Centres for Excellence in Maths Teaching for Mastery Randomised Controlled Trial: Evaluation Report

Wake, Geoffrey; Adkins, Michael; Dalby, Diane; Hall, Jonathan; Joubert, Marie; Lee, Gabriel Chun-Yeung; Noyes, Andrew

Abstract

The intervention was designed to improve post-16 students’ learning of level 2 mathematics. In general, the approach used was one of teaching for mastery in FE, aligned to principles developed by teachers and educators working with the Centres for Excellence in Maths programme. A Handbook sets out these principles alongside advice relating to teaching in this way.

The intervention targeted teachers of students undertaking post-16 GCSE mathematics resit classes. The aim was to support the teachers to develop new teaching practices aligned with the Mastery Teaching principles by engaging with professional development that explained the approach and working with seven lessons that exemplified this. Five of the lessons were taught in specific time frames over the duration of the course using these to inform their developing teaching approach. There were two levels of intervention investigated: a partial intervention that included all the aforementioned and a full intervention that in addition included a programme of a modified version of lesson study. The lesson study was led by a small cohort of Lead Teachers who had taken part in an earlier pilot and who had some additional online training. Teachers in this arm of the trial were clustered geographically to take part in the lesson study process.

The evaluation was a three-armed randomised controlled efficacy trial, involving 147 colleges and 7453 students. The process evaluation included teacher surveys and 13 case studies. Recruitment to the trial was managed by Centre Leads of the CfEM and drew on teachers from Centres and their wider partner networks. The intervention ran in colleges from October 2021 to June 2022. During this period illness due to Covid-19 and college-imposed visiting restrictions proved an issue for teachers and students resulting in some PD sessions and cluster meetings being held online instead of face-to-face as originally planned. Covid-19 also led to some attrition of teachers from the trial as workload proved difficult due to illness of participating teachers and their colleagues.

Citation

Wake, G., Adkins, M., Dalby, D., Hall, J., Joubert, M., Lee, G. C.-Y., & Noyes, A. (2023). Centres for Excellence in Maths Teaching for Mastery Randomised Controlled Trial: Evaluation Report. Department for Education

• Report Type: Research Report
• Publication Date: 2023-03
• Deposit Date: Feb 20, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 27, 2025
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/34634425