The Learner Driver

This year we entered the ‘Learner Driver’ phase of parenting. This is a scary phase. As my children have grown up, I have greatly enjoyed teaching them different skills. From using a spoon, to putting on jumpers, tying shoe laces, riding their bikes and stacking the dishwasher. I have considered every new skill as them becoming one step closer to independence.

I have greatly enjoyed watching them learn, and refining my teaching of various skills as I have gone through four iterations! My teaching of most skills has improved over the years, this is particularly true for learning to ride bikes. I refined my technique, and by the fourth time around it was a very smooth process. The 'towel' trick was a game changer (if you haven't read my blog about using a towel to scaffold children as they learn to ride a bike, you can have a look here)

Teaching driving feels very different. Driving is a part of the 'life curriculum' I feel extremely ill-equipped and ill-prepared to teach. As such, I have passed the teaching of driving over to my husband.

There have been ‘but mum you are a teacher…you do this for a job’ comments thrown my way, however I am standing firm on the fact that I don’t want any part of this teaching experiment (particularly while Miss 16 is in the acquisition phase of this skill).

My unwillingness to be involved has really made me think about those teachers who feel similar dread and lack of confidence when it comes to maths teaching.

I decided to do a 'deep' self psychological analysis to unpack my feelings, in the hope it could provide me with some further insight on how many teachers feel about maths.

The following are the reasons I am reluctant, and if I am being completely honest, downright scared of teaching driving:

1. Confidence: I lack confidence in my ability to teach driving to the standard required to ensure my daughter becomes a safe and sensible road user. I don't feel like I am a particularly 'good' driver. I am ok... but I feel like over the years some bad habits have popped into my repertoire, and to be honest, I am not sure I remember ALL the 'ins and outs' of the road rules! It is important to note there is a difference between competence and confidence. Just because someone is confident doesn't make them competent and vice versa. This is known as the Dunning Kruger effect (1999). You can read more about the D-K effect in this blog I have written. I feel like I lack both competence and confidence in teaching driving- but as the DK effect notes, I my ability to accurately judge about own abilities, may be a little 'skew-if'! 

I know how important it is to learn the 'right' way and not get into bad habits, that compound and cause issues down the track. I lack the confidence in my abilities to impart the knowledge in the most efficient and effective way. I also don't feel like I would know what to do if something went wrong. I would feel completely out of control as she drives. I told my husband I would really like one of those driving instructor cars that has a brake pedal on the passenger side! 😯

As I write down my fears, I realise these parallel the exact feelings that many teachers have as they enter the maths classroom. Feeling a lack of control and not knowing what to do in a tricky situation can be paralyzing.

'What if they ask me something I don't know? What if my students don't get it? What if I look silly or can't do the maths in front of my class/colleagues?'

2. Knowledge: I feel like I can do driving, but I don't have a deep enough knowledge to teach driving. This is the perfect example of the expertise curse at work. I know how to drive without thinking and as such, I have never really stopped to think how I might break driving down into teachable skills and segments for a novice! (I do admit I may be over thinking this!)

This is the same in the maths classroom. The majority of us can 'do' Primary school maths, but teaching the content requires a much deeper level of knowledge. This knowledge comes from a deep understanding of how children learn different skills and concepts, what the best pedagogical techniques are to use in different situations, and an appreciation of the common misconceptions that children may encounter.

I was teaching 'doubles' to a Year 2 class last week. As I was planning, I spent time thinking about the examples I would use with the students. I didn't want to just leave it to chance, and try to come up with numbers to double on the spot- I knew that could lead to confusion! When my uni students would plan lessons for me, I always told them that I would be looking very closely at the examples and non-examples they chose for their students. For me, it wasn't so much about what they were doing in the lesson, but the sequence of numbers they chose, that showed me how much thinking had gone into their plan.

In my lesson with the Year 2s, each student had Base ten blocks and a mirror to look into so they could 'see' the doubles we were making together.

I started with double 23. 

Why?

Because I could teach double the tens and double the ones and the students could add them together without too much place value knowledge.

Next, we looked at Double 32 and Double 41 and Double 12. I made sure the tens and ones all remained under 5, to keep the place value 'load' low.

Then I introduced Double 26.

The challenging part about Doubling 26, is that when I double 6 ones, it makes 12 ones. This would require students to either rename or bridge. 

I knew this example would require students to activate their place value knowledge, and I was ready for their misconceptions.

Had I entered the lesson and lacked the PCK to recognise that 26 is much more difficult for students to double than 23, I may have found myself down a place value rabbit hole too early. This may have derailed the whole session before I even started. I may have then walked out of this lesson feeling like it wasn't successful because I got 'side-tracked', and the students would probably feel the same.

Next we moved onto Double 38, Double 46 and Double 27. Again I kept the tens number below 5 and chose numbers that allowed the students to further develop their understanding of what to do when they were required to bridge.

Then we looked at Double 52.

In this example, I kept the place value load on the ones low, but stepped it up on the tens. Double 5 tens is 10 tens and students needed to rename this as 100.

When I was planning my session, I planned a sequence that moved my students through these examples in a very considered manner. I was ready for their misconceptions, I was ready for their errors, in fact I had planned so that these would come up and we could tackle these challenges together calmly and systematically.

Everything in my planning and teaching was intentional. My knowledge allowed me to navigate, leverage and be very purposeful in my instruction. For teachers who have not yet developed this knowledge, the same 'doubling 2 digit numbers' lesson may have taken a very different course. They may start with double 26, then move onto double 52, and find themselves putting out place value spot fires, rather than focusing on doubles. They then may feel 'put on the spot' and feel ill-equipped to help students. This is not a nice feeling- and it is exactly how I imagine myself feeling when my daughter is struggling to merge onto a freeway!

3. Experience: Miss 16 is our eldest, so it is my first time teaching driving. The first time doing anything is ALWAYS the hardest. It is new to our brains and so we struggle. We are awkward, we make mistakes and our brain releases cortisol, the stress hormone, that makes the situation even more challenging.

This is the same in a classroom. Unless we have taught the same year level for many years, we often are teaching the lessons for the first time. We may have moved year levels, we may be implementing a new part of the curriculum or we may be a graduate or early career teacher. Whatever the case, there are not many of us who get the opportunity to perfect individual lessons- it is usually 12 months before we teach it again! That was something I enjoyed when I taught at uni. I would teach the same tutorial 3 times in a day. I was really able to hone my craft. In schools... we teach lessons and we often move on too quickly... I am a big advocate for slowing down and reteaching content. If I was in that Year 2 classroom, I would be revisiting my teaching of doubles again the next session. In this way I can refine my teaching, but for students it means they have repeated exposures to the same content. 

Link with Maths...

If I am to feel confident to teach driving, I feel I need the following (and I think this is what our maths teachers need too)

• Someone to teach me to drive properly (someone to teach teachers how to do the maths) 
• Someone to show me how to teach driving (someone to teach teachers how to teach maths)
• Opportunities to watch an expert driving instructor (opportunities to watch an expert teaching maths)

This week I encourage you to think about your maths teaching or leading. Do you feel you, or your staff lack confidence, knowledge or experience. What is one small action that you can make to help yourself or your staff in this area?

My action this week is to look and see if there are any driving lesson tutorials on the internet, and also look into safe driving courses that perhaps my daughter and I could do together (and google how much it costs to install a passenger side brake pedal in my car!)

Have a great week,

Ange🎲🎓