Associate Professor in Mathematics Education Deputy Head of School
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Hytten Hall |
| Room Reference | Room 444 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 7220 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2569 |
| Helen.Chick@utas.edu.au |
Units:
Recent refereed journal articles:
Fully refereed fully written conference publications:
Edited book
Chapters in edited books
Career summary
Helen Chick is a researcher and teacher educator at the University of Tasmania, where she is an Associate Professor in Mathematics Education. She began her career as a high school mathematics teacher on Tasmania’s north-west coast teaching Grades 11 and 12. She then returned to university to complete a PhD in mathematics. During that time she also taught both mathematics and mathematics education at the tertiary level, including calculus to engineering and science students, advanced algebra to maths majors, elementary mathematics to primary teachers, and teaching methods to secondary maths teachers, while also doing a little maths education research on the side.
Between 1999 and 2011 inclusive she worked in the field of mathematics education at the University of Melbourne, where she taught pre-service and in-service primary and secondary teachers. Since returning to Tasmania at the beginning of 2012 she has continued her teaching and research work to help build up the mathematics teaching profession.
Her interests, both for teaching and research, concern both mathematical content and pedagogical content knowledge for teachers. She provides professional development in mathematics and maths teaching for practising teachers, and was one of the contributing writers for the Victorian Mathematics Developmental Continuum resource for teachers. She has been a recipient of teaching excellence awards at both the University of Tasmania and the University of Melbourne, including an Office for Learning and Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012 as part of the Maths Education team.
Her research work has focussed on pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics for teachers, the use of examples in teaching, and also statistics education. Further details are given below.
She is a member of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australia and the Mathematical Association of Tasmania. She regularly reviews papers for research and teaching journals, is a senior editor of the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior.
Grants
Helen has been a Chief Investigator on four ARC grants. These are summarised below:
Teaching
Helen’s teaching is motivated by a passionate love of and concern for mathematics, and a strong desire to ensure that teachers are equipped to teach mathematics well.
Her teaching and the kind she tries to develop in others is underpinned by pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which requires deep understanding of mathematics itself; how it is learned; what explanations, materials, and examples best illustrate its principles; what conceptions students may have; and how to make connections among mathematical topics and real-world situations.
This focus on PCK is evident in all the subjects she teaches, either implicitly in her teaching emphases or explicitly when she highlights PCK as a construct for thinking about good mathematics teaching.
Research Interests
Helen is interested in the role of the teacher in making productive mathematics take place in the classroom and the Pedagogical Content Knowledge required to achieve this. Her initial work in this area began with research into pre-service teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about basic mathematics, and included an examination of what they believed constituted basic numeracy and how they assessed the conceptual demands of tasks. This work then led to an Australian Research Council discovery project grant, with Kaye Stacey, that examined the knowledge needed by primary school teachers in implementing mathematics lessons. The research used interviews and classroom observations to examine the ways in which teachers brought mathematical principles and concepts to the fore in their teaching and a framework for PCK was developed.
The PCK work has been a foundation for three further developments. One focus is on the role of examples in mathematics teaching. The second development was associated with an ARC linkage project with the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, with Kaye Stacey and Vicki Steinle. While the main thrust of this project was to develop online diagnostic testing and feedback associated with secondary school students’ understanding, it also examined the nature of teachers’ PCK. The third area of work is within an Australian Teaching and Learning Council grant, looking at the PCK developed during pre-service teacher programs.
Helen’s other major research interest has been probability and statistics education. Her early work, often in collaboration with Jane Watson, focused on students’ and adults’ understanding of elementary “chance and data”, with a particular emphasis on data representation and interpretation. There has also been overlap with her interest in PCK and example use. This research thread is currently developing in the area of statistical literacy for teachers as they interpret school assessment data. Working with Robyn Pierce, Ian Gordon, and Jane Watson on an ARC-funded linkage project, with Victorian education agencies, this project examines the understanding and attitudes that impact on the ways in which teachers make use of school assessment data from national literacy and numeracy testing.
Helen has also supervised research students’ work on a wide range of topics, including geometry, assessment, technology use, and teacher reflection.