Roberta Hunter

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Massey University

As in many countries, for decades in Aotearoa (New Zealand), we have heard the story of the Pacific and Māori achievement gap in mathematics. This has become a widely accepted part of beliefs constructed across multiple communities about students and schools and who can do and learn mathematics successfully. A common response by policy makers and e...

Research by Wood and her colleagues has had a lasting and transformative impact on the mathematical outcomes for Pāsifika learners is Aotearoa/New Zealand. In this chapter I describe a journey from what began as a solitary teacher searching for answers for their own discomfort at the inequitable outcomes for some students in her classroom to that o...

Background Algebra has traditionally been seen as a site of inequity and a gatekeeper for marginalized learners within both national and international studies. However, considerable research has shown that taking an asset-based approach in mathematics teaching improves learning for marginalized students, including Māori and Pāsifika learners. Purp...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a new way of being in a changed and uncertain world. Aotearoa/New Zealand took a well-being approach and in turn, we share the positive outcomes which resulted for some low socio-economic schools and communities in relation to teacher learning and relationships with families. In this article, we report on how t...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused new ways of doing and being, both in education systems and beyond across the world. In the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, the widely supported government approach focused on the well-being of the nation with a position that saving lives was more important than maintaining an open economy. As researchers and educat...

Democracy manifests itself in a range of ways and is an imperfect, dynamic struggle for collective decision-making. This article discusses the multifaceted processes of deliberative democratic praxis found in traditional Māori society. Central to decision-making in te ao Māori, hui provide formal and informal structures for deliberative democracy,...

In recent years in New Zealand, there has been a policy shift towards schools ‘localising’ the national curriculum to align with the context, aspirations, and knowledge of the local community and student population. In relation to mathematics education, this requires educators to understand and value the mathematical connections between diverse stu...

The importance of learners collaborating to construct deep mathematical understandings has been increasingly recognized in research and practice in recent times. In this paper we draw on a sociocultural perspective to show how a situative strength-based approach can be usefully applied to highlight the different ways in which learners from backgrou...

Online learning communities (OLCs) offer opportunities to help teachers engage better with technology and develop new skills through a participatory social process. This study investigates the potential of an OLC for advancing teachers’ professional learning in integrating technology into their instructional practices. Drawing on two case studies o...

Powerful and innovative pedagogical practices are necessary for all students to learn mathematics successfully and equip them for the future. In this chapter, we review Australasian studies that provide evidence of pedagogical practices that support creative and flexible mathematical thinkers for the 21st century. The review is structured around th...

In many Western countries, an ongoing challenge for researchers and educators over the past decade has been persistent inequities in mathematics teaching and learning for particular groups of learners. A key issue related to equity is the exclusion of diverse learners’ culture, language and ways of being within mathematics classrooms. Within the Ne...

Persistent inequities in mathematics teaching and learning for specific groups of learners are a key challenge for researchers and educators. The use of ability grouping has been common practice in New Zealand mathematics classrooms. However, many researchers (e.g. Boaler and Wiliam 2001; Zevenbergen in 2003) highlight the negative effects of group...

A disproportionally large number of Pasifika students achieve at lower levels than their Asian and European fellow students in the New Zealand schooling system. However, we know that their achievements and failures are not dependent on their own efforts; they are the product of culturally situated forms of social interaction which they meet in math...

Research shows that developing students’ resilience can rapidly raise student achievement in mathematics. Despite recognising its importance, teachers often do not have access to a repertoire of practices to develop resilient mathematics learners. The present study explores aspects of resilience among a cohort of students from three low socio-econo...

Achieving equity for all mathematical learners is an urgent challenge for educators. Within New Zealand, Pāsifika students are at a much greater risk of underachievement than students from other ethnic groups (Caygill et al. in TIMSS 2015: New Zealand Year 5 Maths results. Comparative Education Research Unit, Ministry of Education, Wellington, 2016...

This chapter provides a selective review of the research literature on mathematics teaching that attends to and addresses inequities in the learning opportunities offered to students. First, we trace and discuss the growing focus on educational equity in the teaching of mathematics. We then describe the challenges and possibilities for a few promin...

This volume contains the papers presented at the International Conference on Theory and Practice: An Interface or A Great Divide? and held from August 4-9, 2019 at Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland. The Conference was organized by The Mathematics Education for the Future Project – an international educational project founded in 1986 and dedicat...

Researchers have called for culturally responsive approaches to transform inequitable educational practice for several decades, yet the realisation of these aspirations in mainstream educational institutions has been slow. In part, this is due to the difficulty practitioners experience in conceptualising what this type of education looks like in pr...

There is increasing recognition that the underachievement of Māori, Pasifika, and other diverse students in New Zealand schools is in large part owing to systemic factors that disadvantage these students. Responding to the urgent need for significant change in our schools and classrooms, the developing mathematical inquiry communities model is a re...

Purpose The use of technology in education is still seen as a symbol of modernity in Indonesia. Without adequate technological infrastructural support from institutions, teachers develop ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the affective domain in learning mathematics with technology acr...

