Demand for Maths Teachers?

papazen

Hi all,

I will graduate (hopefully) this may with a 4 year degree in maths and economics. I would like to apply for teaching jobs next September. I'm only interested in temping for the moment. I will mainly be looking for jobs on the strength of my maths degree - as there must be the most demand for maths since it is a compulsory subject.

From what I can see in my college, there are very few honours maths graduates every year. From my experience (and the class sizes are so small that I would know most people in them), few if any are interested in second level teaching. I read recently that a third of maths teachers at second level are unqualified!

Is there is much demand for maths teachers?

I know that this probably depends on location, but can anyone give me a little information on the current job situation?

mel2bob

Hi,

I am also a maths graduate, have been working in IT for the last 5 years but am thinking of getting into teaching, thought I would have to do the h dip and am working on my last minute application for next years course, did you manage to get a post without the h dip? how did you go aobut it? do you think there is still that demand for maths teachers?
Thanks,
Mel

Town Man

papazen wrote: »

From what I can see in my college, there are very few honours maths graduates every year. From my experience (and the class sizes are so small that I would know most people in them), few if any are interested in second level teaching. I read recently that a third of maths teachers at second level are unqualified!

Is there is much demand for maths teachers?

When they say unqualified I think it is mainly teachers who are qualified to teach in other subjects such as science for example teach maths classes in schools as they have done maths as part of their course in college.
They still hold a teaching degree. If you have any aspirations to be a teacher you will need to do a Hdip as you will be extremely lucky to pick up a teaching post.

As regards the demand for maths teachers, it is one of the 3 core subjects in school and you will always find jobs out there even though they are not full hours. Schools will choose those with teaching degrees over others and you have to be a member of the teaching council too

papazen

I am only interested in subbing, not looking for any permanent teaching posts. Previously my friends had managed to get substitute jobs (covering for maternity leave etc.), and both are doing their Hdip this year. I believe that s budgets for substitutes have since diminished. It didn't seem a problem for them to get subbing jobs without the Hdip.

ytareh

I wouldnt be THAT optimistic lads...You looking at subbing /short hours etc for years if youre lucky(!) the way things are going ...seriously...

papazen

I'm really just wondering about the current market for maths teachers.
Is there anybody out there struggling to find work?
Can any new graduates share their experiences of looking for their first job?

Alessandra

They really need maths teachers here in the UK. In fact some colleges in England will pay you quite a lot of money to become a maths or science teacher. You also get £5000 pounds of a 'golden hello' when you start working. So that's something to think about.

rainbowtrout

papazen wrote: »

. I'm only interested in temping for the moment.

You wouldn't get much more to be honest, there are very little jobs out there at the moment, and plenty of qualified teachers out of work.

papazen wrote: »

Hi all,

From what I can see in my college, there are very few honours maths graduates every year. From my experience (and the class sizes are so small that I would know most people in them), few if any are interested in second level teaching.

That's just one college though, I'd imagine there are plenty of college graduates coming out with maths qualifications through arts, science, engineering, technology degrees. Have a look at the list of qualifications on the Teaching Council website that are accepted for teaching purposes.

papazen wrote: »

Hi all,

I read recently that a third of maths teachers at second level are unqualified!

... and I read recently of a college student who is not qualified to teach wanting to work in a school...

Where did you read that? Link please. Anyone that's teaching in a school has to be registered with the Teaching Council, they need to have a relevant degree and HDip/PGDE. There are some teachers in schools who teach maths, but are originally science or business teachers. The majority of them would only be teaching maths at junior cert level. It has generally been accepted in the past that if you did a subject in the first year of your degree that you could teach it to junior cert level although, it's not officially recognised. Teachers will often find they get a subject on their timetable which is not one of their main subjects because of staff shortages. The 2009 budget for example meant that most schools lost teaching hours and they have to make do with what they have.

When Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act is passed anyone working in a school will have to be TC registered, that includes subbing work.

MathsManiac

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Where did you read that? Link please.

