Maths in the Workplace

1. Maths in the Workplace Dr Diana Coben Maths4Life

2. Research Review ofBasic Skills in the Workplace (LSDA) • Calls for more research on the effectiveness of workplace basic skills programmes • Identifies factors that determine effectiveness: • Marketing programmes to fit in with workers’ interests, and using positive titles such as ‘communication skills’ • Basing approach on workers’ own communication needs • Including basic skills as part of an organisation’s overall training and development programme, with support from management. (Payne 2003)

3. The benefits to employers of raising workforce basic skills: a literature review (NRDC) • Individuals benefit significantly from improving their levels of literacy and numeracy. • Very little evidence on the benefits to employers of investing in basic skills training, but some studies indicate increases in productivity, reductions in costs and enhanced customer satisfaction. • Much larger body of research on the benefits of workforce training in general suggests that it improves firms’ performance and is associated with lower staff turnover and higher levels of commitment to the organisation. • Dearth of studies on the effects of basic skills training in the workplace and, therefore, an urgent need for more research in this area. (Ananiadou et al, 2003)

4. Some recent research • Mathematical Skills in the Workplace (STM) • Identifying effective workplace basic skills strategies for enhancing employee productivity and development (NRDC) • Chemical spraying (Australia) • Maths4Life Pathfinder (NHSU)

5. Mathematical Skills in the Workplace • Project for the Science Technology & Mathematics Council (SMT, now part of SEMTA) • Research into current requirements for mathematical skills in the workplace in 7 sectors: • Electronic Engineering and Optoelectronics • Financial Services • Food Processing • Healthcare • Packaging • Pharmaceuticals • Tourism

6. ‘Mathematical Skills in the Workplace’ concludes that • Mathematics provision for young people needs to be rethought and upgraded and people need to have access to additional provision over their lifetimes. • ‘Mathematical literacy’ is of central importance and it represents a major skills gap in the workforce. • Mathematical literacy is described in terms of its component skills, its links with the changing context of business and its strong inter-relationship with IT, and is illustrated by reference to examples from case studies from the different sectors studied.

7. Recommendations of the STM project • Raise visibility and awareness of the importance of mathematical literacy in the workplace. • Generate models for training/professional development to promote mathematical literacy. • Identify/further define core concepts which provide the basis of mathematical literacy - has implications for pre-employment education and training. • Communications with employers should recognise that they need to understand the mathematical literacy they can expect from national qualifications. (Hoyles et al, 2002)

8. Identifying effective workplace basic skills strategies for enhancing employee productivity and development (NRDC) • Aim: to examine the effectiveness of workplace-linked literacy, language and numeracy programmes. • Pilot study of employees participating in WPBS programmes. • Findings: • Fairly low attendance and retention rates; • These seem to be related to the general learning culture in the organisation, as well as more practical matters, e.g., working patterns of employees; • Employees participating in WPBS consider them beneficial and enjoyable. They tend to express very positive attitudes towards their tutors or trainers - this can be linked to evidence on employers' positive attitudes towards basic skills training; • Absence of pre-existing research instruments suitable for use in studies of workplace programmes (a major focus of the pilot was the development and modification of instruments). (Ananiadou et al 2004)

9. Learning Numeracy on the Job: A case study of chemical handling and spraying • Illustrates challenges faced by industries using chemical handling and spraying as they attempt to ensure that workers have the appropriate numeracy skills • The ‘numeracy’ task of preparing and applying chemicals requires that the person responsible takes a complex set of variables into account. Although workers may have undergone specific training and/or learned the required mathematical skills at school, they still require further on-the-job mentoring and support. • The worksite influences both the type of numeracy skills needed, as well as how they are deployed. In other words, the task, the history of the task (for example, how previous records were taken), and the equipment used, determine the sorts of calculations people must be able to make. Once these are learned, they have to be embedded through practice. • Workplace numeracy education cannot be approached from a traditional ‘school mathematics’ mentality. • Workplace numeracy requires training that reflects workplace practices and incorporates authentic problem-solving in real or simulated tasks in small groups with shared responsibilities. It also needs to incorporate the development of metacognitive skills, such as critical thinking, learning to learn, planning and problem-solving. (FitzSimons et al 2005)

