Jay Timotheus

Director of Mathematics for a multi-academy trust. NCETM PD lead. Occasional author of musings on mathematics education.

[Jonathan Hall @StudyMaths]

Multiplication comes before addition.

Not quite that simple.

#1001MathsBots
https://t.co/NiLafqbooy

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

Enjoyed speaking at this event. Amazing conference with an excellent range of Maths CPD for all phases!

[Boolean Maths Hub @booleanmathshub]

🌟It's been a week since the Boolean Maths Conference at @TauntonRacing and we're still buzzing from it! Huge thanks to the 200 attendees for your enthusiasm! Shoutout to our amazing workshop deliverers and keynote speaker @jaytimotheus! 🙌
Check out some highlights! 🌟
@NCETM

[CODE Maths Hub @CODEMathsHub]

Yesterday we travelled to @booleanmathshub's Annual Maths Conference at @TauntonRacing. There was coffee and wonderful food. There was MATHS! We explored the brilliance of blocks, experienced Core Maths, and listened to an inspirational key-note speaker, @jaytimotheus. Wow!

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@cjshore @StudyMaths Love this comment! Might well use it!

[Jonathan Hall @StudyMaths]

Before you blindly rearrange, factorise then solve, it might be better to slow down and ask yourself:

"What do you notice?"

https://t.co/8B1JTsGLsY

[Chris Shore @cjshore]

@StudyMaths A good example of when ‘Don’t just sit there, do something’ should actually be ‘Don’t just do something, sit there’.

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@PeterFoulds77 @LearningMaths @ATMMathematics But when we reduce the complexity of teaching and learning to a simple phrase we get lethal mutations.

Which in extreme cases might end up looking like this...

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@PeterFoulds77 @LearningMaths @ATMMathematics And the article also raises important questions about what we might mean as educators by the word, "do".

The intent of pupils learning, becoming cognisant and developing deep fluency with mathematics should always be there....

[Gaynor Bahan FCCT @GaynorBahan]

🧵 (1/6) This is our professional community of maths leaders in multi-academy trusts, together in London on Friday. About 80 trusts, 1000 schools and 10000 teachers of maths are represented right here!

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@donaldson_maths @novonordisk I'm married to a diabetes nurse!

Sent you a message.

[Helen Drury @DrHelenDrury]

Delighted to announce that I’m co-leading (alongside @informed_edu) a major new and independent review of maths curriculum & assessment: @mathshorizons https://t.co/kZOlSOfttJ

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@KTG_1990 @tombennett71 I don't see myself as an expert in mathematics education, despite my experience and my job. I never have. I do highly value the expertise of the academics who have dedicated their university careers to researching mathematics education.

[Adam Boxer @adamboxer1]

If I may bore you with a little philosophy, and hypothesise why Birbalsingh has gone in for this kind of nonsense too:

The narrative at play here is one which radically reduces the amount of agency that the individuals have:

If you are angry, it's *because* you've been neglected by the elites

If you express that anger, it's *because* you've been taken for granted

If you show violence against ethnic minorities, it's *because* metropolitan technocrats have allowed those minorities and immigrants to take your job

Etc etc. When it comes to apportioning blame, you move it a step away, and say "well, what did you expect to happen?"

The main issue I have with this is that it ignores the fact that most of us believe in free will, and that people make choices. You don't *have* to lob a brick at a police officer or a mosque, you *choose* to. You don't *have* to get on a bus and travel hundreds of miles to go burn some bins, you *choose* to.

Swinging back to education: one of the biggest debates between "trads" and "progs" was about student agency. On one side, people argued that if you planned your lesson well and it was engaging and relevant, students would behave. If you had good relationships and unconditional positive regard, your students would behave.

If they didn't behave, it's because you didn't do that work, so teachers were quite literally blamed for students' poor behaviour.

On the other side, people argued that this was A) empirically not true and B) philosophically problematic, because it downplays student agency. It treats students as if they have no choice in the matter: if my lesson is good they behave, if not, not. Others believe that I can plan the most boring lesson in the world and still expect children to behave, because it's a choice, and they should choose to behave because it's the right thing to do.

It's always been a bit of a tightrope though, because the grain of truth is that there are plenty of things we can do to increase or decrease the chances of students making the right choice. E.g. putting in a system of clear and consistent consequences results in students making better choices.

But we don't want to go so far that we take away their choice completely, we have to believe that students are like any other human, and we have to start from a position where we give them the dignity of choice. Any time we put in a rule or a restriction, we have to do it with care, and with the knowledge that it has to be worth it.

Against that backdrop, Birbalsingh has a rather extreme position. Her belief appears to be that if we put *any* slack into the system, chaos will descend. If we don't have completely silent corridors, or we allow students to congregate in groups of 5, or we put in a prayer room, everything will fall apart. This is a pretty hardline position on student agency - it says "if I don't do all of these crazy restrictive things, students will inevitably become feral." Is this so different from saying "if the government doesn't close the borders and listen to the legitimate concerns of the left behind white working class then they will inevitably become feral"? To me, only the surface is different. The deep structure represents a common view of humanity and agency.

So there's a type of consistency here, rooted in a belief that people have no agency, and are mere leaves on whatever wind happens to be blowing.

It's not a vision of humanity that I share.

Anyway, that's my theory. Maybe I'm overthinking 🤷‍♂️

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@Elsie2110 The world might well be on fire... But I hope you're feeling better soon!

[David Thomas @dmthomas90]

Delighted to publish our @AxiomMaths report into the state of maths education today, with some extensive polling into the public’s attitudes to maths.

We found…

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@TFrancome @LboroDME @quorndonian @LboroScience @lborocmc That's a great quote!
Congratulations!

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@edsouthall Congratulations!

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

@ProfSmudge @NCETM Maths MAT leads enjoyed working on it! Used the task as part of a series of tasks that might develop 'fluency as flexibility of thought', considering in particular the teacher actions / prompts to draw attention to aspects of a situation to support all learners to find a way in.

[Jay Timotheus @jaytimotheus]

Looked at this very task at @NCETM Maths MAT leads yesterday! @ProfSmudge

[Teachers of Maths @ATMMathematics]

From the author of Algebradabra & Algeburble, MultipliXing contains 100 tasks with 20 weekly sets of 5 daily tasks, giving teachers a fresh perspective on multiplicative reasoning and revealing the diversity of students’ thinking. https://t.co/2Eom5wHDfY