Text and task complexity in numeracy

A VALBEC (Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council) Professional Learning session presented by Dave Tout.

VALBEC presents another great Professional Learning Session presented by Dave Tout.

What are some of the challenges and dimensions that people, both adults and children, have to address when solving numeracy tasks that can impact on their level of performance on everyday mathematical/numeracy problems.

This session will share some ideas about what factors can make a numeracy task or action easy or difficult. Is it about how difficult the mathematical content is, or is it about the real-world context and the embedded nature of the situation? And are there other non-cognitive aspects that need to be considered?

Based on some lessons learned from international adult numeracy assessments, and other research, this session will share different schemas and factors that can help address the difficulty and complexity of solving numeracy tasks and activities. One of the schemas can allow you to quantitatively compare tasks and questions, whilst the other is a way of supporting learners to solve a numeracy task.

This has implications for educators and teachers including, for example, that a numeracy teacher is also a teacher of literacy and language, and that teachers need to explicitly teach students how to 'read' or 'excavate' the mathematical content embedded in texts within numeracy tasks. Unsurprisingly, other factors address the need for numeracy teachers to explicitly address a range of mathematical content knowledge and processes.

Dave is an experienced adult and youth LLN educator who is particularly interested in making mathematics relevant, interesting and fun for all students, and is recognised as one of Australia's leading numeracy personnel with over 50 years' experience working across schools, TAFEs, community providers, universities, national education bodies and workplaces.

He has worked at a state, national and international level in research, curriculum, assessment and professional development. Dave has written many numeracy and maths curriculum, teaching and PD resources, and is also an author of the Australian Core Skills Framework. Dave has been involved in international numeracy assessments including the OECD's PIAAC and PISA assessment programs and is currently Chair of the Numeracy Expert Group for PIAAC. Dave currently holds positions at both ACER and the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne and is a numeracy & mathematics consultant.

We look forward to seeing you there.

VALBEC PL Forums Team

Who: Dave Tout

When: Thursday, 24^th October 2024, 5.30-6.30 pm AEST

Where: Zoom

Cost: VALBEC Members Free; non-Members $10