Welcome to our roundup of all things Cambridge Mathematics

A message from our Director

Dear reader

Marhaba,

I was recently asked a few questions by my peers on the main things we do at Cambridge Mathematics, who our main audience is, and what services we offer. I believe our readers are familiar with our work, but nonetheless I thought I would share some information. 

Who are we? We like to present ourselves as “a distinctive, evidence-based organisation, aiming for global impact by reshaping the landscape of mathematics education.” We strive to offer opportunities for every learner, from their earliest experiences, to engage meaningfully in mathematical activity. 

The Cambridge Mathematics Framework is at the centre of our work. It is a network of mathematical ideas covering mainly ages 3–19, and designed for the dynamic creation of knowledge maps to represent conceptual relationships in mathematics learning. Its structure and content are evidence- and research-informed. It supports curriculum design, and can be tied to teacher education and training, as well as student tasks and assessments. The Framework is used in many of our products and services, which range from curriculum development to professional learning, including assessment. We work with educators, schools, education entities and EdTech companies, as well as governments. We work on projects of every size and at every level – from reviewing and conducting a needs analysis of the content of a particular area for a specific age range, taking just a few weeks, to longer-term full curriculum design and development with detailed resource scoping and sequencing. We work in partnership with our clients ensuring that solutions offered are context-specific. More information on our services can be found here.

Teachers and educational practitioners are one of the main groups we aim to serve. From Espressos; to Instants; to JourneyMaths, our dedicated platform for professional learning; there is something for everyone! All are currently freely available and accessible on our website. We also partnered recently with Microsoft to develop a Minecraft game where geometry was the highlight, aiming to reach students and a more general audience. More on the above can be found here. 

Research is of course a cornerstone of our work, and it is not solely focused on our Framework, as you can see here, where we publish case studies and guidelines among other resources. We have also published books on probability and statistics, as well as for professional learning, all of which are available here. 

I invite you all to visit our website and to share it with colleagues and friends. You can get in touch with us, share your thoughts and feedback, and also explore all our offerings, including blogs, of which we have two new ones for you which are linked below: one by Lucy addressing sex gaps in education in England, mainly in mathematics, and another by Lynn on what makes an effective school – her second on the topic. We also have in this newsletter a link to our fresh Espresso on the early development of functional thinking.

You can also catch up with members of our team in person this month at the MEI Conference in Keele, UK and at ICME-15 in Sydney, Australia.

Quite a rich and diverse newsletter that I am sure you will enjoy reading.

Best wishes,

Early development of functional thinking

Lucy Rycroft-Smith and Maria Blanton, a Senior Scientist from TERC, explore what the research suggests about the early development of functional thinking. 

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