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Positive relationships in classrooms
By the end of year 8, many teachers working with PLAS talked of 'measuring success' by smiles, pleasure, getting positive feedback from students. In all schools there were at least two teachers who claimed to know that students looked forward to coming to maths lessons, and this news has to be taken in the context of the low expectations of mathematical achievement with which they entered secondary school. When videoing for research purposes, as well as when videoing for dissemination, we observed excitement, engagement and pleasure in mathematical activity in nearly all classes for some of the time.
Teachers connected pleasure to understanding, citing instances where students had said 'I get it now'. One teacher commented that good relationships within the group and between group and teacher were essential to manage the social demands of extended, exploratory, project work, and this was a two-way relationship. She was delighted that her students were saying 'Don't give us a clue, we'll work it out ourselves'.
One teacher reported that his colleagues had decided that they would never use dull work as a management or punishment tool as that created unhelpful views of mathematics. Another comment connecting emotion to learning was: "disruption means the task is wrong; I have learnt to ask 'how would YOU like to extend this work?'"
Several teachers in one school said they had been influenced by Mike Ollerton's positive approach to behaviour, work and mathematics for his key publications see www.atm.org.uk.
