Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) invited to join Professor Gabriel Stylianides (Professor of Mathematics Education) and Professor Terezinha Nunes (Emeritus Professor of Educational Studies) – both of the University of Oxford - in contributing to the government’s call for evidence for its Curriculum and Assessment Review. Led by Professor Becky Francis, the Review aims to ensure that the national curriculum and assessment system in England are fit for purpose and meet the needs of all children and young people.
 
A series of Primary Mathematics roundtable discussions were organised by Oxford University Press's Primary Mathematics team across October and November, and chaired by Professor Stylianides. The event also included experienced primary mathematics practitioners from across England. 

Together, the group makes several evidence-based suggestions on how England’s primary mathematics curriculum and its implementation can be developed. Among several suggestions, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai calls for the new curriculum to – like Singapore’s curriculum - place a much stronger emphasis on problem solving (as well as problem posing). Moreover, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai also calls for the new curriculum to include teaching mathematics for enjoyment as part of its aims. In relation to the curriculum implementation, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai proposes that teachers are encouraged to incorporate storytelling as part of their mathematics teaching to allow mathematics learning to be embedded in meaningful contexts. ​

Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai was invited to learn about the government’s Evaluation Task Force (ETF) at the UK's Cabinet Office in London and to introduce his ESRC-funded UKRI Policy Fellowship project to the ETF.
 
The ETF is a joint Cabinet Office - HM Treasury unit set up following the 2020 Spending Review to ensure evidence sits at the heart of government decision making. It aims to achieve this by working closely with government departments to increase the number and quality of evaluations being carried out.

​The ETF also serves as the Secretariat of the What Works Network (WWN) which sets out to use evidence to improve the design and delivery of public services. The WWN currently has nine full members including the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the host of Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s Policy Fellowship.
 
At this meeting, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai also got to introduce his Fellowship project to ETF colleagues and to discuss how the ETF could support his and other Fellows’ projects.  

​In January and February, Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai presented – on separate occasions – his plan for his ESRC-funded UKRI Policy Fellowship project to various colleagues at England's Department for Education (DfE) as part of his project’s consultation stage.
 
In January, he got an opportunity to present his plan directly to the Chief Research Officer of the DfE’s Central Analysis and Research Division (CARD), and later in February with the Evaluation Lead and around 40 CARD research analysts. 

​Across these meetings, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai highlighted the importance of educational researchers (particularly those working on randomised controlled trials [or RCT] which usually require access to data across several hundreds of schools) to meet their trials’ school recruitment targets before outlining his project’s plan to identify tangible strategies to support school recruitment and retention efforts. These presentations and discussions were then followed by opportunities for the DfE colleagues to help shape the focus of his project. 
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​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) is invited by the University of Oxford’s Department of Education to give a talk on his Maths Through Stories project’s international survey study.
 
The talk, to be held on Wednesday 26th June 2024, is part of the Global Public Seminars in Comparative and International Education seminar series organised by the University’s Department of Education. 

​As part of his talk, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai will outline the nature of his international qualitative survey study which sets out to investigate in-service and pre-service primary school teachers’ perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of storytelling in mathematics teaching and learning across five different countries (England, Ireland, Malta, Australia and Taiwan). In the context of this presentation, the focus will be on presenting data relating to England with some broad comparisons made with the other countries’ datasets. A thematic analysis revealed a set of perceived barriers classified under themes, such as Lack of Pedagogical Knowledge and Confidence, and Time Constraint. Moreover, the study also identified a set of perceived enablers classified under themes, such as Pedagogical Benefits and Social Norms. Findings also showed that most of the teachers in the study have never used or infrequently used storytelling as part of their mathematics teaching. The study highlights the role of professional learning and teacher training in ensuring that both in- and pre-service teachers have the necessary pedagogical knowledge, experience and confidence in using children’s literature to enrich their mathematics teaching. The presentation will then conclude with a summary of the speaker’s research impact-generating activities based on the findings so far.
 
To register to attend this talk, visit the talk’s webpage. 

​To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, visit his profile page here and his MathsThroughStories.org project’s website here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT and @MathsStories.

