University Fellows to teach maths

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University fellows to teach maths

What do you think?

I had 2 teachers for my A-Level maths (pure & applied) One was a very clever man with a series of degrees from Cambridge. He loved maths and obviously found it easy but he was a rubbish teacher - he just didn't get how the rest of us didn't find it easy!

The other had graduated from a Polytechnic and it was his first year teaching A-Level. He had to struggle through the answers with us but he was a far better teacher and much more empathetic

I agree that not everyone can teach but wouldn't it be great if you could combine the two

Great teachers are worth their weight in gold. My DD has three really good teachers and one awful one - the bad one is incredibly lazy and makes lots of mistakes. My DD is having to try and self teach herself that subject.
Teachers make such a difference.

I did sixth form in Cambridge and many of the sixth form colleges use current fellows at the Cambridge colleges to teach A-Level subjects. As places like Hills Road and Mill Road have some the best results in the country I would imagine this is the model they are trying to follow.
The benefits were I was really well prepared for university, much greater depth was taught as standard and they were quite inspirational.
The disadvantages were they expected much more independent learning and expected students to be able to structure themselves.

Oh FGS they can't even get people with merely a good degree in maths or physics into teaching despite throwing money at them, what the fuck makes them think that people with a PhD will want to do it?

Degrees in the right subject would be a good start too. I'm fed up of my kids getting student teachers or temporary teachers who don't actually teach the subject.

One of my kids had a string of temporary teachers for a whole year for one of his science subjects. Fortunately he and a few others were able to self teach themselves but most the class did terribly.

I think it rather depends on why people apply and what training they get.

Academic jobs are extremely hard to get, and it is common to spend years on insecure part-time contracts post-phd. So a guaranteed £40K could be attractive. If people want to teach and get proper training, it could work well.

But if the applicants are bitter that they didn't get a lectureship and don't really want to be there, and/or have little teacher training, I'm not sure that this would benefit the pupils at all.

It might work if they are very selective about which applicants they will take. If they are people who have natural people/teaching skills as well it will be fine. However, my grandfather was excellent at physics and chemistry and had a PhD in physics, but he was the last person who you would ever ask to help with school work. No patience and a complete inability to understand why other people didn't get stuff that seemed so simple to him.

Mind you, my physics teacher never understood the answers to my homework any better than I did, so it was usually marked correct on the basis it almost certainly wasn't wrong.

Any new teacher would love a guaranteed 40k!

These people could already get 20-25k to train, it's unclear what 40k will bring apart from people who are really interested in the money.

I'd be expecting some sort of golden handcuffs to go along with that sort of cash.

You would hope so, otherwise what's to stop them just waltzing off with the 80k after two years. The retention rate isn't great as it is. I'm pretty sure the previous government gave half the PGCE money before and half after a period of teaching.

Any new teacher would love a guaranteed 40k

Yes, and potentially this could lead to equal pay claims.

For example, if a male physics teacher came though on this scheme was at a school with a newly qualified female biology teachers with a PhD....

The article suggests that the phd students will be required to do outreach work with other schools and promote maths/physics etc to students, and 'create free online resources', so there wouldn't be any worry about equal pay claims as they are not equal jobs.

I'm not sure how they think the PhDs will have time to do all that alongside learning how to teach reluctant teenagers. It seems like a bit of a Teach First programme, with an assumption that if you are really good at maths or physics you are also really good at networking, people skills, motivating and enthusing. I suspect (from my university experience) that these people may be thin on the ground.

I have to say, regardless of the ins- and outs- of this particular scheme, I find the regular implication on threads like this that if you are very good at your subject you somehow by default won't have the personality to teach it well to be somewhat insulting. I have a PhD from a leading university, have been in a permanent academic position for a decade, resigned, taught at secondary level and now run my own tuition business.

Just because I have a PhD does not mean I cannot understand why students find certain aspects of the subject hard and it does not mean I breezed through the subject finding every bit of it easy the entire way through. I achieved a PhD (and supervised a lot of others) because I worked very, very hard at it - this is true for many PhD students. However, I am inherently fascinated by the subject and do feel genuine pleasure when I can convince someone else to love it too.

I don't think that having a PhD means you will automatically be good at teaching your subject, by any means. I do resent the implication though that you are very well educated in your subject, you almost won't have the personality and people skills to motivate and enthuse others. This is not an either/or thing!

I wasn't suggesting it was a phd thing in general, rather that the higher echelons of maths and probably physics tends to attract a more quiet, introverted type of personality rather than the outgoing networkers this scheme is looking for.

"I wasn't suggesting it was a phd thing in general, rather that the higher echelons of maths and probably physics tends to attract a more quiet, introverted type of personality rather than the outgoing networkers this scheme is looking for."

Another sweeping generalization.

My PhD is chemistry with large amounts of maths/stats and a reasonable dose of physics thrown in. I'm not an introverted type (and nor were 2 of my PhD students who also went into teaching). DP is a senior lecturer in maths and very definitely not the shy retiring type (and teaches the struggling access to HE students too). As I said, it's not an either/or thing.

Some people will have good degrees, good PhDs and will make excellent candidates for teaching, others will have good degrees, PhDs etc and yet will be awful. On the other hand, if your subject knowledge is shaky, you definitely can't teach the subject. However, suitability has to be assessed on a person-by-person basis.

DCs' (yrs 11 &13) maths teacher has a 2nd from cambridge and they both really like him. Their other favorite maths teacher was a Russian professor. They go to a normal comp but both are very good at maths. Not sure the Russian professor was so good for those without an aptitude for maths.

I'm a maths teacher, I studied maths at Uni and I was going off my university experience, as I said.

Maths, especially pure maths involves a lot of sitting and thinking hard about pretty esoteric problems. This tends to attract a certain type of person, and it's not usually the loud, social, party people types.

It might be a generalisation, but I don't think a particularly unfair one.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one, then. I know an awful lot of science and maths PhDs, some of whom are extrovert, others, more introvert. At the higher end of academia, part of success is being extremely resilient and convincing people (funding bodies, industry etc) over and over again to fund more and more of your work - the idea of the maths "boff" sitting working on his equations in complete isolation is a rather dated view of university research these days, which is forced to be much more collaborative. I'm not saying all PhDs will make wonderful teachers, of course that would be ridiculous, but I resent the implication being made that if you are well educated in your subject you will by default be worse!

From my experience, those who are gifted at maths, may not teach it well.
At my Grammar school the head of the maths dept, taught the top and bottom groups. I was in the bottom group. I think she really struggled dealing with people who did not "get" maths. If we didn't understand something, she would just get cross.

As i said above the Russian professor was probably not so good at teaching the lower sets but he was brilliant for top sets and A levels.

My own ds is just taking his A2 and has a part time job at a sports centre. He was helping his manager do some maths for functional skills exams she was taking and said he found it really difficult as he found explaining the simple stuff really hard, which is strange as in the past his teachers have all said he is a natural teacher.