1 David Mond University of Warwick mond@maths.warwick.ac.uk Warwick Teaching Certificate (Mathematics) An experiment in departmentally-based training MSOR Connections May 2005 Vol 5 No 2 Author's thanks... I am very grateful to Bill Cox, Michael Grove and Joe Kyle for their support with the project described in this article, and to Bill Cox and Rebecca Earle for helpful comments on an earlier draft. O ver the last five years, most British universities have introduced training for their new teaching staff. Completing it is, increasingly, a condition for ending probation and having one’s appointment made permanent. In most cases the training is provided, across all subjects, by a Centre for Staff Development, or a Centre for Academic Practice. This article begins with some very brief comments on central or generic staff training, and goes on to describe an experiment, still in its first year, in which the Mathematics Department at Warwick has taken over the training of its own staff. More details can be found at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/~mond/wtc.html (henceforth referred to as ‘the website’). 1. Participants’ criticisms of generic institutional teacher development By and large, the response of new mathematics lecturers at Warwick to generic training has been critical 1 . Participants feel that many of the issues central to their teaching are peculiar to mathematics and cannot be addressed in a generic programme aimed at practitioners of all subjects. The ‘reflective essays’ that form the mainstay of assessment are foreign to the practice of mathematicians, and leave them perplexed and frustrated. Only the part of the generic provision directly connected with their teaching, namely having their lectures observed and videoed, and observing others’ lectures, was felt to offer any significant benefit. 2. Departmental apprenticeship In the academic year 2004-2005, the Mathematics Institute at Warwick opted out of the staff training (the Warwick Teaching Certificate, WTC) provided by the Centre for Academic Practice (CAP) in order to implement its own training programme, the MWTC, designed primarily by Trevor Hawkes, with input from David Mond and with support and advice from Paul Blackmore, Director of CAP. The MWTC aims to provide a more satisfactory training by: 1. Building the training around an in-service apprenticeship. 2. Replacing generic taught modules by mentoring, by experienced members of staff, supplemented with talks and workshops delivered by recognised specialists on topics of obvious relevance. 3. Building a programme which seeks the consent of existing members of staff, and responds to the needs and interests of the new staff undergoing the training. 4. Encouraging new staff to engage critically with the teaching programmes they find in Warwick, in the light of their previous experience. 1. In the Warwick Mathematics Department this was made more acute by two additional factors: i. Most of our recent hirings come from abroad, and as a department working hard to strengthen an international reputation, we compete with universities in other countries to attract some of the best young mathematicians in the world. It was feared that the prospect of unpopular obligatory training would make this more difficult. ii. While new staff are being trained, their teaching duties are covered by temporary lecturers who are naturally not obliged to do the training, and who often work extremely hard teaching demanding courses, only to move on when their contract ends. The experience that they have gained teaching our courses is lost to us, and the continual turnover in staff detracts from continuity.