The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers

04/11/2026

We ask students to read graphs critically, question claims and think carefully about what data can tell us. But what about the data we work with ourselves? NAPLAN reports, school assessment results and student progress data all rely on teachers interpreting evidence accurately and making informed decisions.

As the amount of data available to schools continues to grow, how do we ensure we spend our time analysing the right data, understand what it tells us, and use it to improve teaching and learning?

Four questions may help us move from data to action:
What do we need to know? Start with a clear question or learning goal, rather than analysing data simply because it is available.

What evidence do we need? Identify the most relevant data to help answer our question.

What does the data actually tell us? Look for patterns, consider limitations and avoid drawing conclusions the evidence can’t support.

What will we do differently? Use what we learn to refine our teaching, set school-wide goals and evaluate whether our actions are making a difference.

The good news is that freely available support can help us build these skills.

Using Data with Confidence - from the NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation - offers practical guidance on data fundamentals, comparisons and interpreting charts accurately.
🔗 https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/education-data-and-research/cese/publications/practical-guides-for-educators/using-data-with-confidence

Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making - from the US’s Institute of Education Sciences - is targeted at leadership and explores how schools can use data to guide instructional decisions and support improvement towards shared goals.
🔗 https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide/12

When you are looking at your own data, it’s also worth considering the same critical questions we encourage students to ask: What was the question? How was the data collected? What can - and can’t - we conclude? And what will we do next?

Data-informed teaching isn't about analysing everything. It's about asking better questions, making sound judgements and using evidence - from many sources - to improve learning.

02/11/2026

For secondary students, statistics becomes far more compelling when the data is real, a little messy, but also about issues that matter to them. This blog from Dr Linda McIver at https://adsei.org/2019/08/04/using-real-data-projects-to-engage-kids-with-stem/ explains why these things matter.

Luckily, Australia has some excellent free sources of data sets.
▪ CSIRO Educational Datasets
🔗 https://www.csiro.au/en/education/resources/educational-datasets
Real research datasets for Years 7-10, each with a teacher resource and versions for spreadsheet beginners, more experienced users and students who code. Topics include carbon dioxide on the Great Barrier Reef, water quality, air quality, mean sea level changes and income inequality across local government areas.

▪ Australian Bureau of Statistics
🔗 https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/understanding-statistics/classroom-resources
No post on data sources would be complete without mentioning the ABS and this link takes you straight to their classroom resources based on the 2021 census data.
A
nd while real data sets are messy, they’re made to be explored using digital tools - from a spreadsheet to more sophisticated data-specific tools such as CODAP - so they provide a great gateway into developing your students’s digital literacy skills too. 🔗 https://codap.concord.org/

29/10/2026

Like most learning, the best statistical investigations start with questions children genuinely care about - because they are personal or they provoke inherent curiosity - who’s at school today, or how far a toy car will roll. Here are some free resources built around exactly these types of ideas.

▪ reSolve teaching sequences. In Foundation, Statistics: How many are we?
🔗 https://resolve.edu.au/teaching-sequences/foundation/statistics-how-many-are-we has students count who is at school, record it in their own way and predict tomorrow’s number.
In Year 1, Statistics: How far goes my car?
🔗 https://resolve.edu.au/teaching-sequences/year-1/statistics-how-far-goes-my-car has students predict and measure how far toy cars roll, including down ramps, then use their data to refine their predictions.

▪ Australian Data Science Education Institute lesson plans and datasets 🔗 https://adsei.org/lesson-plans-and-datasets/.
The Biodiversity Study (F-6) is practical, hands-on and is ready-made as a cross curricular project to engage young scientists and statisticians in a meaningful inquiry.

In the early years especially, the question ‘How could we find out?’ matters as much as the answer.

27/10/2026

Statistics are everywhere in students’ lives. And there’s a lot of language associated with the topic, beginning at the highest level of defining key ideas like statistics itself.

We’ve turned to Version 9 of the Australian Curriculum for guidance:
Statistics ‘provide a story, or means to support or question an argument, and enables exploratory data analysis that underpins decision-making and informed judgement.’
Statistical literacy ‘requires an understanding of statistical information and processes … [and] a basis for critical scrutiny of an argument, the accuracy of representations, and the validity and reliability of inferences and claims.’

There’s also the notion of a statistical investigation to consider, which ACv9 identifies as one of the four mathematical processes and which is outlined in this process diagram:
🔗 https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/curriculum-information/understand-this-learning-area/mathematics/_jcr_content/root/container/column_0/container/section_copy_copy_co_1576427805/Container/image.coreimg.png/1757308078322/statistical-investigation-process.png

Before we dive into some detailed teaching and learning resources over this post series, we want to first consider what makes statistics hard and what are the common misconceptions that students struggle with. AAMT’s Top Drawer Teachers: Statistics resource was developed some years ago, but outlines some key misconceptions that are just as relevant today: bias and misunderstanding of sampling, misleading graphs, issues with averages - all probably very familiar to most teachers.

An idea that runs through this series of posts on statistics is asking good questions of data. Over the next few days we’ll look at investigations for primary students, real data for secondary students, teachers’ own statistical literacy and helping students question the data they meet in the news.

23/10/2026

The 2026 Hanna Neumann Lecture is now available to watch at https://aamt.edu.au/keynotesconference2026/

In Trusting Teachers: Professional Judgement in an Age of Pedagogical Debate and Artificial Intelligence, Professor Catherine Attard (Western Sydney University and AAMT Board Chair) explores why teachers' professional judgement matters more than ever - from deciding when to explain and when to investigate, to evaluating lessons and tasks created with AI.

