Are you looking for extra Tuition in Mathematics for your child, or self?

There are numerous reasons for considering a Mathematics Tutor - Remedial Numeracy, Preparation for Selective School Placement Exams or Accelerated Learning Classes, Boosting Confidence and Improving Grades in general, HSC Success, Passing Bridging Courses at University. Whatever your need is, there are 2 key styles of teaching/learning Mathematics to consider and 2 key types of Math Tutor to consider.

Rote Learning - Reliance on Memorisation and Repetition, often with minimal or no deeper understanding. Math is reduced to formulae to be memorised and procedures to be learnt and drilled, often in the complete absence of any understanding of why?

Teaching/Learning for Understanding - Mathematics is not only a Science but the Root of all Sciences, Everything in Mathematics is based on logic and reason. Math is a body of knowledge continuously building on itself. New Math is always completely connected to current Math knowledge.

Mathematics has been in decline in Australia for many years and in my own humble opinion, the greatest reason for this has been the abandonment of Logic and Reason for Rote Learning approaches, tricks and hacks. Firstly, the subject increasingly ceases to be a Science and instead becomes some sort of a Dark Art for many students. As Math is a subject constantly building on itself, the further a student progresses without understanding, the harder it becomes to understand. Secondly, shallow learning of facts and processes is far less successfully encoded to long term memory than deep learning which is making strong connections with prior learning in building new knowledge. The impact of this is twofold. Students struggle to remember, and students have faulty memory, leading to buggy processes. For example, many students will add two fractions by adding the top and adding the bottom, a faulty recall of the process of multiplying two fractions.

Teaching/Learning for Understanding has several massive advantages. Not only does a deeper connection to the learning greatly enhance memory encoding, but also it reduces the need for the student to do the masses of practice that programs like Kumon rely on. Students can literally work smarter rather than harder. It’s also noticeable at university level that the top Mathematics Students are the Deep Learners and not the Rote learners.

The next key decision is the type of Tutor you employ - A doer of Mathematics or a Teacher of Mathematics? Whenever somebody posts to a community Social Media page looking for a Math Tutor, there will be several responses from Uni Students, often throwing up their impressive ATAR’s. Being able to DO Math and being able to TEACH Math are worlds apart, especially when so many of those ATAR Successful Doers have their own ability rooted in Rote Approaches suited to their own learning characteristics.

Professional Teachers are not only University Graduates in their field but also trained in Educational Psychology and Learning Theories in Education, as well as having greater levels of experience teaching diverse types of students with diverse learning strengths, weaknesses, styles and characteristics.