Enhancing students’ mathematical aspirations and mathematical literacy as the foundation for improving STEM learning

Mathematics is the foundational enabling discipline that underpins STEM and its other constituent disciplines of science, technology and engineering. Central to Australia’s mathematical vitality is universal access to high-quality mathematics education. Without this, young people are at risk of early school leaving, low participation in post-school education and training, poor employment outcomes, and social isolation (COAG, 2008; Parsons & Bynner, 2005). But Australia faces significant problems in ensuring that all young people are successfully engaged in learning mathematics at school, and in providing them with teachers who can inspire their learning. This paper explores approaches to addressing two problems that continue to challenge researchers, practitioners, and policy makers: (1) raising students’ mathematical aspirations and (2) enhancing mathematical literacy across the school curriculum. It draws on the findings from two current research projects. The first project is developing case studies of schools that have increased student participation in higher-level mathematics in the senior secondary school years. The second project builds on a long term research program for embedding numeracy across the curriculum by creating a suite of online videos illustrating what numeracy looks like in real classrooms in different school subjects