workforce
passion. The word ‘passion’ is used too
often inauthentically, but it’s really what
drives my life. I love it. When I’m working
with people and I’m helping them to learn,
I get a real buzz out of it. So, I don’t know
whether that might come across. I’ve
also been doing this for a long, long time.
Thirty-seven years in the one job. I’ve been
able to reinvent myself a lot, do a whole lot
of different things, keep myself interested,
keep myself engaged, keep myself
Probably both universities
and schools have some work
to do to try to get a common
culture between the two.
intellectually challenged. So, maybe those
sorts of things come in as well.
Also, you have to put in a lot of work,
in terms of the awards. I know some
wonderful colleagues who do great work
but have other things they’re interested
in than writing the applications, I
guess [laughs]. I think the students can
pretty quickly sense I genuinely care
about them and I’m genuinely interested
in them. I think that makes a big
difference.
On that point, there’s been a lot of talk,
particularly over the last five years, about
how to stem the tide of students not taking
up maths in the higher years and performing
poorly in maths tests in general. You
mentioned engagement and your passion
being perhaps one of the elements of
that, so can you elaborate on engagement
more generally?
I can only talk with any sort of expertise
about primary school. I’m very aware
of all of the things that you’ve just
mentioned – the tail-off, the lack of
flow-through into the ‘more difficult’
maths subjects in late secondary, and the
implications of that into tertiary.
However, what we’re finding in some
of the research I’ve done with Professor
Robyn Jorgensen, who’s now at the
University of Canberra, is that the self-
identity people have around mathematics
is being formed at a very young age. We
were staggered to find seven-year-olds
saying they’re not a ‘maths person’.
There’s no such thing as a maths person.
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Everyone has the same brain. I don’t have
a special part of my brain that says ‘maths’
and yours doesn’t.
So, they’re getting this identity from
somewhere, and it’s likely their families,
or it could even be their teachers, that
they can’t do maths. Once that identity
is formed as young as that age, it’s very
hard to turn that around, which sort
of leads to why I’m very excited about
working on the Elsa Project, because
we’re getting to work with the early
childhood educators, and we’re getting
to work with about 4000 children around
Australia, trying to give them some
positive experiences around not only
mathematics, but science, technology
and engineering. We’re doing that in a
play-based way.
We’re hoping that the influence that
we’re having in preschool and that we
might be able to have down the track
in the early years of schooling might go
some way to setting up kids a little bit
better to look positively about some of
those subjects.
The issue is often, in primary school,
the educators – their experience of
mathematics when they were at school
and any associated anxieties that they
have. So, working with the educators,
who are going to be our future teachers,
that’s a very strong focus of mine to try
to remove some of that anxiety around
mathematics. It’s going to take a fair bit
of time. I tell my students not to believe
anyone who says they have a solution to
difficult problems because if there was
an easy solution, someone would have
thought of it by now.
So, yeah, we’ve got some cultural
change to do in schooling. That’s not
helped by the media, who are often after a
quick story about how bad things are.
To that end, I’d like to touch on
attrition rates, teacher stress and how
you help pre-service teachers to enter the
workforce and not face those issues to
such a great extent.
I’m part of a big team at Griffith, so
I only look after one little part of the
development of our students. As they
complete their degree, they do a lot of
courses around resilience, managing
careers and those sorts of things.
We can only do so much at university,
but I know and am comforted by the
fact that a lot of schools are now starting
to get a little more rigorous around
induction and looking after the first-year,
second-year and third-year teachers
and mentoring.
So, I think it’s a bigger issue than what
we can do at university. I’m saying we
do things, but it’s a bigger problem once
they get into the workplace.
In a sense, when working with the
students, I can try to inspire them, to set
them up for successful teaching, to build
their confidence, but that’s something
that schools then have to pick up and
carry on.
Unfortunately, there are times when,
still, I think there’s a false dichotomy
between university and schools.
Sometimes, when graduates get into
schools, the culture of schools is a little
bit different to the culture of universities.
Probably both universities and schools
have some work to do to try to get a
common culture between the two.
If you could choose your career again,
would you choose teaching?
Oh, definitely. Not one bit of hesitation.
It makes me a little sad that teaching is
now seen as something you do because
you couldn’t do anything else. That’s
something we really have to change.
I went into teaching but I could have done
We were staggered to
find seven-year-olds saying
they’re not a ‘maths person’.
There’s no such thing as a
maths person.
pretty well anything I wanted, but I wanted
to be a teacher. It’s been a wonderful ride.
In the 37 years I’ve done it, I’ve had only
one year where it was a bit tough – for a
number of reasons. But yes, I’d do it again.
In fact, I’m really proud that one of my
children has become a teacher – he’s in
his second year of teaching – so he gets
to keep the tradition running.
It’s a tiring profession. I don’t think I’d
have the energy now to be a primary or
secondary school teacher, because if
you’re going to do it properly, you have
to give a lot of yourself. But I’d definitely
do it again. ■