Elizabeth Warren, Eva deVries , Danielle Armour , Jodie Miller

1. Young Indigenous students’ achievement in mathematics:A four-year Longitudinal study (Foundation to Year 3) www.rolem.com.au Elizabeth Warren, Eva deVries, Danielle Armour, Jodie Miller

2. We would like to affirm and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are gathering on, and recognise their ongoing spiritual closeness to the land, seas and waterways

3. Professional learning model Literacy& Numeracy | Engagement & Connections | Quality teaching and workforce development Books Website Enactment Enactment Reflection Hands on materials Enactment Enactment DVD Castle & Aichele, 1994; Darling-Hammond, 1997;Clements, 2004; Warren, Quine 2012, 2013; Webster-Wright, 2009 Black line masters

4. Theoretical constructs Quality resources Equitable teaching - cognitive demand, conceptually orientated, open-ended, culturally appropriate Learning pathways – provide a gradual progression along a learning path; Integrated experiences – Involving listening, reading, writing, recording, manipulating; physically moving, and speaking about the concepts to enhance students’ transference of skills; Multi-representations – Using and linking concepts to a variety of mathematical representations including number lines, charts, concrete, and symbolic; Language building – encouraging students to move between home language, mathematical language, and Standard Australian English (SAE); Engaging and focussed – materials- visually stimulating in conjunction with specifically focussed on the mathematical concept under consideration; and Making connections – linking resources to other mathematical concepts and to students’ home and community environment. (Boaler & Staples, 2008; Frigo & Simpson, 2001; Jackson & Cobb, 2010; Warren & deVries, 2009).

5. RoleM approach Literacy& Numeracy | Engagement & Connections RoleM Materials • Align with The Australian Curriculum • Provide a gradual learning progression • Expose students to a range of experiences and representations • Support group work • Cater for a • range of modes of learning (linguistic, logical- mathematical, listening writing, speaking, body -kineasthetic, visual-spatial, musical) • range of learners (differentiated - consolidating, engaging and extending) • Support mathematical thinking • Use a multi-representational approach • Promote teachers directly or explicitly modelling concepts • Use hands on materials

6. Methodology • Mixed methods (Burns 2000), integrating decolonising, qualitative, and quantitative methodologies. • Decolonisingmethodology • Empowering outcomes in which the research is focused on benefiting the Indigenous students and their communities (Smith 1999). • Change the focus away from Indigenous people as the objects of investigation (an approach that has received extensive criticism in the literature and has been labelled as western research) to a focus on mutual benefit between the researcher and the studied Indigenous community (Bishop 1996; Irwin 1994). • Researchers required to think critically about the research processes and outcomes, ensuring Indigenous peoples’ interests, experience, and knowledge are at the heart of the research methodologies (Rigney 1999). • Qualitative methodology • series of collaborative research case studies (Kemmis and McTaggart 2000) occurring in communities with the aim to improve mathematics learning of Indigenous students. • Focused on interaction between teaching actions, Indigenous students’ learning of mathematics, and community support. This approach enabled different schools at different research sites to liaise with Indigenous education leaders and take account of local Indigenous cultural issues and community concerns. • Quantitative methodology • pre-post testing of the students (Burns 2000).

7. Data gathering strategies • Qualitative data • Teachers - Semi-structured interviews (3 per year) • Principals – Semi-structured interviews (2 per year) • Indigenous education workers – Semi-structured interviews (2 per year) – conducted by Indigenous person • All interviews audio-taped, transcribed, analysed (constant comparison – axial coding Cresswell, 2008) • Quantitative data • Students (pre and post tests) • Marked, entered into SPSS for analysis

8. Participants

9. Student Participants Students who completed the pre and post test each year

11. Selection of items (Validity of items) • Balance of questions types • Table to select the type of questions (and the representations in the test • Examined existing tests (e.g., I can do Maths, DMT, Year 2 diagnostic net, Boehm) – types of question – did not map to the content in the Australian Mathematics Curriculum • For content Australian Mathematics Curriculum • For the development of items • Balance between multiple choice or short answer • Trialed (n = 90 students of same age) • Modified the questions and ordered questions in the test from easiest to most difficult

13. Figure X. Converted RoleM scores of Foundation students 2010, 2011, 2012, & 2013

14. Figure X. Converted RoleM scores of Year 1 students 2011, 2012, & 2013

15. Figure X. Converted RoleM scores of Year 2 students, 2012 & 2013

16. Figure X. Converted RoleM scores of Year 3 students, 2013

17. Table XT-tests for Year 1 students who sat the RoleM pre and post-tests broken down by test year and Ethnicity The values of the effect size indicated that the program had a very large effect on Mathematics scores for seven groups of students (> .50) (Cohen 1988). Hattie (2008) reported that an effect size of 0.4 is average for all studies and that teachers typically attain an effect size between 0.2 and 0.4 in a school year. Thus the results of this present study are not only statistically significant but also educationally significant.

18. All students, across all year levels, achieved mean average scores beyond expectations. • When considering an eta2 range of 0.2-0.4, which Hattie (2008) reported that teachers typically attain in a school year, all students achieved either at the upper end of this range or beyond this. • Many of the student cohorts across all year levels had not only demonstrated statistically significant scores between pre and post testing but also had very large effect sizes. • This indicates very significant improvements in student mathematical learning for the year or years they participated in RoleM.