Maths Phds To Be Bribed To Teach.....

[swissy_fit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27280427

What do the OT panel think of this?

I'm not sure - on the face of it it seems good but I'd have thought the quality of teaching isn't necessarily well measured by the level of academic achievement in Maths.

[MrPin]

Teachers do not need a PhD in maths to teach maths!

A better qualification would be clowning, as when you are not funny, you are booed off stage!

[Bloo Loo]

this doesnt add up, its going to cause division, multiply strikes and dissent....a fraction of the workforce will count their losses.

[LiveinHope]

First and foremost, I think an invididual has to want to teach, second they need to have a passion for their subject. Anyone with that skill set should be respected, valued and rewarded well by society since they are doing a great job - and let's not forget that this also frees parents from their educational responsibility enabling them to both work and earn and so help the economy to boom via HPI.

I really don't think you will get good teaching by making teaching a good job option. Mainly, I think you will just recruit people who can't 'cut it' in their chosen professions - such as a Postdoc physics researcher; with the exception that I know some chose the pathway BSc > PhD > Teaching at the outset.

I thoroughly enjoy teaching in schools on the occasions that I drop into them and run classes for a day. However, I could not do it daily, and would not want to do it daily for whatever they paid me - I wouldn't be any good for the children.

So I don't think the policy is a good one. Teaching needs to be more attractive, and I bet that pay is way down the list of inducements for most true 'teachers'. Applying my own viewpoint, above a certain subsistence level, pay only becomes of interest when conditions to do the job are cr4p.

[Dorkins]

Two of the best teachers I was taught by at school both had PhDs (one English, one Chemistry). I don't know if the qualification helped, probably it was just the fact that they were bright themselves and so could connect intellectually with bright students. Whatever the reason, they were both good at getting difficult ideas across and clearly had a passion for the subject. You might not want a staff room full of highly able mathematicians as they would end up depressed after a few years of failing to teach trigonometry to bottom set year 10s, but it's probably a good idea to have one or two around.

[Gigantic Purple Slug]

First and foremost, I think an invididual has to want to teach, second they need to have a passion for their subject. Anyone with that skill set should be respected, valued and rewarded well by society since they are doing a great job - and let's not forget that this also frees parents from their educational responsibility enabling them to both work and earn and so help the economy to boom via HPI.

I really don't think you will get good teaching by making teaching a good job option. Mainly, I think you will just recruit people who can't 'cut it' in their chosen professions - such as a Postdoc physics researcher; with the exception that I know some chose the pathway BSc > PhD > Teaching at the outset.

I thoroughly enjoy teaching in schools on the occasions that I drop into them and run classes for a day. However, I could not do it daily, and would not want to do it daily for whatever they paid me - I wouldn't be any good for the children.

So I don't think the policy is a good one. Teaching needs to be more attractive, and I bet that pay is way down the list of inducements for most true 'teachers'. Applying my own viewpoint, above a certain subsistence level, pay only becomes of interest when conditions to do the job are cr4p.

You missed something out. They need to be good at their subject as well.

But they don't need to be a huge level above the people they are teaching, just one is fine. After that as you say probably teaching skills and a passion for the subject are more important.

My bet would be that someone with degree level maths and a passion for the subject would be much better at teaching A level than someone with little interest in teaching and a PhD.

As a final and somewhat controversial point I would say maths is one of those subjects where the people involved in it at a high level are of course quite brilliant at maths but often very much challenged in other areas of human interaction.

[MrPin]

You missed something out. They need to be good at their subject as well.

But they don't need to be a huge level above the people they are teaching, just one is fine. After that as you say probably teaching skills and a passion for the subject are more important.

My bet would be that someone with degree level maths and a passion for the subject would be much better at teaching A level than someone with little interest in teaching and a PhD.

As a final and somewhat controversial point I would say maths is one of those subjects where the people involved in it at a high level are of course quite brilliant at maths but often very much challenged in other areas of human interaction.

