The INISSS Project: Teachers' reactions

Enthusiastic teachers, engaged students — investigating, solving problems, taking risks with their thinking, discussing and writing about mathematics — in fact, 'working mathematically', teaching what you want known.

The kids got turned on!

I'd deliberately taken two lower level Year 8's who were hating maths and the task that I set myself was that, by the end of the year, I wanted them to be wanting to come to maths. I knew that had happened when a girl came down the corridor and said to me, please sir do I have to go to my music lesson today? I'd rather come to maths. I thought — YES! So these tasks were vehicles for changing teachers' perceptions of how they should be going about their teaching of mathematics and numeracy, and it worked. Tremendous. (Ian Smith)

I started with the INISSS program from the very first stage four years ago. Every time I've been along to one of the seminars or workshops, I come back to school and I'm just so ready to do it again, because I come back with things I can actually do in my class that work.

I spoke to other teachers at school before I came here just to get some feedback on what they thought was happening at our school and what the project was doing and they came up with things like their hands-on tasks, lots of useful teacher intervention, relevant problems being solved, it's fun. Students actually want to come to maths. They really, you know — Do we have to stop now?

There's a lot of learning through investigation. The kids are actually doing it and coming up with the ideas. There was always this fear, you can't work it out, you don't know your tables… We were having a lesson on circumferences and diameters and the kids all had pieces of string and they're measuring up — and this class would be called a lower maths ability Year 8 group — and one of the boys said, 'This tape's too long. It's always about three times as much as the diameter. Hasn't somebody every made up a formula or something for this?'
(Carol Beasley, Huonville HS)

Inclusive practice? The idea is that we want the kids that come into our schools to feel as though they've got something to offer, that they're going to learn something from their experience in school and that their teachers and parents and the communities around them are very curious about their development and their learning, and that it's an unfolding process.

When the kids come into the classroom they bring with them a whole series of life experiences and, where that classroom is inclusive, the work that they're expected to embark on is relevant to them. It's engaging, it encourages people to actually investigate rather than just guess what the outcome is supposed to be. The important role of the teacher and other adults in the classroom is to set up an environment where kids do have a clear task, that they're encouraged to work together and the teacher's role is to ask pertinent questions or set up a situation where the kids are going deeper into the problem and showing increasing levels of sophistication in the way that they're answering the questions.

If you went into classroom where somebody has been trained in this INISSS way you would expect to find a group of very involved people in the classroom. They could be working on the same task, or they could be working on different tasks, but there would be a high level of involvement. That would be the key. (Vicky Nicholson)

I've found it's the only professional development I've undertaken in the past ten years that's had an immediate and sustained impact on my teaching practice. I believe that programs such as this one, is the only way that we'll change the outcomes from Indigenous students anywhere. We can write all the policies and the partnership agreements that we like, but the only way we will change outcomes is to change teaching practice, to change teacher attitudes and to change the way teachers go about their jobs.

It's changed what I do in my class, the way I look at my kids and, and the activities that they do in that class. It has given me practical, hands-on stimulating tasks that engage students and address a range of learning styles.

One of the most powerful aspects is the enthusiasm shown by the kids. The tasks and activities have put the fun back into learning. There is something in them for every student. It engages the kids at their level of competence and it can be taken to a deeper level.

One of the other strengths of the program is the community involvement. We have parents involved. The homework tasks do go home. Parents come in and say, 'That homework was fun, can we have some more tonight?' 'Our kids sat down around the table and we did this for half an hour, and what's the answer because we couldn't work it out?' The parents that go to training are a huge resource. When I said I was going to be away today my kids' comment was, 'Oh beauty, what are you going to bring back for us now.'

That's the value of this program, and I believe that the only way we will address these outcomes is to put more teachers into more programs like this and change their attitudes and their teaching practice. (another teacher presenter in Hobart, May 2001)