​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) was invited to deliver his Maths Through Stories training to teacher trainees at the University of Cambridge for the fifth consecutive year.
 
Drawing from his research on enriching mathematics teaching and learning through the use of storytelling, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai designed a 1.5-hour Maths Through Stories workshop which has now been delivered to over 4,000 pre-service and in-service teachers across the UK and internationally since 2017.

Some of the trainees commented that:

Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) was invited by Prof. Yarhands Dissou Arthur (Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Mathematics Education at Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development [AAMUSTED], Ghana) to expand his Maths Through Stories research activity to Africa, starting with Ghana.

This new research collaboration involved conducting a feasibility study to test out the implementation and evaluation process of a study that sets out to measure the effectiveness of an innovative low-cost mathematics teaching strategy whereby 1,800 primary and secondary school students in Ghana create short mathematical story picture books within their regular Maths lessons.

This new study had received ethics approval from AAMUSTED’s ethics committee in January, and is now in the pilot stage where Dr. Trakulphadetkrai recently trained a small group of primary and secondary school teachers on how to implement this innovative mathematics pedagogical approach in their classrooms. 

This feasibility study is building on Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s University of Reading Research Fellowship project (2019-2021) where he designed a similar project but with a focus on upper primary school children.

This research collaboration will hopefully lead to an international research grant application collaboration in 2025.
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To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, visit his profile page here and his MathsThroughStories.org project’s website here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT and @MathsStories.
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A Leverhulme research grant application led by Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) with support from colleagues at the University of Cambridge and University College Dublin gets through to the next (and final) round where a more detailed version of the Outline Stage application will be submitted at the end of Summer 2024. 
 
The grant application is for a proposed ambitious large-scale project which will measure the effectiveness of an innovative low-cost mathematics teaching strategy whereby secondary school students create short mathematical story picture books within their regular Maths lessons. Its impact will be assessed on its ability to reduce the level of students’ mathematics anxiety, and fostering their self-efficacy in and attitudes towards mathematics learning as well as improving their mathematics attainment. In doing so, the project will bring new understanding of the role of storytelling in fostering mathematical understanding and positivity within an adolescent population whose mathematical development is currently under-explored. Such understanding is especially important given the recent UK government focus on making mathematics compulsory post-16.

His co-applicants on this grant application are Dr. Ros McLellan (University Associate Professor in Teacher Education & Development / Pedagogical Innovation, University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education) and Dr. Flávia H. Santos (Assistant Professor, University College Dublin’s School of Psychology).
 
This proposed project will build on Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s University of Reading Research Fellowship project (2019-2021) where he designed a similar project but with a focus on upper primary school children. 

​To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, visit his profile page here and his MathsThroughStories.org project’s website here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT and @MathsStories.
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​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) has successfully supported Campaign for Learning (part of the national charity NCFE) to attract another large grant (£200,000+) to design, deliver and evaluate a project sets out to train a large cohort of around 200 early years practitioners in socio-economically disadvantaged parts across London to support 600 parents to tell mathematical stories to their pre-school children at home to foster mathematical talk. 

This grant is part of an early years special initiative, supported by the Mercers’ Company as trustee of the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington.

This 4-year project, titled ‘Pre-school Mathematical Storytelling at Home (PMSH)’, will build on Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s MathsThroughStories.org initiative, and his British Academy/Leverhulme Trust-funded project (which focuses on using storytelling to foster maths talk at school). 
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​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Reading’s Institute for Education) is awarded the prestigious UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Policy Fellowship. Funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Fellowship – according to Stian Westlake (Executive Chair of ESRC) – places some of the UK’s brightest researchers at the heart of government, to help inform the way policy is made.
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Recruitment and Retention in Social Services Research
The Fellows have an opportunity to spend 18 months working closely with their chosen host organisation to conduct research to help them address specific policy making-related challenges. The host organisations include 21 government departments and five What Works Centres (i.e., national research evidence generating centres) across the UK.

Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s chosen host organisation is the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Founded in 2011 with a £125 million founding grant from the Department for Education, the EEF is a national influential charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement through generating educational research evidence. As part of his Fellowship with the EEF, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai will conduct mixed-methods research to help produce practical guidance on maximising the recruitment and retention of schools in trial studies.

