The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. It develops the numeracy capabilities that all students need in their personal, work and civic life, and provides the fundamentals on which mathematical specialties and professional applications of mathematics are built.
Mathematics aims to instil in students an appreciation of mathematical reasoning. Digital technologies are facilitating this expansion of ideas and provides access to new tools for continuing mathematical exploration and invention. The curriculum focuses on developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These proficiencies enable students to respond to familiar and unfamiliar situations by employing mathematical strategies to make informed decisions and solve problems efficiently.
Mathematics ensures that the links between the various components of mathematics, as well as the relationship between mathematics and other disciplines, are made clear. Mathematics is composed of multiple but interrelated and interdependent concepts and systems which students apply beyond the mathematics classroom.
Aims
The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics aims to ensure that students:
- are confident, creative users and communicators of mathematics, able to investigate, represent and interpret situations in their personal and work lives and as active citizens
- develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of mathematical concepts and fluency with processes, and are able to pose and solve problems and reason in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability
- recognise connections between the areas of mathematics and other disciplines and appreciate mathematics as an accessible and enjoyable discipline to study.
Content in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics is organised under six interrelated strands:
• Number
• Algebra
• Measurement
• Space
• Statistics
• Probability.
Natural connections exist between the content of these strands. It is important that students develop the capability to identify and use the many connections that exist within and across all strands of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. This will help them to develop a deeper understanding of the core concepts of mathematics.
Core concepts are the big ideas, understandings, skills or processes that are central to the Mathematics curriculum. They give clarity and direction about what content matters most in the learning area. In the curriculum development process, core concepts help identify the essential content students should learn to develop a deep and increasingly sophisticated understanding of mathematics across the years of schooling. They ensure content is connected within and across the strands, building in sophistication across the year levels. Core concepts in Mathematics centre around the three organising ideas of mathematical structures, approaches and mathematising. The core concepts underpin the study of mathematics across the six content strands of number, algebra, measurement, space, statistics and probability. Knowledge and conceptual understanding of mathematical structures and approaches enables students to mathematise situations, making sense of the world. The use of core concepts has enabled the proficiencies of understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem solving from the previous version of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics to be integrated across the six content strands and the achievement standards of this version. The curriculum enables the development of increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem-solving skills interdependently through the specification of essential content in the content descriptions, and the expectations for student learning in the achievement standards, both of which are designed to promote thinking and working mathematically. This ensures that students' mathematical proficiency develops throughout the curriculum and becomes increasingly sophisticated over the years of schooling.