EDPR4000/EDPR4002/EDP443 Mathematics Pedagogies and Integrated Curriculum Assessment Two – Reporting of Child Study

Unit Learning Outcomes

ULO 1. Demonstrate increased personal numeracy skills in mathematical relationships, expressions, and applications of the content of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics.

ULO 4. Develop assessment strategies that demonstrate knowledge of curriculum and pedagogies for effective teaching of mathematics and inform teaching practice.

AITSL Standards: This assessment provides the opportunity to develop evidence that demonstrates these Standards:

1.1. Understand how students learn

1.2. Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

2.1. Content selection and organization

2.2. Curriculum, assessment and reporting

2.5. Literacy and numeracy strategies

3.2. Plan, structure and sequence learning programs

3.3. Use teaching strategies

3.4. Select and use resources

5.1. Assess student learning

5.4. Interpret student data

Assessment Two Guidelines

This assessment is a Child Study about computational choice. Before you have any contact with a child you must have a current Working With Children Certificate (or the equivalent in your state or territory, such as a Blue Card in Queensland) and you must obtain a signed permission form from the parent or teacher. The signed consent must be included in your assignment. It is strongly recommended that you conduct the Child Study in a school. Diagnostic interviews can be administered only after Week 6 although you are encouraged to organise your child as soon as convenient.

Conducting the diagnostic interview

There are three diagnostic instruments provided on Blackboard for you to conduct the diagnostic interview. These documents are the only diagnostic instruments to be used.

Quiz 1 – This assesses aspects of the child’s mindset.

Quiz 2 – This assesses the child’s understanding of number and operations and their strategies (be they mental, written or calculator).

Quiz 3 – This assesses how the child copes with computations embedded in worded contexts.

A fourth document, Computational Choice Quiz Criteria, links each item in the quizzes to specific aspects of mathematics. This will guide you in deciding how to approach the tutoring and also what to include when writing your submission. Please also see additional guidance provided.

Be thoroughly prepared prior to commencing the first quiz. Read the quiz aloud to the child and record their responses yourself if necessary. You may make an audio recording if you wish and there is no objection by the child or their teacher / parent. Take any materials you might need for conducting the quizzes (consider a calculator being available). The diagnostic interview is not a teaching opportunity, but you should use probing questions to try to ascertain what the child is thinking. Interview responses from children are not necessarily what you would expect and you might cover more or less than anticipated. If the child is confused or upset, stop. Remember that the point of the diagnostic interview is to find out about the child and what computational choices they have, not to complete the quizzes.

You will need to build a Child Profile based on the model for computational choice (Hurst, 2016; Hurst & Hurrell, 2018). Therefore, you will need to use all three quizzes in order to build the profile. This is expected to take more than one session. You are required to work with the child for six sessions, including the diagnostic interview. You may do more sessions if you are able.

The Child

Choose a child who is in Year 5, or 6. S/he may be in Year 7 if you have access to such a child. Do not choose a child with a lot of learning difficulties and try not to use a child who is very advanced at mathematics.

You are not permitted to use the same child from the Inquiry Child Study, nor any child who is well-known to you such as your own child. The Tutor must be contacted if this poses a problem.

It will be necessary to conduct more than one session per week. Be aware of possible interruptions such as public holidays or parents removing the child for a holiday.

You can work with the child at his/her school (is preferred) or his/her home. In reporting the Child Study, use a pseudonym, not the real name of the child.

Submission format

Use key reference sources such as the unit textbook Van de Walle et al. (2024), items in the Unit Reading List and other reputable academic sources to support what you say throughout your submission. Number the pages of your submission.

Sub-headings may be used. Sub-headings help to organise your thinking and they make it easier to read your work. The required format is APA 7th edition.

Child study diagnosis and intervention

Summary of the diagnostic interview

Write a profile of the child in terms of the computational choice model. This must be supported by clear examples of the child’s responses to interview items and/or questionnaire items. A template is provided below for this purpose. Avoid having a lot of white space , if necessary, you may alter the formatting of the template. This should not be a complete description of everything that the child did and said but rather a summary.

Describe the extent of the child’s understanding in terms of the Computational Choice model that informs the interview tools. Include a summary of what you decided to do in the tutoring sessions and why. Describe how your plan is linked to the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (n. d.). Use the Computational Choice Quiz Criteria document and the further support advice to guide your work in this section and the next.

Summary of the tutoring sessions

This should not be a full description of everything that happened in each of your teaching sessions. It is important that you record that in detail for your own use as you summarise what happened. This section should only describe the key learning that took place.

Consider some of the following questions as a guide:

What did the child learn and how did s/he demonstrate that learning? What were some of the tasks that worked well? Why did they work? What didn’t work? Why didn’t it work? What did you do about that?

Discuss the understanding/learning that took place in very specific mathematical terms. Avoid general comments like “showed good understanding of operations”. Relate your comments to specific key ideas about number and operations, and the content descriptions of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (ACARA, n. d.)

Briefly summarise what you see as the child’s main learning needs following your tutoring and observation of the child.

It is important to give specific examples of tasks and the child’s responses. Describe particular tasks and quote directly what the child said in particular instances. You should scan/crop sections of the child’s work samples, or use photographs taken during the tutoring, and incorporate them in your submission. Such samples should be included at the point of the discussion, not in appendices. The point is that you need to provide clear evidence to show what occurred.

General aspects

The assignment must be well-structured with a brief but clear and purposeful introduction and a brief conclusion that restates the main points of argument or presentation. The discussion must be supported by references from reputable mathematics education sources.

The assessment must meet general submission requirements such as completeness and consistency of formatting. Presentation, grammar, punctuation, spelling, referencing and writing style must be of a high standard and consistent with APA 7th Edition style. Use 1.5 line spacing, left alignment, 2 cm left margin, 3 cm right margin. Page numbers must be cited for all paraphrasing as well as all quotations.

Word limit: 2500 words plus or minus 10%

Assessment Two Additional Required Documents

A Tutoring Log must be completed each time an assessment or tutoring session is conducted. This must be signed by the child's parent or teacher, depending on whether the sessions are conducted in a school or at the child's home. The Tutoring Log, showing a Parent or Teacher email contact address, along with the completed Permission form must be uploaded with the assessment as an appendix