There is currently little evidence on the most effective approaches to maximising study participant recruitment and retention, particularly within the research field of education. Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s work will therefore explore the incentives and strategies that are most effective, and will ensure successful research evaluation.

By supporting educational researchers to become more successful in recruiting and retaining schools in trial studies, it will allow more educational research evidence to be generated and will, in turn, help inform education policy making. The outputs from this fellowship are expected to be of significant interest to the research community, including the broader What Works Network, government departments, academic institutions, and independent research organisations.

Dr. Trakulphadetkrai said: “Research participant recruitment and retention are two crucial issues affecting evaluation studies not just in Education but also across the wider research field of social sciences, and I aim to uncover the incentives and strategies needed to boost engagement in studies and promote best practice. This evidence will hopefully allow the EEF and the broader research community to design projects that successfully recruit and retain participants as well as generating robust and meaningful insights.” He also added that “I very much look forward to working closely with the EEF. It is also a privilege to be part of this cohort of UKRI Policy Fellows from across the academic disciplines to use their research expertise to help address some of the major challenges facing policy makers here in the UK.”

Professor Becky Francis (Chief Executive, EEF) commented that: “I am delighted at this exciting partnership with the ESRC which allows EEF to benefit from academic expertise, and to share EEF know-how in reaching policy and practice. Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai’s important work to support recruitment and retention in trials research will address an ongoing challenge for EEF and wider RCT [Randomised Controlled Trial] work. This drawing together of expertise illustrates how collaboration can aid our mutual aim to support young people’s learning outcomes and narrow the attainment gap for social disadvantage.”

Professor Adrian Bell (Research Dean for Prosperity and Resilience, University of Reading) commented that: “This policy fellowship enhances our commitment to be an Engaged University. The excellence of Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research will be enabled to make a real impact on policy.”


Apart from being awarded this Fellowship, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai has also recently successfully supported Campaign for Learning (part of the national charity NCFE) to attract a large grant to design, deliver and evaluate a programme which sets out to train a large cohort of early years practitioners in socio-economically disadvantaged parts across London to support parents to tell mathematical stories to their pre-school children at home to foster mathematical talk. The grant for this 4-year project is part of an early years special initiative, supported by The Mercers’ Company as trustee of the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington.

On top of these two projects (with a combined grant value of just under half a million pounds), Dr. Trakulphadetkrai is also in the process of completing his British Academy and Leverhulme Trust jointly-funded research project exploring the effectiveness of having older primary school children co-create short mathematical story picture books as a tool to foster mathematical talk in classrooms. Previously, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai was a recipient of the University of Reading’s Research Fellowship that enabled him to conduct a large quasi-experimental intervention study to investigate the effectiveness of having older primary school children across the Southeast of England create short mathematical story picture books as a tool to foster their conceptual understanding in mathematics.

Dr. Trakulphadetkrai also leads a non-profit research-based initiative, called MathsThroughStories.org which produces and makes available free on-line resources to support teachers and parents globally to become knowledgeable and confident in using storytelling to support their mathematics teaching. Since the launch of the initiative’s website in 2017, it has now been visited over 1,580,000 times by around 430,000 teachers and parents from more than 220 countries. As part of this initiative, he has also been invited to deliver his Maths Through Stories training to around 4,000 in-service and pre-service teachers across the UK and internationally. In 2019, he launched the world’s first annual international mathematical story writing competition for students aged 8-15 years old, and since then around 3,000 students across over 200 schools in 21 countries have taken part in this competition.

​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) had recently been invited by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) - Norway’s largest public research university – to give his Maths Through Stories lectures and research seminars to staff, pre-service teachers and in-service teachers.
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This invitation followed a UK visit made by Jørn Ove Asklund and his colleagues from NTNU’s Department of Teacher Education last September to meet with Dr. Trakulphadetkrai to learn about his Maths Through Stories research. 

​​Not only did Dr. Trakulphadetkrai have an opportunity to share his research with research staff and teacher educators at the Department, he also got an opportunity to show the pedagogical benefits of supporting mathematics teaching and learning through storytelling to pre-service teachers (who are studying at NTNU) and in-service teachers (who travelled across Norway to receive this training).