PinWorld welcomes you!

I am challenged by this and I would like to meet "people"!

[justthisbloke]

The world seems utterly **** over tit sometimes. Universities, which existed to push the boundaries of knowledge with undergraduates as a sort of side effect, are being turned into schools with 50% of the population being churned through. And now they're putting researchers in schools.

What schools need is good teachers - and having defended a thesis is no indication of that skill. My personal experience is of the opposite. The brainier and better qualified teachers I had, the more self-education I had to do. I once had a teacher who was some sort of world renowned guru in his field - his lessons consisted of tea and biscuits at his house and broad discussions about pretty much anything that, only coincidentally, included his subject

[MrPin]

The world seems utterly **** over tit sometimes. Universities, which existed to push the boundaries of knowledge with undergraduates as a sort of side effect, are being turned into schools with 50% of the population being churned through. And now they're putting researchers in schools.

What schools need is good teachers - and having defended a thesis is no indication of that skill. My personal experience is of the opposite. The brainier and better qualified teachers I had, the more self-education I had to do. I once had a teacher who was some sort of world renowned guru in his field - his lessons consisted of tea and biscuits at his house and broad discussions about pretty much anything that, only coincidentally, included his subject

Yes!

[thecrashingisles]

The brainier and better qualified teachers I had, the more self-education I had to do. I once had a teacher who was some sort of world renowned guru in his field - his lessons consisted of tea and biscuits at his house and broad discussions about pretty much anything that, only coincidentally, included his subject

But I bet the quality of your self-education under his influence was better than you would have got from being spoon-fed by a nonentity.

[Saver]

First and foremost, I think an invididual has to want to teach, second they need to have a passion for their subject. Anyone with that skill set should be respected, valued and rewarded well by society since they are doing a great job - and let's not forget that this also frees parents from their educational responsibility enabling them to both work and earn and so help the economy to boom via HPI.

I really don't think you will get good teaching by making teaching a good job option. Mainly, I think you will just recruit people who can't 'cut it' in their chosen professions - such as a Postdoc physics researcher; with the exception that I know some chose the pathway BSc > PhD > Teaching at the outset.

I thoroughly enjoy teaching in schools on the occasions that I drop into them and run classes for a day. However, I could not do it daily, and would not want to do it daily for whatever they paid me - I wouldn't be any good for the children.

So I don't think the policy is a good one. Teaching needs to be more attractive, and I bet that pay is way down the list of inducements for most true 'teachers'. Applying my own viewpoint, above a certain subsistence level, pay only becomes of interest when conditions to do the job are cr4p.

Having taught uni level physics I can tell you PhD does not equal ability to teach. I had one PhD student who was supposed to help with the marking, but I quickly discovered students complained to me that he had marked questions wrong, when their answers were correct. The reason? They had not followed the model answers, but had come up with a different and correct way to solve the problem to get the right answer and he could not see they had done this because he did not really understand the material. I also found every time he explained things to students, they had learnt to then ask me for another explanation that they could understand (and often I found he had told them wrong things). He started to improve a bit, but if I had the power to do it I would have told him he should not turn up anymore.

This tells me just letting PhD holders teach is probably a bad idea - unless they can teach properly, in which case its probably great to have people who worked at a high level in a field *and* can communicate the basics (this is probably not a common combination though?). Not sure why they should get £40k either - the only obvious explanation to me, is to try to stop people going into other careers which pay more. However then I wonder - why not also do this for undergraduate physics degree holders that they cannot attract into teaching?

I've also heard people express the other extreme view - that you don't need to understand a subject as long as you can "teach". I cannot see how that works properly. Maybe for really simple concepts, but as soon as you get an above average student asking harder questions to understand things better, the teacher won't have the answers.

[Bloo Loo]

First and foremost, I think an invididual has to want to teach, second they need to have a passion for their subject. Anyone with that skill set should be respected, valued and rewarded well by society since they are doing a great job - and let's not forget that this also frees parents from their educational responsibility enabling them to both work and earn and so help the economy to boom via HPI.

I really don't think you will get good teaching by making teaching a good job option. Mainly, I think you will just recruit people who can't 'cut it' in their chosen professions - such as a Postdoc physics researcher; with the exception that I know some chose the pathway BSc > PhD > Teaching at the outset.

I thoroughly enjoy teaching in schools on the occasions that I drop into them and run classes for a day. However, I could not do it daily, and would not want to do it daily for whatever they paid me - I wouldn't be any good for the children.

So I don't think the policy is a good one. Teaching needs to be more attractive, and I bet that pay is way down the list of inducements for most true 'teachers'. Applying my own viewpoint, above a certain subsistence level, pay only becomes of interest when conditions to do the job are cr4p.

according to the then headmaster at my daughters school, having the latest tech was vital to education.

They had a luvly IT suite complete with bouncers.

he was asked to resign ultimately as standards fell...the focus was on IT and pupils wearing the correct uniform.

I think he was the wrong man in the wrong job...teachers teach, IT does little other than offer information. I have no idea what an IT suite was for...but they are everywhere.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

This tells me just letting PhD holders teach is probably a bad idea - unless they can teach properly, in which case its probably great to have people who worked at a high level in a field *and* can communicate the basics (this is probably not a common combination though?).

Agreed, and that's why many PhD programmes now include a compulsory teacher training component. In my case it was a full-scale PGCE equivalent (the Postgraduate Certificate of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education - PGCLTHE), taken as evening classes during the first two years

I have to say that for me, that course was effin' useless - full of equality and diversity shyte, esoteric educational theory (think Paolo Freire, Kolb's learning cycles, etc.), and very little about how to inspire a bunch of sullen teenagers to engage with the less exciting subject matter of your syllabus, write coherent essays and other real-world classroom problems. It could have been excellent, but was designed by PC idiots (it was a well known joke at the institution I did my PhD at that the Staff Development Unit, which delivered the PGCLTHE course, was where failed academics went to serve out their last few years to retirement) and a wasted opportunity.

This leads on to a bigger problem, which is that many naturally good researchers are not naturally good teachers, and vice-versa, but the ethos of a top-level university is to have academics do both. There is actually a good reason for this: that undergraduates get the benefit of knowledge "from the horse's mouth" of the people creating it. Even people I've stayed in touch with from my undergrad days who did not become academics tend to agree that this was a valued experience, and it's not something we should just throw away to solve a short-term problem.

So what do you do when you have someone who is excellent at communicating knowledge and mediating the learning process, but less so at generating it themselves, and vice-versa? One advantage of the old polytechnics is that, given that most of them only really did teaching, they were ideal for dedicated, high-level career teachers. Likewise, the traditional universities tended to take care of research fellows who might invent cures for cancer or write the definitive volume on the French occupation of Mexico in the mid-c19, but who you wouldn't want to trust in a seminar room with 15 teenagers. But now there seems to be a standard academic career path that requires you to do both, and I think it's led to some mediocre teaching on the one hand, and journals and publishers springing up to provide a home for the second-rate research that the good teachers but indifferent researchers are being forced to churn out.

[LiveinHope]

according to the then headmaster at my daughters school, having the latest tech was vital to education.

They had a luvly IT suite complete with bouncers.

he was asked to resign ultimately as standards fell...the focus was on IT and pupils wearing the correct uniform.

I think he was the wrong man in the wrong job...teachers teach, IT does little other than offer information. I have no idea what an IT suite was for...but they are everywhere.

I can remember when the first computer arrived in school, We were THE chosen grammar school in the county to have one.

It was placed on the side of the physics laboratory and revered.

We were A level 6th formers and we had a rather gullible physics teacher who couldn't teach the subject that well.

It came to the point in the physics syllabus where we were to be taught why a roller coaster can loop the loop without falling to the ground.

All of us were also taking A level Maths and had covered "loop the loop" already.

