The popular series of online workshops on sharing practice in TMSJ returned in June 2026. These workshops provide opportunities to engage with and discuss ideas, teaching approaches, classroom resources and work in progress. There were 6 presenters and 16 participants across the 3 workshops. Details of each workshop, including the workshop outline, a recording of the presentation (where available), and the presenter’s reflections on the discussion, can be found below.
WORKSHOP 1 (on Wednesday 10th June)
‘I have the right to rest, relax and play’: Exploring article 31 at school
Anne Kagoya (Barn Croft Primary School, The Open University)
Outline: As part of the school’s work towards becoming a Rights Respecting School, one class explore how well their school upholds article 31 using maths.
Watch the recording of Anne’s presentation.
Anne’s reflections: Power was a key theme from the beginning to the end of my presentation. When I was responding to questions from other members of the network, they really helped me to see just how empowered the children researchers had felt. A further comment: ‘I did not expect children so young to be so agentic’, affirmed the ‘Learning Without Limits’ principles ( everybody, co-agency, trust and unpredictability) which underpin my practice. A later question, from an attendee, provoked much thought about how we could further explore opportunities for play and how the maths is connected. I feel I want to hold on to that provocation and develop it into an action for the next academic year. I am really very grateful for these opportunities to share practice, in a very safe space, and be gently encouraged to learn. I hope that’s what I give the children.
Imagining a student-centred mathematics learning experience
Jane Goodland (Secondary teacher/researcher, University of Manchester)
Outline: Let’s strip back everything we know about schools, classrooms, exams and curricula, and go back to the basics of inclusive, critical, relevant, student-centred education. The only starting point is this: we will have classrooms where we come together in person, and we will have a dedicated session in the day for maths. What would this maths lesson look like? Who would be in the room and what would they be doing? This is not going to be a presentation. It is going to be a structured discussion to get us all using our imaginations and thinking outside the box!
[There will be no recording of Jane’s session]
Jane’s reflections: [To be added]
WORKSHOP 2 (on Tuesday 16th June)
Social Justice Maths Days in the primary setting
Joel Kelly (The Blue School C of E Primary)
Outline: In this session, Joel will present his school’s recent work in incorporating social justice issues into the curriculum through the teaching of mathematics. This has included planning and teaching a series of three Social Justice Maths Days (SJMDs) each year (now in their fourth year). We will use this presentation as a prompt to discuss current opportunities and constraints for addressing social justice through the teaching of mathematics in all primary schools.
Watch the recording of Joel’s presentation (audio and slides).
Joel’s reflections: One of my favourite parts of sharing this project with new audiences is the energy and excitement that is created by the ensuing discussion. I always come away feeling buoyed by this and have had similar feedback from others. This session’s discussion provided a great opportunity to think about how someone may bring social justice mathematics into their secondary or primary school. We discussed having one day a term in which all the maths lessons for that week could be stacked into one day and made into a social justice project close to the children’s hearts. The five maths lessons on division or coordinates etc will still be taught in line with the school’s plans, however they will be strung together for a cause that with tackle an injustice. This means that extra time to do this project is not needed and the curriculum, in any setting, will continue. Initially teachers will need more time to plan this first session, but afterwards it becomes part of the standard planning. A positive of this is that social justice maths then can be used in other sessions. There was a further discussion about collaboration between departments in secondary schools, to bring experts together, as well as collaborations between primary and secondary. We also spoke about how important it is to get leadership involved and to bring social justice maths into the quality cycle and/or the school improvement plan to ensure longevity. Thank you again for having me. Best wishes, Joel
Demolishing barriers to decolonising maths
Ric Crossman (Durham University, Department of Mathematical Sciences)
Outline: Efforts to decolonise mathematical education in the UK are not always supported by mathematicians. Many arguments are mustered against decolonising education in general, but the specific objections to decolonising mathematics frequently appeal to the rigorous logic of mathematics. The existence of objective truth within the discipline – something which is, if not unique, highly unusual – allows for claims that mathematics exists beyond political considerations. I will discuss the way in which such arguments fail, and how in countering those arguments, mathematics educators can set the stage for their own decolonisation work, at all levels.
Watch the recording of Ric’s presentation.
Ric’ reflections: It was lovely to get feedback from those present – clearly the idea of decolonising the mathematical curriculum is one that struck a chord. It’s lovely in particular that people working with younger students than I do are interested in, or already are, working towards helping their students recognise the way our culture thinks about mathematicians is in need of challenging.
One topic that came up during the post-presentation conversation was what we might do in terms of coming up with lists of maths and mathematicians we might highlight during lessons as a way of broadening students’ understanding of the cultural aspect of maths, and what it means to be a mathematician. Resources such at those which have begun to be built at the Open University are going to be critical here, I think. Specifically within my own discipline of Statistics, I like to highlight the work of Mahalanobis and Rao (two Indian mathematicians who did extremely important work, and have been accordingly celebrated – Mahalanobis even ended up on a stamp) and of Akaike, a Japanese mathematician who won the Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, possibly the best name for any prize given out in the history of maths.
