those who teach well. And guess what? That means we need good textbook writers.

Many maths teachers already mark examination papers outside school. This doubtless benefits their teaching, as they get in-depth knowledge of mark schemes and begin to think like examiners. But few maths teachers realise that they have the potential to write textbooks, and that this would also have immense benefits for their teaching. After going through the process of writing for textbooks, your questioning, your worked examples at the whiteboard, and even your comments in students’ exercise books will be better crafted than ever before. (I know - I’ve been there.)

The bigger problem, though, is the shortage of qualified maths teachers, which, year on year, gets worse. This shortage is not just felt inside the classroom. It also translates into a shortage of good maths textbook writers.

It’s a vicious circle that needs to be broken. So what am I doing about it? My colleague, Katherine Pate, and I are distilling our years of experience in textbook publishing and in author coaching into a training course. In just one day, we will take teachers through how educational publishing works and how to write good material - the type that publishers are looking for. Our hope is to find and then harness the talent in good maths teachers, so that we can provide the good maths textbooks writers who are so badly needed. We are sure they are out there … somewhere!

Dr Naomi Norman is a mathematics education consultant, researcher and author

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