We were asked if we had covered it already or knew about it - "No Sir"

Then we were told "Well it is the same as swinging a bucket of water over your head - surely you have all done that?"

"No Sir, we've never done that"

The ceiling height was about 8ft.

A bucket of water and a length of rope was rustled up and out teacher started it swinging to describe the principle.

All went well, but we could see the rope lengthening with each revolution

Until the bottom of the bucket clipped the ceiling

The water didn't stay in the bucket as predicted

The school never got a replacement computer.

[LiveinHope]

Agreed, and that's why many PhD programmes now include a compulsory teacher training component. In my case it was a full-scale PGCE equivalent (the Postgraduate Certificate of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education - PGCLTHE), taken as evening classes during the first two years

I have to say that for me, that course was effin' useless - full of equality and diversity shyte, esoteric educational theory (think Paolo Freire, Kolb's learning cycles, etc.), and very little about how to inspire a bunch of sullen teenagers to engage with the less exciting subject matter of your syllabus, write coherent essays and other real-world classroom problems. It could have been excellent, but was designed by PC idiots (it was a well known joke at the institution I did my PhD at that the Staff Development Unit, which delivered the PGCLTHE course, was where failed academics went to serve out their last few years to retirement) and a wasted opportunity.

This leads on to a bigger problem, which is that many naturally good researchers are not naturally good teachers, and vice-versa, but the ethos of a top-level university is to have academics do both. There is actually a good reason for this: that undergraduates get the benefit of knowledge "from the horse's mouth" of the people creating it. Even people I've stayed in touch with from my undergrad days who did not become academics tend to agree that this was a valued experience, and it's not something we should just throw away to solve a short-term problem.

So what do you do when you have someone who is excellent at communicating knowledge and mediating the learning process, but less so at generating it themselves, and vice-versa? One advantage of the old polytechnics is that, given that most of them only really did teaching, they were ideal for dedicated, high-level career teachers. Likewise, the traditional universities tended to take care of research fellows who might invent cures for cancer or write the definitive volume on the French occupation of Mexico in the mid-c19, but who you wouldn't want to trust in a seminar room with 15 teenagers. But now there seems to be a standard academic career path that requires you to do both, and I think it's led to some mediocre teaching on the one hand, and journals and publishers springing up to provide a home for the second-rate research that the good teachers but indifferent researchers are being forced to churn out.

Academia needs a clear out of sub par academics, many of whom would be far happier doing something else. It has burgeoned due to lack of jobs.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

I would like to believe that I was at least an on-par academic, and I certainly am!

[Bloo Loo]

I can remember when the first computer arrived in school, We were THE chosen grammar school in the county to have one.

It was placed on the side of the physics laboratory and revered.

We were A level 6th formers and we had a rather gullible physics teacher who couldn't teach the subject that well.

It came to the point in the physics syllabus where we were to be taught why a roller coaster can loop the loop without falling to the ground.

All of us were also taking A level Maths and had covered "loop the loop" already.

We were asked if we had covered it already or knew about it - "No Sir"

Then we were told "Well it is the same as swinging a bucket of water over your head - surely you have all done that?"

"No Sir, we've never done that"

The ceiling height was about 8ft.

A bucket of water and a length of rope was rustled up and out teacher started it swinging to describe the principle.

All went well, but we could see the rope lengthening with each revolution

Until the bottom of the bucket clipped the ceiling

The water didn't stay in the bucket as predicted

The school never got a replacement computer.

I couldnt be a teacher....although many clients say I should...

I do some work in day nurseries...its always the same, a semi circle of tots forms behind me...I work, then a brave soul will ask "wot you doin man?"

then they get brave, they climb up and work has to stop.

kids.....drive me round the bend. And I have no idea how to control them...

[LiveinHope]

I would like to believe that I was at least an on-par academic, and I certainly am!

Someone sub par will tell me if I'm on par this week

[MrPin]

Do not learn from me! For
I know nothing!