Derek Woodrow

Reasons for Choosing a Teacher Training Course

T are very few studies which consider why students choose to take a PGCE one-year teacher training course and there seem to be none at all which looks at different reasons students from different disciplines may have for deciding to enter teacher training. Research by Reid and Caudwell (1999) used questionnaire techniques to investigate PGCE trainees’ reasons for choosing teaching as a career. Assessing responses to twenty-one different possible reasons ranked in importance on a Likert scale, they found that the two most popular reasons chosen by 96 per cent of the 453 trainees were that they enjoyed working with children and that they felt teaching would bring high job satisfaction. They distinguished between arts and mathematics/ science graduates but found little difference in the results, the greatest being that 40 per cent of arts trainees compared with only 17 per cent of mathematics/science trainees chose continuing their interest in their studies as important. Whilst conducting research into trainee learning styles (Jarvis, 2002) the opportunity was taken to explore again the reasons for choosing a career in teaching, but allowing free responses rather than the prompted responses employed by Reid and Caudwell.

Cultural determination of curricula, theories and practices

Abstract This article looks at the differences in learning assumptions and principles that are evident between societies, both internationally and intra-nationally. The underlying value systems which are embedded in the ways in which societies and subgroups of societies view the nature of learning makes international exchange on the one hand and social equity on the other problematic. Differential valuations of cultural capital create differential power. Comparisons are, however, valuable in raising awareness about the underlying principles and implicit discrimination present in school curricula and methods of teaching. In particular, the assumptions about autonomy and authority dominate much of the decision making on school curricula. The roles of teachers as guardians of knowledge or facilitators of learning, and the prioritisation of individual rights over social responsibilities create major variations. Mathematics and science teaching are used to epitomise different national assumptions, and constructivist theorising in particular is used as a focus for the discussion. This has clear significance not just for international co-operation, but also for the equality of treatment and access to learning for the different subgroups within English society. No education is without values and whilst those values should be recognised they should not be universally imposed.

Mathematics, Mathematics Education and Economic Conditions

This chapter looks at the rhetoric which surrounds the relationship of mathematics to the economic assumptions in modern societies. It is concerned on the one hand with the economic language which has invaded educational principles and on the other its converse, in which the language of mathematics is used to justify and authenticate political and economic arguments. Economic conditions are now globally managed — through inter-dependant markets, through overt political pressures from such bodies as the World Bank and through dominance and pressures from global corporations — and so too education is becoming an internationally uniformly conditioned commodity. The chapter also looks at the issues raised by international testing as measures of educational success and the supposed dominant variable in national economic success. After reviewing the dilemmas raised by ICT and new technologies in the context of disparate world resource divisions it also looks at the limited studies available on the impact of poverty on mathematics education in classrooms.