Organisation av matematikundervisning

: speciallärarens roll

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to get an insight in the factors behind how schools in Sweden are organising the teaching of mathematics. What and whom has made the overall decisions, and the advantages and disadvantages with the selected organisation in the perspective of the principal and the special needs coordinator and what part the special needs coordinator is playing in the selected organisation in teaching mathematics. A survey was emailed to the principal of 1027 secondary schools, both compulsory mainstream schools and independent schools in the whole of Sweden. Our survey gave us both quantitative and qualitative empirics regarding the reasons behind the selected form of organisation within mathematics and contact details to 82 of the participating principals and at 32 of these schools there was also a special needs coordinator focusing on mathematics development. The 8 principals who were contacted and the 5 special needs coordinators in mathematics provided deeper understanding to the questions of the study and increased the qualitative empirics .The study shows that out of the 214 replies from different schools approx 50% are teaching mathematics in a complete class of students with one responsible teacher, 20% are using two teacher system, 20% are timetabling classes in parallel and 10% in another or combined form of organisation. A clear pattern that we identified was that the schools regardless of the form of organisation all spent resources on adding extra staff during mathematics lessons, for example another subject teacher, teacher assistant or special needs coordinator. Some schools teach their students in smaller groups, others have extended the number of hours or made mathematics a pupils choice to increase the number of hours in mathematics. The overall aim for the efforts is to make all the students qualified for studies at sixth form.