Created by maths education expert Dr Wendy Taylor, maths teacher and consultant David Morkunas, Mastery Schools Australia co-founder Toni Hatten-Roberts and teacher, author and podcaster Ollie Lovell, the highly structured offering has already undergone promising trials in schools across the country – and Morkunas says the hope is that it will ‘shift the needle’ on maths outcomes in a big way.
“We’ve come at this as a group of people who see that there is a chance here to really move the needle forward, and we’re incredibly committed to doing all that it takes to ensure that every student in Australia has access to the highest quality mathematics instruction,” the Victorian teacher tells EducationHQ.
The driving motivation is to reduce the number of students failed by ineffective instructional approaches and see performance lift on a national scale, he adds.
“Because we’ve all had those instructional casualties in our schools, of students that we didn’t quite get to in time, or students that might have come from other schools that maybe haven’t been given the scaffolding and the support that they need.
“And so this was really like, this program is built for them and just the rest of students to give them the best possible chance.”
The Explicit Mathematics Program (EMP) is said to provide schools with everything needed to implement and run a high quality, rigorous, and research-informed maths program.
Each year level includes:
- Daily reviews
- Teacher lesson plans
- Student workbooks
- Assessments
- Reporting Level auto-generator
- Suggested scopes and sequences
The program currently spans Foundation Year to Year 2, with other year levels soon to follow.
Morkunas says the program’s name is no accident.
“We wanted a name that clearly communicated the main pedagogical approach utilised throughout the program. This is because we know from a preponderance of the evidence that explicit instruction is the approach that works best for novice learners.”
A Grattan Institute survey of 2243 Australian teachers and school leaders from 2022 found evidence of a ‘lesson lottery’ at play across the country, with half of all teachers planning curriculum materials on their own.
The study found the typical teacher spends six hours a week sourcing and creating materials, while a quarter spend 10 hours a week or more.
Only 15 per cent have access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes, with teachers in disadvantaged schools only half as likely to have access to a common bank as those in advantaged schools.
Morkunas says we know the time and labour costs that go into developing high quality curriculum resources, and it’s simply not practical for every individual or school to be creating their own from scratch.
“One of our main goals with the EMP is to address the enormous lesson planning burden that teachers face,” he says.
“The structured approach of the program means that traditional lesson planning will be a thing of the past for teachers, freeing them up to focus more on behavioural foundations as well as academic support, and enrichment.”
While there are a few other maths resource providers out there, the teacher says the EMP is different in several ways.
“We definitely saw a need for a fully comprehensive offering for schools, something that covers lessons and reviews, but also covers really robust fluency practice for basic facts.
“It includes assessment as well. The program really has all bases covered for teachers,” he explains.
The program has been trialled across public and independent schools in a range of SES contexts, and the results to date have been “really exciting”, Morkunas reports.
“Results are still coming in, but one of our trial schools that runs regular testing reported that they went from 78 per cent of their Foundation year students at level last year, to 98 per cent of students at level after using the EMP.
“[That’s a] fairly significant improvement year on year, which is super encouraging.”
A big effort has gone into ensuring students master the prerequisite skills needed to succeed before each new lesson kicks off, Morkunas notes.
As the primary lesson writer for the EMP, creating both the explicit lessons and preparing student workbooks to accompany the sessions, Morkunas joined the team following a unique request from Lovell.
The educator says the prospect of working alongside ‘luminaries in their field’ was an offer too good to turn down.
“[Lovell’s] knowledge is so impressive, not just of pedagogy, but of instructional design and Cognitive Load Theory and all that fun stuff. He literally wrote the book for teachers on Cognitive Load Theory!
"Toni is an absolute fountain of knowledge, too. She was the first outside the US to get the Direct Instruction Teacher of the Year Award
“So, she's amazing and the work that she does with Mastery Schools Australia is really exciting.
“And then, of course, our secret weapon is Dr Wendy Taylor, who has a PhD in pure maths.
“Wendy’s attention to detail and vision for how every component of the project fits together to create a seamless learning experience for students is like an incredible work of art, and an inspiring feat of science all rolled into one,” Morkunas says.
Lovell noted via email that he extended the chief lesson writing role to Morkunas after seeing the phenomenal work that he had done at both Bentleigh West Primary School and Brandon Park Primary School.
“I visit a lot of schools, and I see a lot of teachers, both in Australia and internationally. What I saw when I visited Dave’s class was some of the best teaching, and the best planning, that I’ve ever come across.
"When we were hiring for the role, there was no doubt in our mind that we needed Dave’s talent on the team.”
Morkunas is buoyed by the recent commitment made by the NSW and Victorian governments to make explicit teaching the bedrock of all teachers’ practice.
“We see our program as part of that shift away from constructivism and towards the explicit side of things.
“That’s a change that I’m excited to see in motion, and I just hope continues to accelerate.”
Samples of all EMP resources noted can be downloaded here.
