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Preamble

Since the beginning of 2001, we (Dr Annette Baturo and Professor Tom Cooper), have been visiting, at their request, Wadja Wadja High School (AISQ) and Woorabinda State Primary School (Education Queensland) for at least one week per school term to assist the schools with their mathematics teaching. During these visits, we have undertaken mathematics teaching sessions with the students (including virtual activities), helped the teachers plan mathematics programs, conducted professional development in mathematics with teachers from these two schools and the nearby Baralaba State Primary School (which a significant number of Woorabinda students attend), and participated in the schools’ day-to-day activities.

We have met with Community elders to seek their support and to get advice on how best to deal with the mathematics education problems in the community. We have also sought the advice of members of the Woorabinda Council, members of committees associated with the schools and the hospital, and leaders of the Women’s refuge and the local radio station. On our behalf, the Woorabinda State Primary School Liaison Officer interviewed a selection of parents as to their concerns and hopes for their children’s education, the sorts of out-of-school experiences their students have (to use as a context for teaching mathematics), and to what degree they were able to help their children with their schoolwork. These interviews provided valuable information and most parents indicated that they would like to know more about how they could help their children learn mathematics.

Students

Through our visits and activities, we received first-hand knowledge of Woorabinda students’ poor attendance at and motivation for school, particularly their generally low mathematics performance in Years 1-10. We found that the many Woorabinda students have particular difficulty with early numeration, particularly place value, the major concept that makes our decimal number system powerful but succinct and that underlies so much else of mathematics, particularly operations, money and measurement. Place value is based on grouping by tens and by understanding amount in terms of ones, tens, hundreds, and so on. Our experiences with Indigenous students thus far indicates that, in general, they seem to have greater difficulty than other children in moving from number in terms of counting single objects to number as groups of ten and ones and as groups of hundred, and ten and ones (two and three-digit numeration).

As a result of testing programs undertaken at the Primary School, we recognised how the various assessment tools, through their language and context, are inadequate in determining the students’ mathematics competence. To this end, we successfully applied for a research project with Education Queensland to develop an assessment tool that would be more suitable for Indigenous students.

The students’ understanding of place was exacerbated in Wadja Wadja High School because of their low attendance across the primary years. This translated into a situation where many Year 8-10 students at the High School had not yet reached VET Level 1 mathematics competencies which require students to have, among other concepts, an understanding of whole-number numeration to hundreds (two and three-digits). This meant that the students did not have the minimum numeracy to be able to undertake vocational courses aimed towards trades, thereby severely affecting their future employment and life chances. To overcome this disadvantage, we successfully applied for a research grant from the Association of Independent Schools of Queensland to investigate ways to teach mathematics as part of Vocational Education and Training courses at the High School.

As well as Woorabinda, we have worked with Indigenous students in the Mount Isa region as part of an ARC Linkage grant we received, with Associate Professor Elizabeth Warren of the Australian Catholic University. Teaching trials in the Mt Isa region have also indicated that time, slow development and small group intervention is necessary to improve Indigenous students’ understanding of place value.

However, with respect to student learning, we also found that Woorabinda students will sustain prolonged engagement if provided with motivating mathematics tasks. In particular, we have found that “virtual” (computer) mathematics activities attract and engage Years 8-10 students to such an extent that they have worked for two hours on even low-level mathematics concepts and processes when provided in this medium. Furthermore, they were amenable to teaching that involved off-computer supporting activities if provided in a meaningful and seamless way. As a result, we successfully applied for a small University grant to trial the teaching of fractions at Wadja Wadja High School using virtual materials.

IEWs

Our visits to Woorabinda also illuminated a limitation in mathematics teaching. Mathematics classrooms normally had two adults present: a young non-Indigenous teacher with little teaching experience and training in Indigenous education, and an older Indigenous Education Worker (IEW) with long experience of the community but limited education and little education training particularly in mathematics. It was evident that the teachers lacked readiness for teaching mathematics to Indigenous students and the IEWs lacked knowledge of how to support Indigenous students’ mathematics learning.

We found out that many of the teachers came to Woorabinda straight from graduation with very little or no preparation for working with Indigenous students and, in the case of the high school, came trained for teaching two specialist disciplines at secondary level with little or no preparation for teaching primary level literacy and numeracy (the normal program at the High School). They tended not to know how to work in the classroom with an IEW. Thus, as we observed, they tended to use the IEWs as behaviour managers rather than teaching partners.

We noticed a continuous turnover of teaching and administrative staff at Woorabinda, particularly in the Primary School, where teachers only had to stay in the community for two years. At the start of 2004, we realised that of the staff at the schools in the middle of 2001, only one teacher at Wadja Wadja High School and one teacher at Woorabinda State Primary School remained; both principals and all other teachers have changed (sometimes more than once).

Therefore, we came to believe that Woorabinda IEWs (and parents), being long-term community members, were the key to stability in the education process and to promoting mathematics learning because of their familiarity with the mores of the community and the informal language, Aboriginal English, which they could use to help students connect to the formal mathematics language.

As well as Woorabinda, we have undertaken professional development in mathematics with Education Workers (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) in three schools in the Mt Isa region that have 60-100% indigenous students. Our experiences have shown that IEWs from the more “mainstream” schools (i.e., a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous student populations) generally work in collaborative partnerships with teachers whereas Indigenous aides in 100% Indigenous populations generally work in behaviour management roles. The teachers and IEWs find it difficult to work together effectively in the 100% Indigenous schools because of the teachers’ inexperience and the IEWs’ insufficient knowledge of mathematics per se. The IEWs are aware of their paucity of knowledge and have, in general, welcomed any mathematics inservice.

Therefore, we designed this project, Training Indigenous teacher-aides and parents to support mathematics learning of Indigenous educationally disadvantaged students in junior secondary school to train the long term educators in the school (the IEWs) with the skills to provide the assistance Wadja Wadja High School students need to improve their place value understanding, meet VET level 1 competencies and increase their opportunities in TAFE courses.