The idea a student was struggling with one way of solving the problem and teaching them alternative methods never occurred because it was “outside the curriculum”.

It’s a tough balance of being ‘outside the curriculum’ vs ‘they don’t have time’. There’s lot of methods of doing most things in maths. Teachers usually will be trying to take an evidence-based approach of which method is supposedly the most effective for the most people (but unfortunately won’t be the most effective for everyone. And then with the amount stuffed into our school curriculum, there just isn’t time to cover the alternate methods