Several months ago I was asked by a neighbour-friend, ‘Mrs James’, to help her get her eleven year-old son, ‘Stephen’ and eight year-old daughter, ‘Katherine’, back to school. Mrs James was in hospital in Sydney at the time, recovering from a serious operation, while Mr James, an invalid pensioner, was trying to look after the two remaining children at home. (An older son is with foster parents).

Stephen had missed more than 100 days of school in 1988 and had not returned to school in 1989. Katherine had a somewhat better attendance record but had stopped going to school when her mother went off to Sydney. Stephen’s and Katherine’s absences had been drawn to the attention of the home-school liaison officers.

In Vol.16 No.3, p.37, we published an article by Mr Kerr entitled “A Metaplan Approach to Needs Assessment”. This was an outline of an approach used by the Aboriginal Education Unit, Kalgoorlie Education Centre, W.A. to determine the educational needs of Aboriginal Communities. One of the target groups selected for this program was a group of traditional Aboriginal people from the remote community of Coonana. Mr Kerr now writes:

The following is a copy of the report on the project sent to the Coonana School.

The research on which this article is based was undertaken at Pularumpi, Melville Island, Northern Territory in 1984-85. At the time I was employed as the adult educator for Pularumpi, and was conducting courses and classes which involved mathematics at various levels - a course in metrication for the technical staff; mathematics for specific purposes for the health workers, police aides, Council and Housing Association bookkeepers, and for the Essential Services apprentices.

In all this I was never too sure of my methodology: what was the most effective way of helping these adults to learn? The basic problem was that I had no information of their pre-knowledge - the mathematical knowledge they possessed prior to their entry into the classes. Most had formal education to a secondary level, a few had completed secondary schooling in Darwin, Perth or Melbourne, with mixed results. Beyond that formal knowledge, however, I needed to know the students mathematical preconceptions so that I could more effectively assist them to learn the specific purpose mathematics they needed for the jobs they held.

In 1984, the Northern Territory Education Department published a paper by Pam Harris, Money in Aboriginal Communities. This was the first academic work I had encountered which addressed my needs as an educator in this area. Harris examined modern shopping practices and posited a theory of attitudes to numeracy. This information was presented in a readable form and in an effort to assist educators of Aboriginals in mathematics.

In early 1989 a proposal was submitted for the purchase of three Macintosh computers and software for the purpose of assisting lower streamed students in their reading difficulties. A condition of the purchase was that some form of evaluation would be implemented in order to gauge the worth of the program.

The computers were installed in the schools and a program of instruction was written for the commencement of Term IV, which ran for 10 weeks.