ABSTRACT
Mental mathematics has, for many, negative associations with timed times table tests or questions fired out to be solved quickly, but they have little memory of the explicit teaching of specific approaches to mental calculation. This chapter unpicks what it mean by ‘mental mathematics’, how it relates to mathematics as a subject and how it is conceptualised within the teaching of mathematics. It provides an overview of the English context below to exemplify the tensions and dilemmas. In the current version of the National Curriculum, developed while Michael Gove was Secretary of State for Education, the status of arithmetic has been raised. The chapter argues that for an informal approach to mental mathematics as a way of developing ‘relational understanding’ of mathematics. A useful analogy to illustrate the difference between these two types of understanding is a comparison between someone who only uses the underground to travel around London and a London taxi driver.