Link would have been helpful alright, but a quick google turns up these two:

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/oct/25/one-third-of-maths-teachers-unqualified/

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2009/10/26/story104195.asp

e04bf099

Alessandra wrote: »

They really need maths teachers here in the UK. In fact some colleges in England will pay you quite a lot of money to become a maths or science teacher. You also get £5000 pounds of a 'golden hello' when you start working. So that's something to think about.

Hi Alessandra, do you happen to have any information at hand? Not being lazy or anything, I'll look into it myself. But if you happened to have any more advice, in regards to the necessary qualifications for being a teacher in England, say, I'd very much appreciate it.

clartharlear

papazen wrote: »

. I read recently that a third of maths teachers at second level are unqualified!

That would include me, and my electrical engineering degree, which was 515 points the year I applied for it, and continues to be internationally prestigious.

MathsManiac wrote: »

Link would have been helpful alright, but a quick google turns up these two:

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/oct/25/one-third-of-maths-teachers-unqualified/

From that link, “While the quality of maths teaching is still high, it would obviously be an advantage if every teacher that taught it had actually studied it,” he (Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes) said

. My bold.
It is not obvious at all, in fact, it is quite contentious.
In Malcolm Gladwell's article on choosing the right people to become teachers, he discusses the huge difference between the effects of good, average and bad teachers.

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year's worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half's worth of material. That difference amounts to a year's worth of learning in a single year.

Educational-reform efforts typically start with a push for higher standards for teachers—that is, for the academic and cognitive requirements for entering the profession to be as stiff as possible. But after you've watched Pianta's tapes, and seen how complex the elements of effective teaching are, this emphasis on book smarts suddenly seems peculiar. ... Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.

I'd highly recommend reading the full article. Any "qualified" (bitterness quotes) teacher should be familiar with the teacher effectivity work of Kounin etc, but the article makes nice parallels with the hiring of sports players and financial dealers, whose importance is far great than that of teachers. :rolleyes: (more bitterness)

clartharlear

In fact, (and I realise that this post may be deleted through being off-topic, but I'm on a hobby horse and I can't get off) the briefest of googles will bring you to a whole host of teacher effectiveness studies. Everyone agrees that there is nothing more important than a good teacher. Anyone who has put a bit of thought into it realises that a good learner (i.e. who has academic qualifications to beat the band) does not necessarily make a good teacher, and other factors must be considered.

“One piece of No Child Left Behind calls for highly qualified teachers, but those qualifications are … front-end qualifications—does the person have this certificate or this degree? And I believe we have to move away from the front-end inputs to looking at highly effective teachers. If you can produce results in the classroom, that makes you effective, and you can stay in the classroom. And it really shouldn’t matter whether or not you have your Ph.D. or your master’s.”
—Michelle Rhee, Superintendent of D.C. Public Schools, “Charlie Rose,” July 14, 2008.
Research now shows that most qualifications only weakly predict whether teachers will succeed in the classroom,

Using a dataset covering over 10,000 Australian primary school teachers and over 90,000 pupils, I estimate how effective teachers are in raising students’ test scores from one exam to the next. ..Experience has the strongest effect, with a large effect in the early years of a teacher’s career. ... Teachers with a masters degree or some other form of further qualification do not appear to achieve significantly larger test score gains.

This analysis reviews a wide range of empirical studies that examine the impact of teacher characteristics on teacher effectiveness in order to draw conclusions about the extent to which these characteristics are, in fact, linked with teacher performance.

That is - don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. "Education policy makers and administrators would be well served by recognizing the complexity of the issue and adopting multiple measures along many dimensions to support existing teachers and to attract and hire new, highly qualified teachers."

e04bf099

This might seem lazy because I haven't read the links yet, especially the last one, which most likely contains the answer to this question. But if you'll indulge me a little.

While I agree that...

...Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.

