Chapter 6: Methods of Engagement

This chapter will explore the methods that we used to engage children and parents in our research, and to encourage schools (who acted as gatekeepers) to support us in our endeavour. Both the Economic Activity project and the Everyday Maths project demonstrated that children and families use a wide range of mathematics in their everyday lives. Integrating this into mathematics teaching in the classroom is complex in many ways, however, as we explored in Chapter 5. In part, this complexity arises from the way in which mathematics is taught and discussed in schools. It also stems from the wide variation of ways in which mathematics is used in family life. Exploring this variation presents interesting methodological challenges. Because we were interested in spontaneous activity and conversation, it was not feasible for us to gain an understanding of mathematics in different families' lives through direct observation. For this to work, there were several steps that we needed to achieve.