Nuffield Mathematics Teaching Project

The Nuffield Mathematics Teaching Project produced a series of twenty modules aimed at supporting the teaching of topics in mathematics which in the project team’s view students found difficult. The modules were aimed at students aged 11 and 12 in the first two years of secondary education. Some of the ideas and content would now normally be taught rather later in the secondary curriculum (for example, irrational numbers and matrices). The value of the material is that each module draws together a strand of mathematics. If used as a module of work, this enables the student to see rather more of the development of a topic than is usual in the chapter of a text book.

The resources available in this collection are nearly all from the project trial material. As a result of the trials some of the modules were split into two (decimals, similarity and number patterns) otherwise, however, the structure and approach of the modules appears little changed.

The Nuffield work in science curriculum development is evident in some places where cross curricular approaches are suggested. For example the ‘functionality’ module uses relationships found in science experiments to motivate the mathematics.

There is some dependency between modules as would be expected although many could be regarded as ‘stand-alone’.

Within the collection the modules have been organised into three sub-collections: Number, Shape and Space’ and Applications/Miscellaneous.

Note
This collection of resources was published between 1970 and 1973. The mathematical content is still very relevant but some of the teaching approaches may be at variance with more current approaches. The material was written before the use of handheld calculators in schools – mention and use is suggested of a (mechanical) desk calculator with the associated language of setting register and accumulator.