10. Maths4Life Pathfinder: Decisions that count in health and social care: a problem-solving approach to making good mathematics/numeracy-related decisions Action research project, led by NHSU, with NIACE and University of Nottingham. Researchers from Maths4Life and NIACE worked with a nurses’ ‘learning set’ established by Oxfordshire Skills for Health. Aims • to support the development of effective strategies to support staff to make mathematics-related decisions at work in selected health/social care sites • to develop a model which will inform decision-making strategies outside the selected sites

11. The pathfinder project yielded rich data on… • How the nurses viewed the mathematics/numeracy they use at work • How they made mathematics/numeracy decisions • How they viewed the learning support they receive on mathematics/ numeracy issues • How their mathematics/numeracy skills and practices affected patients Small-scale project; all these issues warrant further study on a wider scale Found that nurses often calculate and measure under pressure: • The working environment is often noisy (in various senses); • Their mathematical results may have a bearing on patient care and patient safety; • The nurses’ working environment encouraged them to seek help if they were uncertain, but we have no evidence about how strong this culture is elsewhere in the NHS. (Maths4Life internal report)

12. To sum up… evidence from these and other studies suggests… • Dearth of well-founded research in this area. • Employers, employees, providers/tutors, policy makers keen to know ‘what works’. • Complex connection between the numeracy/mathematics learned in the classroom and that used elsewhere (Lave, 1988). • Transfer or translation of skill and knowledge between contexts is difficult (Evans 2000). • Maths skills used in the workplace and the classroom may be different, despite apparent similarities (Nunes et al., 1993, Hoyles et al., 2001). • Links between numeracy/maths skills and other skills and practices may be critical (Wedege, 2000; Coben et al 2003). • Workers need to combine mathematical skills with communication skills; the impact of extensive team-working (Hoyles et al, 2002). • Effective strategies acknowledge the demands of the specific context in which mathematical skills are being used, as well as any existing strategies, knowledges or conceptions among the staff involved. (FitzSimons et al., 2003; Hoyles et al., 2001).

13. References • Ananiadou, K., Emslie-Henry, R., Evans, K., & Wolf, A. (2004). Identifying Effective Workplace Basic Skills Strategies for Enhancing Employee Productivity and Development. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. • Ananiadou, K., Jenkins, A., & Wolf, A. (2003) The Benefits to Employers of Raising Workforce Basic Skills: A Literature Review. London: NRDC • Coben, D., Colwell, D., Macrae, S., Boaler, J., Brown, M., & Rhodes, V. (2003). Adult Numeracy: Review of research and related literature. London: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC). • Evans, J. (2000). The transfer of mathematics learning from school to work, not straightforward but not impossible either. In A. Bessot & J. Ridgway (Eds.), Education for Mathematics in the Workplace. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers. • Evans, K., Hodkinson, P. & Unwin, L. (Eds) (2002). Working to Learn: Transforming Learning in the Workplace. London: Kogan Page • FitzSimons, G. E., Coben, D., & O'Donoghue, J. (2003). Lifelong mathematics education. In A. J. Bishop, M. A. Clements, C. Keitel, J. Kilpatrick & F. K. S. Leung (Eds.), International Handbook of Mathematics Education (pp. 105-144). Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers • FitzSimons, G. E., Micek, S., Hull, O., & Wright, C. (2005). Learning Numeracy on the Job: A case study of chemical handling and spraying. Adelaide: NCVER • Hoyles, C., Noss, R., & Pozzi, S. (2001). Proportional reasoning in nursing practice. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 32(1), 4-27. • Hoyles, C., Wolf, A., Molyneux-Hodgson, S. & Kent, P. (2002). Mathematical Skills in the Workplace. Final report to the Science, Technology and Mathematics Council. London: Institute of Education • Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice: Mind, mathematics and culture in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Payne, J. (2003). Basic Skills in the Workplace - A Research Review. London: Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) • Wedege, T. (2000). Technology, competences and mathematics. In D. Coben, J. O’Donoghue & G. E. FitzSimons (Eds.), Perspectives on Adults Learning Mathematics: Research and Practice (pp. 191-207). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.