Reflections on an Initiative to Improve Junior Secondary School Pupils’ Understanding of Number

In 2005 the opportunity to apply the New Zealand ‘Numeracy’ approach to teaching Mathematics was extended into the secondary school sector. The goal was to alter teachers’ pedagogy so that ‘sense making’ rather than ‘instruction’ was the core objective of their lessons. Ultimately it is hoped that along with a familiarity and comprehension of Number will come a relatively seamless acquisition of the fundamentals of Algebra. This paper will present details of this approach for teaching Number, the status of Number in the secondary school curriculum, the focus and ramifications of teaching for understanding, as opposed to assimilating and learning to apply algorithms, and will also consider evidence of the effectiveness of the initiative