The best evidence syntheses (BESs) bring together research evidence about ‘what works’ for diverse (all) learners in education. Recent BESs each include a number of cases that describe actual examples of professional practice and then analyse the findings. These cases support educators to grasp the big ideas behind effective practice at the same time as they provide vivid insight into their application.
Teachers need to be careful that their contribution to mathematical conversations does not take from their students valuable opportunities to do some thinking. This case describes how a secondary school teacher maintained high levels of involvement after noticing that the students were all using variations of the same incorrect strategy to tackle a particular task. The teacher introduced a different but parallel task to demonstrate the shortcomings of the strategy. Once the students saw the issue, the teacher supported them to think about another strategy.