campusreview. com. au
Put time on their side
One university explains that its new approach to education in the STEM sector is built on giving teachers more of a precious resource.
By Chris Stewart
What happens when you take more than 60 high school science, maths and technology teachers out of school for three days, free them of their day-to-day routines and allow them to share and explore new ideas? You get noise, excitement, argument, and laughter.
The teachers, all from the STEM disciplines at 13 NSW schools, are participants in the newly launched STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy at the University of Sydney.
For three days, they have left behind the marking, the timetabling, the endless administration and the pastoral care of angst-ridden teenagers, and have applied their minds to something at the core of their professional lives: the practice of teaching. But why a Teacher Enrichment Academy and why STEM? Australia’ s Chief Scientist, professor Ian Chubb, set the scene in his July 2013 position paper Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in the National Interest: A Strategic Approach.
FACULTY FOCUS
“ The reality is that we can’ t relax,” he wrote.“ We can’ t be complacent. There can be no sense of entitlement. We must understand that we will get the future we earn.”
About three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations today require STEM skills and knowledge. Australia’ s— indeed, the world’ s— prosperity increasingly depends on a workforce skilled and literate in science, engineering, IT and mathematics.
Now consider the present. About 40 per cent of mathematics classes in years 7 – 10 are taught out of area, by non-maths teachers. Participation rates in traditional high school science subjects have fallen to their lowest in 20 years.
In an increasingly technology- and knowledge-based economy we know we need many more students to choose science, maths and technology subjects in school and to pursue these interests through higher education into careers, just to provide the employees needed in STEM-related industries. Yet even if we do somehow manage to get sufficient numbers of students engaged in these subjects, we simply don’ t have enough STEM-qualified teachers to teach them.
It follows that we need more talented STEM-trained graduates choosing teaching careers. However, in a technology and knowledge-based economy, where these same graduates can find excellent jobs in all sorts of industries, a career in education rarely gets a look-in.
For teaching to compete at all, the status of the profession itself needs a boost – from competitive remuneration and career trajectories to best-practice professional support.
Let’ s hear from the chief scientist again, writing in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: Australia’ s Future paper from September.
“ Australia’ s STEM teachers at all levels, from primary to tertiary, must be equipped to deliver course content with confidence and inspiration, and develop all students to their full potential,” he wrote. Fair enough— but how do you equip teachers with confidence and inspiration?
Here’ s what you don’ t do. First, you don’ t throw resources at them. There are many excellent websites, apps, books, kits and programs available to teachers, with more developed every week.
Despite this avalanche of materials, any teacher can tell you the best resources in the world will not change classroom practice.
Second, you don’ t blame them for Australia’ s decline in participation rates and STEM literacy. Clearly teachers need regular, quality professional development – show me a professional who does not.
To view Australia’ s precarious position in STEM education, research and industry as squarely a problem with under-performing teachers gravely misses the point. Teachers don’ t need a stick – whether the punitive kind or the multimedia-filled USB variety – to do their best work. They need something much more valuable, and therefore much, much harder to provide. They need time. Time to gather. Time to learn. Time to practise and reflect and evaluate and share. Time to work out which of the many possible new classroom innovations might work best for their students.
Then they can try them out and see what happens. And then try again. And again.
Thanks to a donation to the University of Sydney, the STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy has been established to provide this rarest of resources – because teachers need the time to be inspired. ■
Dr Chris Stewart is director of the STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy at the University of Sydney.
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