During his time there, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai also had a chance to discuss potential research collaboration opportunities with NTNU colleagues and to learn more about teacher training in the context of Norway.
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The visits were facilitated by Professor Jeremy Hodgen (UCL Institute of Education), a former Chair of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics (BSRLM).  

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​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) is one of the recipients this year to have won the British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grant (£10,000).

His project aims to explore the extent to which children (aged 9-10 years old) working in pairs to co-create a short story picture book about fractions helps them engage in using mathematical talk. This study is important as mathematical talk can foster children’s mathematical thinking. 60 pairs of Year 5 children of different ability levels in the Southeast of England will be randomly allocated to either an intervention or comparison cohort. Over the course of one 60-minute session, the intervention cohort children will work in pairs to co-create one short story picture book about fractions, while the comparison cohort children will work in pairs to solve fraction problems on worksheets. Children’s conversations about fractions will be audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed using statistical analyses to explore whether there is any statistically significant difference in the quantity and quality of talk about fractions across the two cohorts, when controlling for children’s age.

The grant applications are assessed on: the quality and interest of the research proposal; the ability of the applicant to make a success of it based on their past track record; the feasibility of the methodology; the feasibility of the timescale; and the appropriateness of costs requested.
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Dr. Trakulphadetkrai commented “I am pleased to be a recipient of this year’s highly competitive British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grant. This funded project is essentially a spin-off of my University Research Fellowship project (2019-2020, which was then extended to 2021 due to COVID). I hope this growing trackrecord in funding will help me attract further research grants in the future.”

The project will begin in October 2022 and end in September 2023.

To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT.

​In September, Jørn Ove Asklund, Astrid Kufaas Morken and Silje Neraas - academics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway’s largest public research university) - visited Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) to learn about his Maths Through Stories research to help them develop their in-service teacher training course with a focus on mathematics and literacy.

​At the meeting, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai shared the research findings from his University of Reading Research Fellowship project, and talked about his new British Academy / Leverhulme-funded research project. He then explained the format of his popular Maths Through Stories training course which he has delivered to over 3,500 pre- and in-service teachers in the UK and internationally, including an annual invitation (since 2020) from the University of Cambridge to help train their teacher trainees.

​The Norwegian colleagues were recommended to meet with Dr. Trakulphadetkrai by Professor Jeremy Hodgen (Professor of Mathematics Education at the UCL Institute of Education and Chair of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics).

Latest research article by Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) which helps to dispel myths about gender differences in the way male and female teachers perceive mathematics has recently been published in Frontiers in Education journal. The article is available free of charge here, thanks to the University of Reading’s Open Access funding.

The article, titled ‘Mathematical Epistemic Beliefs: Through the Gender Lens’, reports findings of Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s large survey study which set out to ascertain whether gender differences in teachers’ mathematical epistemic beliefs (i.e., beliefs about the nature of mathematical knowledge) exist, and the extent to which teachers’ gender as well as their teaching experience level, education level, and socio-economic setting of the schools can predict these beliefs. This is crucial given that previous research have demonstrated the potential role of teachers’ mathematical epistemic beliefs in shaping their mathematics teaching, and hence their students’ mathematics learning outcomes and perceptions of the subject.
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The study examined 745 primary school teachers’ beliefs concerning the structure, stability, and source of mathematical knowledge. The findings reveal a very limited to no effect of gender on teachers’ mathematical epistemic beliefs, and also alert us to the fact that when it comes to exploring factors that shape one’s beliefs, their exogenous characteristics, such as the socio-economic setting of where they live and work, should too be taken into account.

​This article is part of the journal’s special issue (‘Negotiating a Sense of Self in Gender and Education’) edited by Prof. Carol Fuller, Suzy Tutchell and Dr. Madeleine Davies (University of Reading). While Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s article is already available on-line, the special issue in its entirety will be published later this year.

To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT.

Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education) was invited to give his on-line Maths Through Stories training workshop to Early Primary and Primary PGCE trainees at the University of Cambridge on Monday 21st February 2022. This is now his third year supporting Cambridge trainees on the programme.