Drawing on her 2025 study with 33 primary teachers across nine schools, Catherine shows how teachers decided what to accept, question and adapt in AI-generated tasks, and what that meant for students' engagement with maths.

A thoughtful watch for teachers, maths leaders and anyone considering how AI fits into mathematics teaching.

🔗 Free to all, watch the recording on our website at: https://aamt.edu.au/keynotesconference2026/

22/10/2026

The fifth and final episode of AAMT's video series on teaching maths using manipulatives and concrete materials, produced with We Support Hands-On Learning, is now available.

In Ordering and sorting fractions, AAMT Board Chair Professor Catherine Attard and AAMT CEO Allan Dougan tackle one of the most common fraction misconceptions: that a bigger denominator means a bigger fraction. Using fraction bricks, fraction bars and number lines, they show how asking students to predict and explain first, then check with materials, builds the proportional reasoning they will later need for decimals, percentages, measurement and probability.

All five episodes are now together on the AAMT website, each with key ideas you can take straight into the classroom:
▪ The basics of counting
▪ Working with number lines
▪ Thinking about addition
▪ The initial concept of fractions
▪ Ordering and sorting fractions

🔗 Watch the full series: https://aamt.edu.au/teachers/resources/hands-on-learning/

21/10/2026

On Monday and Tuesday this week, AAMT hosted a two-day roundtable in Melbourne for leaders from our affiliate associations, building on our 2025 roundtable theme ‘Stronger Together’.

Presidents and Executive Officers from mathematics teacher associations from each state and territory within Australia joined AAMT Board members and staff. Together we shared what's happening within the states, territories and nationally. We talked through the issues facing maths education and explored how, using our collective strength, knowledge, experience and extensive networks, we could work towards addressing them. The shared goal was simple: better maths education for every student in Australia.

It was a pleasure to welcome new faces alongside many returning friends. The conversations showed how much experience and commitment there is across the affiliate network.

We also had something to celebrate. Di Siemon baked a beautiful cake to mark AAMT's 60th birthday, and it was a fitting moment to share with so many of the people who make up the AAMT community.

Thank you to everyone who travelled to Melbourne, from far and wide and who gave their time and ideas.

13/10/2026

Fractions are the first time many students meet a number that isn’t whole and can be the first time that the rules they’ve built up start to let them down. Bigger digits no longer necessarily mean bigger numbers. One number is suddenly written using two.

Episode Four of the AAMT series with We Support Hands-On Learning is about building fraction understanding from the ground up. In this 13-minute video, Allan Dougan and Catherine Attard talk through why fractions are genuinely hard, why students need more than one model and what early misconceptions look like.

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jku8Tg39m-0

The emphasis is firmly on concrete work: folded paper, number lines, magnetic fraction bars and fraction walls. There’s plenty of manipulation, plenty of different representations and plenty of talk, all underpinned by precise language from the teacher throughout.

If you teach Years 3 to 5, this is the episode to watch, but it could be just as applicable if you teach older students who are still shaky with fractions.

Presented by Allan Dougan, Chief Executive of the Australian Associ...

08/10/2026

We're delighted to announce our sixth and final keynote presenter for The Keynotes Conference: Perspectives on Pedagogy - Associate Professor Helen Chick from the University of Tasmania.

Helen has been engaged in mathematics and teaching for over 40 years, most of that time as a teacher educator, first at the University of Melbourne and now at the University of Tasmania, where she works with pre-service primary and secondary mathematics teachers.

In her keynote, ‘Explicit Learning and Pedagogy’, Helen notes that while ‘pedagogy’ usually centres on teaching practices, the English language distinguishes between ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’. She asks whether important ideas about learning have been lost along the way, and proposes thinking about pedagogy in terms of ‘explicit learning’, where teaching decisions start from one question: ‘What is it, exactly, that I want students to learn?’

Helen's session closes the conference on Saturday 17 October, rounding out a program that also features Colin Foster, Yeap Ban Har, Dan Meyer, Dewey Gottlieb and Jodie Hunter.

The weekend opens on Friday evening with the free Hanna Neumann Lecture, delivered by Professor Catherine Attard.

There’s just over one week to go!

🔗 Register for the full conference or the free public lecture: aamt.edu.au/keynotesconference2026

🗓️ Follow our Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/1NdzB45N5v/

06/10/2026

It’s a common misconception: ask a young student what the equals sign means and a lot of them will tell you the answer comes next. Whilst this may seem an understandable reading it can cause trouble for years afterwards, especially once students meet formal algebraic equations in Year 7. The correct response: equals means 'the same as'. It’s a statement of balance, not an instruction.

The third episode of the We Support Hands-On Learning/AAMT series on foundational primary maths concepts is about addition, and it spends as much time on relationships as on procedures. Allan Dougan and Catherine Attard cover part-part-whole thinking, why 3 + 4 and 4 + 3 giving the same result is a genuine insight rather than an obvious fact, number bonds to ten and what the equals sign really means.

The materials are familiar ones: two-colour counters, ten frames, MAB blocks. The thread running through it is that addition is about relationships rather than rules and that there’s no need to rush students to the algorithm.

▶️ Watch Thinking about addition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRGZOaGCjk

Presented by Allan Dougan, Chief Executive of the Australian Associ...