Mathematics textbook use in England: mining Ofsted reports for views on textbooks
Mathematics textbook use in England: mining Ofsted reports for views on textbooks
According to TIMSS data, the use of textbook in mathematics classrooms in England is relatively low in comparison to other countries. Although the reasons for this might be varied, the pronouncements of Ofsted, the official body for inspecting schools in England, might have an influence. This paper reports on a text analysis of almost 10,000 publicly-available Ofsted secondary school inspection reports and mathematics- specific commentaries from the year 2000 until now. The analysis focused on what Ofsted said over this period about textbook use in general and about the use of mathematics textbooks in particular. The analysis was conducted by first ‘scraping’ the reports from the Ofsted website and then utilising basic text mining and analysis methods to extract information on these documents. While the analyses showed that the occurrence of comments by Ofsted on textbooks appeared to be relatively minor, interpreting these findings from text mining alone was not straightforward. A further qualitative analysis of a sample of Ofsted publications found mention of ‘over-reliance’ on textbooks. Such allusion to ‘over-reliance’ on textbooks might have negative connotations and may have contributed to the relatively low use of textbook in mathematics classrooms in England.
TIMSS, textbook use, Ofsted, England, text mining, text analysis
9780854329847
159-166
University of Southampton
Bokhove, Christian
7fc17e5b-9a94-48f3-a387-2ccf60d2d5d8
Jones, Keith
ea790452-883e-419b-87c1-cffad17f868f
29 July 2014
Bokhove, Christian
7fc17e5b-9a94-48f3-a387-2ccf60d2d5d8
Jones, Keith
ea790452-883e-419b-87c1-cffad17f868f
Bokhove, Christian and Jones, Keith
(2014)
Mathematics textbook use in England: mining Ofsted reports for views on textbooks.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mathematics Textbook Research and Development (ICMT-2014).
University of Southampton.
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
According to TIMSS data, the use of textbook in mathematics classrooms in England is relatively low in comparison to other countries. Although the reasons for this might be varied, the pronouncements of Ofsted, the official body for inspecting schools in England, might have an influence. This paper reports on a text analysis of almost 10,000 publicly-available Ofsted secondary school inspection reports and mathematics- specific commentaries from the year 2000 until now. The analysis focused on what Ofsted said over this period about textbook use in general and about the use of mathematics textbooks in particular. The analysis was conducted by first ‘scraping’ the reports from the Ofsted website and then utilising basic text mining and analysis methods to extract information on these documents. While the analyses showed that the occurrence of comments by Ofsted on textbooks appeared to be relatively minor, interpreting these findings from text mining alone was not straightforward. A further qualitative analysis of a sample of Ofsted publications found mention of ‘over-reliance’ on textbooks. Such allusion to ‘over-reliance’ on textbooks might have negative connotations and may have contributed to the relatively low use of textbook in mathematics classrooms in England.
Text
icmt2014_proceedings_ofsted.pdf
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Published date: 29 July 2014
Keywords:
TIMSS, textbook use, Ofsted, England, text mining, text analysis
Organisations:
Mathematics, Science & Health Education
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 367607
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/367607
ISBN: 9780854329847
PURE UUID: 7b9a4f35-8e7b-4bcf-b2fd-528c07f909c4
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Date deposited: 11 Sep 2014 11:19
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:44
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