The workshop is informed by his research on enriching mathematics teaching and learning through the use of storytelling. To date, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai has now delivered his Maths Through Stories training workshop to over 1,300 in-service teachers and more than 2,000 teacher trainees across the UK and abroad.

The host, Alice Hehir (PGCE Early Primary and Primary Tutor​, University of Cambridge), commented that:

 “It was an absolute delight to hear Vincent speak so passionately to our trainee teachers about how maths can be taught through stories. Personally, I have learnt a lot and will endeavour to include stories more in my own sessions here at the Faculty and I know that the trainees also found the workshop equally inspiring. I particularly liked the idea of getting children to create their own stories and I believe that this would work well with even the youngest children. It’s so important that maths is seen as relevant, interesting and exciting; teaching maths through stories is one way of achieving this.”​

Some of the trainees said:

“I admit that I had never really considered that maths could be taught in a meaningful, purposeful way and this workshop shed a completely new light on this for me. I came away with a completely reformed perspective, with so many new ideas and, very importantly, access to some really practical resources (via the MathsThroughStories.org website) to help me get started with implementing this into my own classroom. Thank you so much for such an insightful and inspiring session, which has undoubtedly influenced my maths teaching practice.”
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“I would like to reiterate how much I enjoyed the Maths through Stories lecture! I feel like this is a great way to further encourage a cross-curricular approach in the early years and inspires exciting maths lessons.”


To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, visit his profile page here and his MathsThroughStories.org project’s website here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT and @MathsStories.

​A co-authored research article by Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading), which set out to examine Taiwanese primary school teachers’ perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning, has just been published in Springer’s Educational Studies in Mathematics journal – a leading peer-reviewed journal in the research field of mathematics education.
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This paper is the fourth output of an international survey study which Dr. Trakulphadetkrai leads and collaborates with academics in different countries to investigate the extent to which teachers integrate children’s literature in their mathematics teaching as well as their perceived barriers to and enablers for such integration. The first paper, second paper and third paper focus on Irish, Maltese and Australian teachers respectively. An upcoming paper will focus on teachers in England.

​The article is available free of charge here, thanks to the University of Reading’s Open Access funding.

His co-authors are Prof. Der Ching Yang (National Chiayi University, Taiwan), Iwan Andi Jonri Sianturi (Indiana University-Bloomington, USA), Dr. Chia Huang Chen (National Taichung University of Education, Taiwan) and Yi-Wen Su (University of Taipei, Taiwan).

​To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT.

His co-authors are Dr. Sharyn Livy (Monash University), Dr. Tracey Muir (University of Tasmania) and Dr. Kevin Larkin (Griffith University).
This paper is the third output of an international survey study which Dr. Trakulphadetkrai leads and collaborates with academics in different countries to investigate the extent to which teachers integrate children’s literature in their mathematics teaching as well as their perceived barriers to and enablers for such integration. The first paper in the series focuses on Irish teachers while the second paper focuses on Maltese teachers. Upcoming papers focus on teachers in Taiwan and England.
To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT.

​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading) gave an invited on-line talk on teaching mathematics through storytelling to around 100 teacher trainees at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York on 5th August 2021.
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During the talk, participants learned about the different types of mathematical story picture books and how they can be integrated into mathematics teaching and learning. They also learned how teaching mathematics using story picture books can be a pedagogically powerful strategy and explored its underpinning theories. Based on Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s on-going research, participants learned how asking students to create mini mathematical story picture books could help them develop their mathematical understanding. Finally, participants were shown how they could continue to receive (free) CPD support through Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s MathsThroughStories.org website and how they can be part of the initiative.

​Since joining the University of Reading in 2013, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai has delivered his Maths Through Stories training workshops and talks to over 1,200 in-service teachers and more than 2,000 pre-service teachers across the UK and abroad.

The MathsThroughStories.org website was launched in 2017 as an on-line platform to encourage educators to integrate storytelling as part of their mathematics teaching and learning. The website offers a wide range of free on-line resources e.g., the world’s largest database of recommendations for mathematical stories; book reviews, lesson ideas, exclusive interviews with some of the world’s leading mathematical story authors, etc. To date, the website has been visited almost a million times by over a quarter of a million teachers and parents from over 210 countries. 

