Making Maths Useful - How Two Teachers Prepare Adult Learners to Apply Their Numeracy Skills in Their Lives Outside the Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky

This pilot case study examines how two numeracy teachers in adult and community settings motivate and enable learners to build on informal numeracy skills and apply new learning to real-life situations beyond the classroom. The study analyzes similarities and differences in teachers’ approaches using a Context Continuum model. Less emphasis is placed on whether teachers begin with real-world contexts or with abstract mathematics, and more on ensuring movement between numeracy and mathematics discourses.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Functional skills and contextualised agendas

Curriculum intentions and transfer to real life

Motivations and instructional challenges

Teachers' aims and research questions

Context Continuum model and anticipated use

Making Maths Useful: How Two Teachers Prepare Adult Learners to Apply Their Numeracy Skills in Their Lives Outside the Classroom Carolyn Brooks Anglia Ruskin University <[carolyn.brooks@anglia.ac.uk](carolyn.brooks@anglia.ac.uk)> Abstract This pilot case study of two teachers and their learner groups from Adult and Community settings, investigates how numeracy teachers, working with adult learners in discrete numeracy classes, motivate and enable learners to build on their informal skills and apply new learning to their own real-life contexts. Teachers used a range of abstract and contextualised activities to achieve this. Similarities and differences between teachers’ approaches were analysed using a Context Continuum model. Whether teachers started with real-life situations then moved to the abstract mathematics within them, or approached it the other way around seemed less important than ensuring there was movement back and/or forth between the different discourses of numeracy and mathematics. Keywords: context continuum, numeracy, out-of-school practices Introduction The inherent complexities of developing an adult learner’s numeracy knowledge and skills ina way that will both enable them to pass a summative assessment in order to gain a qualification, as well as develop the motivation and ability to ‘transfer’ and use their skills and knowledge to support their own real-life problem solving, are widely debated, and relevant internationally. This research investigates whether and how numeracy teachers of adult learners enable learners to apply their skills to real-life uses, particularly in ‘discrete’numeracy classes, i.e. those which are not vocationally or workplace-based. Mathematics and numeracy qualifications in the Further Education (FE) & Skills sector in the UK identify the contextualised and embedded agendas within which adult numeracy teachers are working: Functional skills are the fundamental, applied skills in English, mathematics, and information and communication technology (ICT) which help people to gain the most from life, learning and work. (Ofqual1, 2012) Prior to the relatively recent introduction of the Functional Mathematics curriculum, the preceding Adult Numeracy core curriculum (BSA, 2001) stated that it is deliberately context free so that numeracy teachers can relate the curriculum to their learners’ own contexts. The stated intentions of helping people to gain the most from life, learning and work, and relating the curriculum to learners’own contexts, raise some interesting questions; for 1 Ofqual – the Office of Qualification and Examinations Regulation. Volume 10(1)– August 2015 Copyright © 2015 by the author. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. example, are these intentions consistent with learners’ and teachers’ intentions and aims? Research (Coben et al., 2007; Swain, Baker, Holder, Newmarch, & Coben, 2005; Swain & Swan, 2007) suggests that many learners simply want to gain a qualification to enable them to gain access to other programmes of study or to enhance their job prospects, other learners wish to be able to help their children. In summary (Swain et al., 2005) explain that: Students’motivations are varied and complex but few come to study maths because they feel they lack skills in their everyday lives. There are also difficulties associated with teaching numeracy and mathematics in a way that enables learners to apply what they learn outside the classroom, partly because of the differences between the approaches used to problem solve inside the classroom-to ultimately enable learners to gain a numeracy qualification-and the approaches we use to problem solve in real life (Ivaniĉ, Appleby, Hodge, Tusting & Barton, 2006), further ampli

FAQs

What does the pilot case study investigate about adult numeracy teachers?

It investigates how numeracy teachers motivate and enable adult learners to apply numeracy skills to real-life contexts beyond the classroom.

How does the Context Continuum model feature in the analysis?

Teachers’ approaches are compared and interpreted using the Context Continuum model to examine how embedded learning activities connect to real-life contexts.

Why is transfer of numeracy skills outside the classroom considered difficult?

Difficulty arises from differences between problem-solving approaches used in school-based settings versus those used in real life, and from potential misalignment between assessment and intended outcomes.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky