RDC participants at a "Mathscify" session in Budapest (August 2023)
BACKGROUND
The project grew out of RDC work on designing low threshold, high ceiling tasks that engage all students in problem solving and problem posing in STEM education, starting with science and mathematics. After consultation with teachers, support for formative assessment of students' work on such tasks was identified as a pressing need. Thus, the project focused on helping teachers to embed formative assessment into their everyday classroom practice.
PHASE 1: DEVELOPING AND USING THE MATHSCIFY TOOLKIT
The project team is building up a repository of tasks, for each of which there are (or will be) resource material for students and teachers. The teachers' materials provide rubrics and other assessment materials for measuring and recording students' attainment as they progress along appropriate learning continua. The tasks and associated resource materials are encapsulated in a website, mathscify.org, which constitutes the Mathscify toolkit. A feature of the toolkit is that the tasks and resources are available in a variety of languages, chiefly reflecting languages spoken by members of the RDC. The pictures below illustrate the Dutch-language introduction to a mathematics task on patterns ("Een regenboog vol wiskunde" / "A little rainbow of mathematics") and the range of languages available at present (summer 2025) for some of the science tasks.
The project grew out of RDC work on designing low threshold, high ceiling tasks that engage all students in problem solving and problem posing in STEM education, starting with science and mathematics. After consultation with teachers, support for formative assessment of students' work on such tasks was identified as a pressing need. Thus, the project focused on helping teachers to embed formative assessment into their everyday classroom practice.
PHASE 1: DEVELOPING AND USING THE MATHSCIFY TOOLKIT
The project team is building up a repository of tasks, for each of which there are (or will be) resource material for students and teachers. The teachers' materials provide rubrics and other assessment materials for measuring and recording students' attainment as they progress along appropriate learning continua. The tasks and associated resource materials are encapsulated in a website, mathscify.org, which constitutes the Mathscify toolkit. A feature of the toolkit is that the tasks and resources are available in a variety of languages, chiefly reflecting languages spoken by members of the RDC. The pictures below illustrate the Dutch-language introduction to a mathematics task on patterns ("Een regenboog vol wiskunde" / "A little rainbow of mathematics") and the range of languages available at present (summer 2025) for some of the science tasks.
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The toolkit and some of its uses to date have been showcased at conferences. In particular, the evolution of Mathscify was described as part of a symposium organised by RDC members for a conference (the Science and Mathematics Education Conference, SMEC) held in Ireland.in June 2024. The paper - in the circumstances, focusing especially aspects of the project relevant to an Irish audience - is available here. The other two SMEC symposium presentations described a trial of mathematics tasks in Irish schools and the potential for use of Mathscify in an Irish-language context (see the symposium abstract here). The latter contribution prefigured the emergence of phase 2 of the project, described below.
The SMEC symposium, 2024 (clockwise from right): a slide from the overview of the development of Mathscify, highlighting the ATEE connection; a picture from Judith Callan-Gough's presentation on using the task "I wonder"; and Miriam Ryan reporting on a study of teachers working through the medium of the Irish language - transitioning to Phase 2 of the project
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PHASE 2: USING THE TOOLKIT FOR CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING
The multilingual nature of the website has led to a development: using the toolkit to engage in content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The teaching of mathematics or science – the “content” element – through a language other than the students' first language is intended to facilitate development of mathematics or science concepts alongside skills in the target language.
Activities reported during 2025 have focused on this aspect. First, a paper on the use of Mathscify tasks in Irish-medium immersion contexts (in which most students are from homes where the first language is not Irish) was presented at the joint WorldFATE / ATEE Spring Conference in May 2025.
Lorraine Harbison and Deirdre Ní Chonghaile presenting...
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... at a session of the WorldFATE / ATEE Spring conference, 2025 (Milan Stojkovic, fourth from left; Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, seventh from right; Lorraine Harbison, fourth from right)
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Judith Callan-Gough and Lorraine Harbison by the CLIL Mathscify poster
Secondly, the work was showcased in a poster at the World CLIL conference held in June 2025. Most people at the conference were language specialists to whom the subject content aspect was secondary; the RDC poster drew interest because the project came from the mathematics / science education area, with language as the secondary aspect. As noted in the poster, special thanks are due both to RDC member Hilde Rabaut, from Belgium, in working to develop the CLIL materials and helping to make these available in French, German, and Dutch, and to An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta (COGG) for supporting translation of key parts of the site into Irish.
Thirdly, presentations were made at the ATEE Annual Conference in Marino, Dublin, in August 2025.
It is hoped that development and reporting will continue. Hopefully the focus will be on use of the toolkit in first-language settings (a continuation of Phase 1) as well as on CLIL applications (Phase 2). |
Left: five of the six authors of one Mathscify paper (Elizabeth Oldham, Judith Callan-Gough, Miriam Ryan, Deirdre Ní Chonghaíle and Lorraine Harbison; Hilde Rabaut could not attend).
Above: Lorraine Harbison, Miriam Ryan and Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, authors of another Mathscify paper.
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