The Secondary Numeracy Project (SNP) was first piloted in 2005 and builds on the findings of the Numeracy Exploratory Studies for students in years 7 to 10 (NEST) that operated from 2001. The implementation in secondary schools involves a whole mathematics department and recognises the particular needs of secondary mathematics teachers. The Project emphasises the use of mental computational strategies to solve numeric problems and aims to help students develop a deeper understanding of mathematics.
As part of the Numeracy Development Project, SNP shares features with the other parts of the project. A Number Framework describes strategies and knowledge that students have been observed to use to solve numerical problems. It contains broad stages of increasingly sophisticated strategies with progress through the earlier stages tending to occur more readily than later stages. Teachers conduct a Diagnostic Interview to assess students’ performance against this Framework, and use this information as a starting point for teaching. Facilitators introduce and model a teaching approach for developing mathematical understanding that progresses through physical representations, imaging and on to abstract mathematical concepts.
SNP has the goal of developing students’ capacity to work efficiently with numbers by developing their computational strategies. This structural thinking can then be exploited to develop their understanding of algebra.