Teachers’ perceptions of students’ capabilities are particularly important in efforts to support ambitious instructional reforms. In this paper, we explore one teacher’s efforts to resolve conflicts and tensions as she engages with new practices associated with ambitious mathematics teaching. While many conflicts arose in the first year of the inte...

This study investigates attitudinal factors attributed to the use of technology in mathematics in Indonesia, where access to technology is still seen as a symbol of modernity. Specifically, we focus on measures related to student engagement-mathematics motivation, attitudes to the use of technology in mathematics, technological confidence and mathe...

Implementing mobile learning in curriculum-based educational settings faces challenges related to perceived ethical and learning issues. This study investigated the affordances of mobile technologies to support mathematics instruction by teachers. An exploratory study employing questionnaires and semi-structured interviews revealed that, while math...

Many Pāsifika students start their schooling fluent in their own language and with a rich background of knowledge and experiences. However, very quickly they join high numbers of Pāsifika students failing within the education system. The reasons are diverse but many link directly to the structural inequities they encounter which cause a disconnect...

The practice of grouping mathematics students by perceived levels of attainment, commonly referred to by teachers as ability grouping, is a contentious and long-standing topic of debate in education. Responses from a survey of 102 mathematics support teachers affirm the widespread use of ability grouping within New Zealand primary school mathematic...

The use of powerful and innovative pedagogical practices by teachers potentially provides opportunities for all students to learn mathematics successfully. In this chapter we offer a review of a range of Australasian studies about how teachers proficiently organise mathematical classrooms. The review shows that there are three key themes in the res...

In recent years there have been calls for ambitious mathematics teaching which places student thinking and reasoning at the centre of instruction. Drawing on a larger study concerning implementation of practice-based pedagogies within our initial teacher education mathematics programme, this paper explores the range of opportunities for prospective...

Ambitious mathematics teaching involves skilled ways of eliciting and responding to each and every student in the class so that they learn worthwhile mathematics and come to view themselves as competent mathematicians. In this article we analyse a beginning teacher’s enactment of a Quick Image activity in order to illustrate how the teacher’s valui...

This article focuses on argumentation in mathematics classrooms in two different geographic contexts, the US and New Zealand. Drawing on data from a case with immigrant students (Pāsifika) in NZ and a case with Mexican American students in the US, we argue for the need to study the concept of argumentation through a cultural and language lens. Our...

A critical issue for all involved in primary and secondary mathematics education is how to ensure that all students learn mathematics successfully so that at the end of schooling they have the mathematical knowledge, skills, and confidence necessary to fully participate in further learning, employment, community life, and citizenship. This issue fo...

Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/tlri-research/research-progress/post-school-sector/learning-work-ambitious-mathematics-teaching

The provision of quality learning experiences for teachers is critical to mathematics reform agendas aimed at equitable and culturally responsive teaching. In this paper we use an activity theory framework to explore one teacher’s learning journey. Drawing on the teacher’s self-report of his journey 1 year after his participation in an intervention...

In this article, the authors report changes in mathematical disposition, participation , and competencies within a group of Pasifika students as a teacher established the discourse of mathematical inquiry and argumentation. Within a classroom based design approach, the teacher used a communication and participation framework tool to support student...

In the current shifts in mathematics classrooms, teachers are challenged to use effective pedagogy to develop inquiry communities in which all participants are offered opportunities to engage in the reasoning discourse of proficient mathematical practices. The challenge for teachers is to know how to implement these pedagogical changes. This articl...

With 23 chapters, this book brings together a wide range of research and ideas about teachind and learning of primary (elementary) school mathematics and statistics. Content areas include Number, Measurement, Alebra, Geometry, Statistics and Prbability. Pedagogical focus areas include culturally responsive teaching, mathemaical inquiry and argument...

In the current shifts in mathematics classrooms teachers are challenged to use effective pedagogy to develop inquiry communities in which all participants are offered opportunities to engage in the reasoning discourse of proficient mathematical practices. The challenge for teachers is to know what pedagogical actions support the development and use...

This paper describes the phases in a journey one te acher and her students travelled during a year long teaching experiment designed to reform cl assroom communication norms A study group environment supported the teacher to ex amine reflectively the discourse patterns enacted in the classroom Data indicated t hat the communication norms constitute...

Mathematics education is currently experiencing unprecedented reform efforts, largely directed at improving low standards of calculation skills of children in primary schools (Brown, 2004). This paper presents a window into two classrooms in order to exemplify the nature of the reforms as influenced by current sociocultural theories of learning. In...

In the current mathematics education reform efforts teachers are challenged to develop discourse communities where students learn to construct and evaluate arguments used in mathematical reasoning. The challenge for teachers is to know what actions to take to establish such discourse. In this study I investigated the actions a teacher took to estab...

In the current mathematics education reform efforts, teachers are challenged to develop discourse communities in which the students learn to construct and evaluate mathematical arguments collectively. In this paper I examined the interactional strategies used by a teacher to constitute a classroom context in which the students participated in the d...