[Catalist] An interesting read...

[Stephen Zander]

Hi Leon and others,
Not that long ago there were considerable shortages of maths and science graduates, particularly in Chemistry and Physics. As the mining industry went through a series of booms and busts, there was a corresponding increase or decrease in the supply of engineers mainly retraining to become secondary teachers, capable of teaching maths, physics and chemistry. In the metropolitan area, the shortage has not been that significant, however, in country and regional centres shortages existed where many teachers were the only person available to teach across the disciplines in some isolated school, resulting in many teaching outside their area of specialty with the typical problems that came with this. In some cases untrained science teachers were also expected to teach science. Private and independent schools have not really experienced these problems, but many of our colleagues who have taught in isolated or regional areas could tell us some rather frightening stories.

The document provided a UK “horror” story but some of the lessons are just as relevant to us, particularly the pay differential between science teaching graduates and humanity teachers in occupations outside of teaching. There are companies that deliberately target young science teacher graduates who have many of the skills they see as advantageous to their firms and industries. Talk to anyone that taught science in Nhulunbuy or Groote Islandt in the Territory. The big mining companies offered housing, salaries and conditions that would make a teacher working in the government system think long and hard about remaining as a science teacher at the local high school. All too often they willingly jumped careers.

Unlike the UK, the average age of science teachers in chemistry and physics is not declining, but increasing. If we want to have a constant supply of quality science teachers wanting to enter the profession to replace those who have already retired or will be doing so in the not too distant future, (outside of retraining engineers), science teaching needs to become a far more attractive prospect than it is today.

Enrolments in chemistry may be on the rise, but I don’t think the same is true for enrolments in physics and the harder level maths courses. This does not present a rosey picture for our futures STEM industries, or young scientists to carry on research or to replace our aging University Science Academics.

Kind Regards

Dr Stephen Zander
Secondary Physics/Science Teacher

From: Catalist <catalist-bounces at lists.stawa.net> on behalf of Leon Harris <leon at quoll.com>
Reply-To: Leon Harris <leon at quoll.com>, Catalist <catalist at lists.stawa.net>
Date: Wednesday, 15 November 2017 at 9:35 pm
To: jaclyn mcgregor <jaclyn_mcgregor at yahoo.com.au>, Catalist <catalist at lists.stawa.net>
Subject: Re: [Catalist] An interesting read...

Yes,  interesting.
In WA, from data that I have been seen, we're not seeing this. Chemistry seems to be maintaining or increasing enrolments, and I am not aware of teaching shortages. Stress and change are big factors that make all science teaching hard, and the tendency to have "data driven" decisions being made by people who have little skill or training in such subjects is worrying. I am not referring to my current school on this, but nowhere in these "ooh shiny" longitudinal data displaying tools or pd sessions is there any acknowledgement of the uncertainty associated with data, or the need for "internal standards" or controls. We live in dangerous times !

When the administrations of many schools are appointed on the basis of the Peter principle (rise to the level of your inability - a 1970s public service concept, particularly in the UK), it is hard to expect more. Note the representation of D&T and phys ed among the deputy and above layer- this is because one of the best attributes to have when applying for a job is past experience, and no-one seconds the HOLA of maths, or science to the temporary deputy position caused by illness as those are large, busy and complex departments and doing so will potentially kill the ATAR of the current crop of 12s, with all the associated parental howls ! By the way, guess which departments are likely to have numerate, data-savy people in them, with technical understanding of statistics? Yup!

So in summary here, chem is good, science not bad, but this data-focus (junk data) misapplied has the potential to do some savage damage to our systems, and degrade the pleasure and quality of teaching.

Thanks for the article, it seems to be different in the uk than here.

Cheers,
Leon

On 15/11/2017 11:18 AM, jaclyn mcgregor wrote:

https://eic.rsc.org/feature/recruiting-and-retaining-teachers/3008189.article




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