All three of these mathematicians might be people one could mention when pupils are drawing lines of best fit. Rao helped give us the concept of linear regression, so students learning to calculate lines of best fit are using work he was involved with. One could also mention him as having found a way to draw the mathematical “best line of best fit” in any circumstance where you’re getting students to draw such lines by eye. If you use lines of best fit as a way to talk about comparisons of variance (or I guess even just of scale), you can mention Mahalanobis revolutionising the way we do this through his idea of Mahalanobis’ distance; a generalisation of how we usually find distances between points which takes account of how spread out those points are in each dimension. Lastly, the contribution that Akaike is most famous for is the Akaike Information Criteria or AIC (he wanted to call it something else, because he was a very modest man, but history insisted we remember where the idea came from). The AIC gives us a way to measure how well a model represents the data it is fitted to, including lines of best fit.
We also talked about flipping or democratising the classroom; seeing the teacher as a facilitator rather than a transmissive authority. As I said at the time, I think this is really valuable approach to take wherever possible, and indeed it’s how I run the module I’m currently teaching for postgraduate non-mathematicians looking to pivot to a career in data science. I record the theory in the videos, which they then watch, and our contact hours have plenty of space for them to interrogate and practice what’s been taught. Facilitation also works at the other end of the scale, I think. I’m part of the Young Minds, Big Maths outreach programme we have at Durham, where academics like myself regularly meet with local nursery teachers to discuss how to help their pupils engage with maths. This is a really nice initiative, and one of the highlights has been seeing how much of what the students learn is being driven by their own curiosity, with their teachers prompting them over how they might further investigate the maths in the contexts the pupils themselves are drawn to.
The extent to which this is possible in the context of secondary school maths is a bit of an open question, in my experience at least. One hurdle I’ve come across here is that some maths teachers don’t really feel comfortable with facilitating because they’re worried their own maths skills might not be up to the task. I’m not really sure what one might do in response to that, other than to remind people (and perhaps ourselves) that it’s probably a very good thing that students occasionally hear us say “I don’t actually know the answer to that yet”. In terms of topic, there are ideas which I think lead themselves to facilitation rather than transmission. My first thought – inevitably – is students designing their own survey to collect data to be interpreted and analysed. I once did the Dido Problem for a piece of Y10 coursework, which meant I pretty much had to be a facilitator, but I don’t see any reason why using Dido’s problem as a way of exploring the relationship between perimeter and area couldn’t be presented in a similar way outside the context of summative assessment.
WORKSHOP 3 (on Thursday 18th June)
Maths that empowers fairness, agency, critical thinking & real-world connections
Angel Hinkley (Drumchapel High School)
Outline: In this session, I will share a resource I developed to embed equity, real-world relevance, and critical thinking into maths lessons. I will showcase practical examples and outcomes, demonstrating how maths can inspire collaborative learning, amplify pupil agency, belonging and spark meaningful discussions about fairness and inequality. I will highlight the impact of this approach, as observed by my colleagues and me, and how social justice, rights, and equality resources use innovative ways to connect maths meaningfully to students’ lives, empowering them to engage critically and empathetically with the world through a mathematical lens.
Watch the recording of Angel’s presentation. [to be added]
Angel’s reflections: [To be added]
Promoting socially just maths teaching – professional development workshops
Pete Wright (University of Dundee):
Outline: This session will provide an opportunity to engage with a series of professional development workshops that are freely available, along with accompanying facilitators’ notes, on the TMSJN website (www.mathsocialjustice.org/prof-dev/). The workshops were developed through discussions at the Critical Mathematics Education Working Group (BSRLM) and the ‘Promoting Socially Just Maths Teaching’ research project, which involved 15 members of the TMSJN.
Watch the recording of Pete’s presentation.
Pete’s reflections: This was a great opportunity to publicise the professional development workshops more widely. We need the help of TMSJN members in doing this. The facilitator’s notes which accompany each workshop are designed so that they can be used by anybody to lead a professional development session for a group of colleagues, for example a mathematics department in a secondary school or teaching staff in a primary school. We’d be very interested to hear feedback from people who’ve tried this. The workshops are designed to last about 90 minutes, roughly half of which would be engaging with exemplar activities and the other half critically reflecting on, and discussing practice. There is an introductory workshop and then a series of three follow-up workshops which draw links between TMSJ and inclusion, engagement and problem-solving. These three issues are seen as issues of primary concern to teachers and policy-makers in England and Scotland and hence might be a good way of drawing in a wider range of practitioners who are not already committed to the aims of TMSJ.
The Teaching Maths for Social Justice Network 