Colin Foster

Dr Colin Foster
BA, MA, PhD, CMathTeach, PGCE

I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Mathematics Education in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. I am interested in the design of mathematical tasks and how teachers and learners use, adapt and own them in the classroom.

Contact details

Centre for Research in Mathematics Education
School of Education
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham NG8 1BB
UK

c@foster77.co.uk

Research

My research interests in mathematics education focus on task design and its connections with the resulting classroom activity. I am particularly interested in what makes mathematical tasks ‘open’ and what teachers mean by ‘exploratory’ and ‘investigative’ approaches to learning mathematics. A particular interest is in how mathematics teachers handle the unexpected so as to exploit the mathematical potential of unanticipated classroom incidents.

Selected papers

Foster, C. (2013) Mathematical Études: Embedding opportunities for developing procedural fluency within rich mathematical contexts, International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, online first
Foster, C. (in press) Confidence Trick: The Interpretation of Confidence Intervals, Canadian Journal for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education
Wake, G., Foster, C. and Swan, M. (in press) A theoretical lens on lesson study: Professional Learning across boundaries. In xxxx (Eds). Proceedings of the 37th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 1, pp. XXX-YYY. Kiel, Germany: PME.
Foster, C. (2012) Working Without A Safety Net, The Australian Mathematics Teacher, 68(2), 25–29
Foster, C. (2012) Creationism as a Misconception: Socio-cognitive conflict in the teaching of evolution, International Journal of Science Education, 34(14), 2171–2180

Foster, C. (2012) The Probability Distribution for a Biased Spinner, Teaching Statistics, 34(1), 41–43

Foster, C. (2011) Peripheral Mathematical Knowledge, For the Learning of Mathematics, 31(3), 24–26

Foster, C. (2011) Student–Generated Questions in Mathematics Teaching, Mathematics Teacher, 105(1), 26–31
Foster, C. (2011) Productive Ambiguity in the Learning of Mathematics, For the Learning of Mathematics, 31(2), 3–7
Foster, C. (2011) A Slippery Slope: Resolving cognitive conflict in mechanics, Teaching Mathematics and its Applications, 30(4), 216–221

For my other papers, click here.

Memberships

British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics (BSRLM)

Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM)

Mathematical Association (MA)

Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE)

Website

www.mathematicalbeginnings.com

This website contains a free collection of over 40 starting points (beginnings) for mathematical activity. They could be used with learners aged around 11 upwards as a part of normal mathematics lessons or as something ‘a little different’. Some prompts are provided to help learners find mathematics to work on and some brief teacher’s notes are also offered, indicating possible mathematics that could emerge. Click here to take a look.

Selected books

Foster, C. (2013) The Essential Guide to Secondary Mathematics: Successful and enjoyable teaching and learning, London: Routledge
Foster, C. (2012) Ideas for Sixth-Form Mathematics: Further pure mathematics & mechanics, Derby: Association of Teachers of Mathematics
Foster, C. (2012) Ideas for Sixth-Form Mathematics: Pure mathematics & statistics, Derby: Association of Teachers of Mathematics

Foster, C. (2012) Flowchart Investigations: Explorations in mathematics, Leicester: Mathematical Association
Foster, C. (2011) Resources for Teaching Mathematics 11–14, London: Continuum
Foster, C. (2010) Resources for Teaching Mathematics 14–16, London: Continuum

Foster, C. (2009) Mathematics for Every Occasion, Derby: Association of Teachers of Mathematics

Foster, C. (2008) Variety in Mathematics Lessons, Derby: Association of Teachers of Mathematics

Foster, C. (2008) 50 Mathematics Lessons: Rich and engaging ideas for secondary mathematics, London: Continuum

For my other books, and further details, click here.

Conference presentations

2 April 2013	Association of Teachers of Mathematics, Sheffield, ‘When real life appears in the mathematics classroom: responding mathematically to unexpected events’
20 June 2012	London Borough of Croydon Local Authority ‘Exploring Excellence’ conference, keynote presentation: ‘Putting problem solving and investigation at the heart of mathematics teaching’
24 March 2012	The Marches joint ATM/MA branch meeting, ‘Variety in the Learning of Mathematics’
21 April 2011	Association of Teachers of Mathematics, University of Wolverhampton, ‘Possibility Tables’
3 April 2008	Association of Teachers of Mathematics, Keele University, ‘Joined-up Dots: Isometric graphs’
1 February 2008	Becta Hard-to-Teach Mathematics Conference, ‘Functions and Graphs’
4 April 2007	Association of Teachers of Mathematics, Loughborough University, ‘Writing to publish in Mathematics Teaching’ (co-led with Helen Williams)
11 April 2006	Association of Teachers of Mathematics, Edgehill College of Further Education, Ormskirk, ‘Still reading Mathematics Teaching without having written for it yet?’ (co-led with Helen Williams)

I also regularly participate in the Institute of Mathematics Pedagogy.