2  About This Module

2.1 Introduction

Welcome to the Communicating Mathematics course. This handbook is intended to give you a full overview of the how the course will run and to help you prepare for the challenges ahead.

Your visits to the school will be made during the spring term at times that are arranged to be mutually convenient to yours and your allocated school timetables, it is expected that you will make at least ten visits. In addition to your school visits you are expected to attend three compulsory tutorials where you will be asked to provide feedback from your personal experiences. You will also need to provide details of your special project once you have had it approved by your mentor teacher. Further details will be provided by your course co-ordinator when appropriate and completion of them will be an essential element of participating in the course.

The course was set up as part of a national scheme called the Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme (UAS) (https://www.uas.ac.uk). UAS works with universities all over the country to develop similar courses in other science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments, and has links with various other subject organisations and professional institutions.

2.2 Overview of the Course

2.2.1 What is it and what do you get out of it?

The Communicating Mathematics course will reward you with academic credit for working as a ‘student-tutor’ with teachers in local schools and will help you to develop some valuable transferable skills. You may already know about ‘student tutoring’ schemes that work on a voluntary basis. Most of these run very successfully without giving academic credit for taking part, but do provide immense satisfaction to the truly committed undergraduates who get involved This course is slightly different in that you are rewarded with credits towards your degree for the work you do in the classroom.

Of equal importance are the ways in which you will benefit as a result of doing the course. You will learn important, marketable and transferable skills of benefit to you in employment and in life. A good degree is no longer enough in the competitive world of work so involvement in a course like this will be of great appeal to potential employers. The specific and transferable skills you will be able to attain include:

  • Public speaking and communication skills
  • Organisational and interpersonal skills
  • Time management skills
  • Team-working
  • Working in a challenging and unpredictable environment
  • Staff responsibilities and conduct
  • Addressing the needs of individuals
  • The ability to improvise
  • Giving (and taking) feedback
  • Handling difficult and potentially disruptive situations
  • Standard teaching methods

You will gain experience of working in a professional educational environment and will learn about the key issues affecting school education today. You will have the satisfaction of making a positive impact on the education of pupils of all ages and the chance to act as a role model for your subject. It is a chance to put something back into the community by sharing your knowledge and helping to motivate young people and raise their aspirations towards your subject. You will develop your confidence in answering questions about your own subject and in devising appropriate ways to communicate a difficult principle or concept. You will develop your communication skills and gain a better understanding of your own level of expertise. For those of you who are interested in teaching as a profession, this will be an opportunity to explore whether it is a path you want to pursue. You will learn to devise and develop subject specific projects and teaching methods appropriate to engage the relevant age group. Hopefully, you should also get a lot of enjoyment out of this course!!

2.2.2 How does it work?

The course will involve:

  1. Attendance at a training session giving you an introduction to the fundamentals of working with children and conduct in the school environment
  2. Undergoing a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check prior to entering the classroom
  3. Being paired with a specific teacher at your school who will work with you to identify your aims and objectives for the term
  4. Spending half a day a week in school for ten weeks, developing your role within the classroom
  5. Completion of a special project
  6. Assessment of the course – further details are outlined later in this handbook

2.3 Your time in the classroom

2.3.1 Overview

The schools and teachers with whom you will be working will be selected by the university. You may have the opportunity to show a preference for the location of the school to which you are allocated. Allocations to school are completed in early December and you will receive contact details of your mentor teacher and are expected to make contact with them before the end of the autumn term. During the spring term you will spend half a day a week in the school for the duration of the course. You will be able to review progress and discuss any problems with the course tutor either through timetabled tutorial sessions or during their office hours.

The day and time of the weekly placement will be decided on an individual basis to match the timetable of you and the teacher. The placement may be organised so that you are involved in lessons with pupils of more than one age group. The number of weeks for which you will visit the school should not be less than nine, but may be more than ten in some cases.

In general you will spend a few hours in the classroom each week. Your role in the classroom should progress from initial observation to constructive support of the teacher, although the level of interaction with the pupils must be agreed with the teacher, and should at all times be under the teacher’s direction.

The initial periods of observation should be used to study the teacher’s interaction with pupils, and the approaches taken to the introduction and development of topics and concepts. If possible, specific situations should be discussed with the teacher. You should expect to become more involved, possibly working with small groups of pupils on specific topics or activities. As you gain experience and confidence, you may be asked to take a more responsible role such as taking all or part of a lesson, or in helping in some other way such as with a mathematics club, or with a talk about undergraduate experiences, etc.

You will be required to keep a log book of your experiences in the school. It is not expected that the teacher will read this log book, but you will need to use it yourself as a basis for the report that you will write at the end of the course as part of the course assessment. University staff will need evidence that this log book is being kept and it will itself be used for assessment.

You will be expected to plan your own role in each lesson. These plans will need to be discussed with the teacher, who will provide feedback on them. The plans should also be available for discussion with university staff.

You will be required to implement a special project. The choice of the project should be made following discussion with the teacher and possibly with the course tutor. It should be targeted, where possible, at a specific concept or activity for which there is a perceived need in the school. The project may be a novel method of presentation appropriate to the topic, a particular demonstration or a pupil activity, and may involve the preparation of special materials. The nature of the project and materials must be discussed fully with the teacher. If equipment is being used, then safety issues must be addressed and the teacher’s advice should be carefully followed.

2.3.2 Assessment

The assessment for this course will comprise four components:

  1. A Journal of Teaching activity. (25%)
  2. An end of course written report. (40%)
  3. A fifteen minute oral presentation. (25%)
  4. An assessment by the teacher, moderated by the course tutor (10%)

The overall aim is to assess the extent to which you have succeeded in the following:

  • acquiring and developing
  • your knowledge of a working educational environment
  • your ability to observe and analyse
  • your ability to apply knowledge in ways relevant to your environment in an enthusiastic and helpful manner
  • your ability to critically evaluate your own progress.

You will not be assessed on whether or not you have shown yourself to be a potential teacher.

More detail about the assessment criteria and methods used are available in the ‘Assessment Briefing’ section of this handbook - you will also be briefed on all of this in a separate tutorial.

2.3.3 Learning Outcomes

The Learning Outcomes for this classroom based course are as follows:

  • To provide undergraduates with an opportunity to gain marketable and transferable including the communication of their knowledge of the subject in a challenging educational environment.
  • To give undergraduates a better appreciation of the level of their own expertise in their subject, and to build upon this through the process of explaining the subject’s core ideas and concepts to others.
  • To help undergraduates learn to address the needs of individuals and to think about methods of presentation which are appropriate to the groups they are working with.