The host, Dr. Xia Li (Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, Brooklyn College), commented that: “Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s invited talk at Brooklyn College is a huge success! His talk is incredibly informative and inspiring. Both my students and I have learned a great deal about teaching math through storytelling. His MathsThroughStories.org website is also impressively resourceful! I especially like its Recommendations section – very handy that mathematical story picture books are organized by topics and have suggested ages.”
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One of the trainees at his talk commented that “Dr. Natthapoj was a fabulous guest! Very engaging, and I loved that he shared actual resources for us to take advantage of. It was very helpful!”, while another noted that “This was very inspiring for me because the resources shared are so helpful. I am a lot more open now to using storytelling when teaching math to children.”

To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT. 

​A co-authored paper by Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Reading), which set out to examine Maltese teachers’ perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching, has recently been published in Taylor and Francis’s Cogent Education journal. The article is available free of charge here.

This paper is the second paper in an international series of research papers that Dr. Trakulphadetkrai collaborates with academics in different countries to investigate the extent to which teachers use children’s literature in mathematics teaching and their perceived barriers to and enablers for doing so. The first paper in the series focuses on Irish teachers and upcoming papers focus on teachers in Taiwan, Australia, Israel and England.
To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, click here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT.

Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai is promoted to Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Reading. 

Dr. Trakulphadetkrai joined the University's Institute of Education (IoE) in September 2013 as a Lecturer in Primary Mathematics Education, serving as the Mathematics Specialism Leader on the BA Primary Education (QTS) Programme. In more recent years, he has been taking on a number of leadership roles within the IoE including the Director of Research Communications, the Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research Studies (PhD), and the Chair of the Teaching & Learning Group on Assessment Literacy. Earlier this month, he has also been appointed to serve as the Senior Academic Manager to line manage a group of academics from the 2020/2021 academic year onwards. 

On the research front, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai's research interests are centred around the use of storytelling (particularly in the story picture book format) to help enrich mathematics teaching and learning experiences. Based on his research findings, he founded the MathsThroughStories.org initiative back in 2015. The initiative sets out to help teachers and parents globally to use storytelling to enrich their children's mathematics learning. The initiative's website offers valuable and free resources for parents and teachers to achieve this goal. Since its launch in March 2017, the initiative's website has now been viewed over 530,000 times by more than 120,000 teachers and parents from 200 countries around the world. He has also delivered his popular Maths Through Stories training workshop to over 600 in-service teachers and around 2,000 teacher trainees at 30 universities across the UK and abroad. In the 2019/2020 academic year, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai was one of only five academics across the University of Reading to have received the University Research Fellowship. His Fellowship research project examines the effectiveness of 1,200+ Year 4 children across the South East of England developing their conceptual understanding of multiplication by creating short story picture books about the said topic. 

Since joining the IoE, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai has either won or been nominated for several research- and teaching-related awards and recognitions. (More details can be found here.) Recently, he has also been recognised as Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

Nationally, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai also serves as the Co-Convenor of the British Educational Research Association’s (BERA) Mathematics Education Special Interest Group. Previously, he served as an executive committee member of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics (BSRLM), the UK Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM), as Chair of the British Congress of Mathematics Education’s (BCME) Communications Committee as well as Co-Editor of the Mathematical Association’s (MA) Primary Mathematics Journal.
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​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Lecturer in Primary Mathematics Education) was invited to give his Maths Through Stories training workshop for PGCE trainees at the University of Cambridge. Drawing from his research on enriching mathematics teaching and learning through the use of storytelling, Dr. Trakulphadetkrai designed a 2.5-hour Maths Through Stories workshop which has now been delivered to over 2,000 teacher trainees at 30 universities across the UK since 2017.