... I am not sure that it is quite engaging with an important aspect of the issue. What is the criterion on which a successful teacher is measured? I'll use English as an easy example, which is a direct analogy. We had an excellent English teacher. Nobody ever got less than a C in his classes. I barely haad to do any reading myself at all. He was extremely experienced and literate. But we all did well because he fed us the essays and we learned them off and regurgitated them in the exam. We basically vomitted all over the page, and none of the content of the essays was remotely contributed by us.

I have just graduated from Maths and Philosophy. I read a huge amount but I didn't start reading until after the leaving cert. English in secondary school, despite the success of our teach, played no part in my subsequent burgeoning level of literacy. I realised a flaw, when I struggled to explain myself, and so I immersed myself in philosophy and literature. That was a latent talent that our education system failed to bring out, despite my good grades. I received a B2 grade in the leaving, which I was happy with.

Studying Maths, I realised that, despite the fact that my Mam is a maths teacher and the fact that I have always had a proficiency for maths (a lot of cousins and Aunts and Uncles are Maths teachers or lecturers) I was unprepared for university maths because of the leaving cert. Much like learning off essays, we learn off, and are encouraged to learn off, formulae and proofs, of which we need little mathematical understanding. This, for me, is a product of our attitudes toward equality, combined with the misguided notion that if you can say something then you "know" it, which supercedes a proficiency and aptitude for the subject. Quantity of "qualified" people above Quality.

So, this, for me, is the route of motivation for ensuring that we have qualified maths teachers. Somebody who is *qualified* would certainly be more likely to have a proficiency in maths, than those *unqualified*, even if that isn't always the case. Obviously engineering maths is of a high standard and few people in engineering in the major universities would not be competent at maths. But I don't think it is necessarilly the case that qualified engineers make up the one third in question. Take business or finance student. The level of maths there could be (and is in the Quinn school in UCD, which is fairly eminent) quite low. But, unless they are teaching in a VEC, that type of graduate could easilly be teaching maths. And the argument that its ok because they'd only be teaching junior cert is rubbish. Junior certs require just as much proficiency, as well as care and attention, as leaving certs in explaining the deductive logic involved in their course. Early education is a must, because the younger a child is introduced to something the better they will be at the finale of second level, i.e. crunch time. There may be much less to remember in the junior cert, which would make it easier for a person with a low qualification in maths to cope with, so as to produce good grades, but that does not mean that they are explaining the material thoroughly. My mam always sas that if she has a class from first year through to leaving cert there will be twice as many Higher level students sitting the leaving those years, as compared to the years she gets them in in 4th year.

I may be misinterpreting you completely though. It may sound like I've put words in your mouth. I've not tried to do that, I've just found myself in a train of thought that must have been bouncing around in my head for some time and so on starting my "quick question" I couldn't stop.

I have no doubt that there are terrible maths teachers who are highly qualified. I call them textbooks on legs and I've had quite a few of them in my time in UCD. But looking for "better teachers" as opposed to qualified teachers with the right aptitudes and proficiency levels to inspire the most intelligent students to fulfill their potentials is going in the opposite extreme. You need qualified teachers who are also not autistic, i.e. good educators also.

This is off-topic, so I'll set up a new thread.

clartharlear

e04bf099 wrote: »

T I am not sure that it is quite engaging with an important aspect of the issue. What is the criterion on which a successful teacher is measured?

The important aspect of the issue is that there is no one criterion, but many criteria, and many of the most important ones (withitness etc, to use Kounin's terminology) are not possibly measured by cognitive tests like college degrees. Basically, there is no sure-fire way to tell who will be a good teacher before that person starts teaching. Therefore, excluding people on one weakly correlated criterion and never measuring any of the strongly related criteria sucks ass.

For the rest...
You've gone off on a tangent to my tangent! All very interesting though.
I will stress that I do believe teachers should be highly educated in their subject, and research in maths education supports that, I just don't think it's the only important thing.

Toto Wolfcastle

As interesting as this discussion is, can you start a new thread about it please so we can get back to the topic at hand? Thanks.

clartharlear

Sorry Janeybabe, will do.