Professor Merrilyn Goos, School of Education, UL, was a keynote speaker at the Numeracy in the 21st Century Conference of the National Adult Literacy Agency, held at Trinity College Dublin on 30 May.
NALA is an independent charity committed to making sure people with literacy and numeracy difficulties can fully take part in society and have access to learning opportunities that meet their needs. In her talk, Professor Goos explained that being numerate involves more than mastering basic mathematics, because numeracy connects the mathematics learned at school with out-of-school situations that additionally require problem solving, critical judgment, and making sense of the non-mathematical context.
It has long been known that poor numeracy has a devastating impact on young people’s life chances and on a nation’s economic and social fabric. But what does numeracy look like in the 21st century?
To answer this question, her presentation drew on a ten-year research and development program that developed strategies for embedding numeracy across the primary and secondary school curriculum. Her aim was to stimulate discussion on the meaning of numeracy in contexts that matter – whether this is school, home, work, or community and civic life.