The host, Harriet Rhodes (PGCE Early Primary and Primary Tutor​, University of Cambridge), commented that:

“This wonderful workshop provided a much needed foray into cross-curricular maths teaching. Vince’s evident commitment to the cause shone throughout this dynamic and engaging session. The trainees were captivated and designed thoughtful mathematics lessons based on the story picture books he had brought to show us. Thank you Vince, for your session and for the wonderful [MathsThroughStories.org] website resource.​” ​

Some of the trainees said:

“It was amazing! So engaging and had a really good mixture of practical activities, advice and theory. We also had a lot of fun doing the activities. I feel more confident in planning lessons that combine maths and literature.”

“Brilliant workshop, with so many inspiring ideas for future maths lesson planning. My teaching will definitely include story picture books to introduce and consolidate maths concepts.”
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“Fantastic workshop. So engaging, loved being able to look at maths story picture books + case studies + plan our lessons. I will definitely try and include stories in my placement maths lessons.”


To learn more about Dr. Trakulphadetkrai’s research interests, visit his profile page here and his MathsThroughStories.org project’s website here. He tweets at @NatthapojVinceT and @MathsStories.

​Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Lecturer in Primary Mathematics Education) gave an invited keynote address at the seventh Conference on Research in Mathematics Education in Ireland (MEI 7) at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University on Saturday 12 October 2019. The conference’s theme of Mathematical Literacy provided an appropriate context for Dr. Trakulphadetkrai to shed light in an under-researched area of enhancing mathematics teaching through storytelling beyond the pre-school level.

​He also used his keynote address to share with conference delegates his new mathematics teacher training video showcasing how a Year 6 teacher used a story book called ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar as a basis for her Mathematics lesson on volume and mass. The video had recently been released by his MathsThroughStories.org initiative and was funded by the University of Reading’s Endowment Fund.

​This was not the first time Dr. Trakulphadetkrai was at Dublin City University. In March this year, he was invited to meet with representatives of Ireland’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) including Dr. Jacqueline Fallon (Director of Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA) and other NCCA representatives in charge of developing Ireland’s new primary mathematics curriculum to be rolled out in 2022. Dr. Fallon had previously read a research article co-authored by Dr. Trakulphadetkrai reporting key perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of story picture books in mathematics teaching as reported by Irish primary teachers. Since then, Dr. Fallon and NCCA have been interested to learn more about the approach, particularly its adoption across the primary curriculum and not just at the pre-school level.
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During that visit, he was also invited to run his popular Maths Through Stories training workshop for around 70 primary teacher trainees from both Dublin City University (Dublin, Republic of Ireland) and Ulster University (Coleraine, Northern Ireland, UK) later that afternoon. The workshop was also attended by the NCCA representatives.

A book chapter, titled 'Bringing Mathematics Alive Through Stories', first-authored by Dr. Natthapoj Vincent Trakulphadetkrai (Lecturer in Primary Mathematics Education, University of Reading's Institute of Education) and second-authored by colleagues at the University of Turku (Finland), is published in a new academic book, called 'Story in Children's Lives: Contributions of the Narrative Mode to Early Childhood Development, Literacy, and Learning'. 

Published by Springer, the chapter draws from published and on-going research by Dr. Trakulphadetkrai and other scholars to highlight potential cognitive and emotive benefits of integrating stories in developing mathematical thinking and learning for young children. The chapter also discusses some of the benefits of treating learners not only as consumers of mathematical stories, but also as mathematical storytellers. Finally, the chapter ends with some interesting case studies of practitioners using stories in their mathematics teaching.

One of Dr. Trakulphadetkrai's doctoral students presented her research at the British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference, which was held between 10 and 12 September 2019 at the University of Manchester.

Fatemah Almuwaiziri (a final-year PhD student) gave a presentation, titled ‘Can self-constructed visualisation (SCV) meet unique mathematics learning needs of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD?’. Her presentation is based on part of her PhD research which was conducted in special schools in Kuwait. Speaking of her experience in giving her first-ever presentation at an international research conference, Fatemah said:

Dr. Trakulphadetkrai commented that: 

"It is very important for doctoral students to have some experience in presenting their research to academic audiences at national and international research conferences. While it can be a nerve-racking experience to begin with, the feeling soon becomes one of joy as soon as the presentation is over. I am glad that Fatemah found the experience useful for the development of her doctoral thesis."