The preparation of Mathematics Teachers in Australia - ACDS

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250 200 150 100 50 0 19 number of mathematics teachers per school Figure 3.1 Number of mathematics teachers per school, as reported by heads of mathematics departments Table 3.2 Number of mathematics teachers per school, as reported by each school’s head of mathematics number of mathematics teachers per school total 19 mean ACT 11 0 5 3 2 1 11.27 NSW 165 16 92 48 7 2 8.45 NT 11 1 5 5 0 0 8.55 QLD 102 5 29 34 16 18 12.76 SA 75 14 24 23 12 2 9.76 TAS 23 4 11 5 3 0 8.17 VIC 144 17 34 33 29 31 13.53 WA 77 14 34 24 4 1 8.44 total 608 71 234 175 73 55 (100%) (12%) (38%) (29%) (12%) (9%) Compared to their counterparts in Victoria and Queensland, mathematics teachers in New South Wales taught a broader range of mathematics subjects and were less likely to teach non-mathematics subjects (see Section 3.2; Table 3.7). Mathematics teachers in New South Wales were also more likely to have studied mathematics to third year or beyond at university (p
60.0% 50.0% 40.0% New South Wales Queensland Victoria 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% 19 New South Wales 9.7% 55.8% 29.1% 4.2% 1.2% Queensland 4.9% 28.4% 33.3% 15.7% 17.6% Victoria 11.8% 23.6% 22.9% 20.1% 21.5% number of mathematics teachers per school Figure 3.2 Distribution of mathematics teacher numbers per school for New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Table 3.3 Comparison of mathematics teacher numbers for New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, grouped by ARIA. Highly Accessible Accessible Moderately Accessible number of teachers (mean) n (schools) number of teachers (mean) n (schools) number of teachers (mean) n (schools) NSW 9.04 120 7.53 36 5.44 9 VIC 14.7 121 9.78 18 5.89 9 QLD 13.81 71 13.6 11 9.39 18 3.2 The teaching patterns of mathematics teachers Section 3.2.1 details the pattern of subject offerings of the schools surveyed, based on the responses from heads of mathematics, before Section 3.2.2 describes the teaching patterns of the mathematics teachers surveyed. 3.2.1 Subjects offered by schools at senior school level Heads of mathematics were asked to indicate the senior school mathematics subjects offered by their schools. Elementary and Intermediate mathematics were taught by the majority of schools (Table 3.4) (see Appendix 2 for details of subject classifications). In contrast, advanced mathematics was offered by just 64 per cent of the schools surveyed. There are indications that this was due to lower student demand. Half of the heads whose schools offered elementary and intermediate mathematics, but not advanced mathematics (n=81/155), cited ‘insufficient demand from students’ as the reason, while only six cited ‘shortage of qualified teachers’. Barrington and Brown (2005) estimated that, in 2005, just 25,000 students studied advanced mathematics at Year 12 – compared to an estimated 100,000 to study elementary mathematics. 3.2.2 Teaching patterns of mathematics teachers Most (91%) of the teachers responding to the survey were employed in schools that taught senior school, and 85 per cent were from schools offering five or six year levels including junior, middle and senior years. The majority of mathematics teachers taught mathematics at multiple school levels (Table 3.5). For example, one third taught either junior plus middle school or middle plus senior school. Another third 10
Page 2 and 3: The Preparation of Mathematics Teac
Page 4 and 5: Contents Contents..................
Page 6 and 7: Table 6.3 Average age of secondary
Page 8 and 9: Recommendations: The Australian Cou
Page 10 and 11: • Heads of mathematics expressed
Page 12: Acknowledgements This report was pr
Page 15 and 16: Chapter 2: The study’s purpose, m
Page 17 and 18: Questions involving named school su
Page 19 and 20: Box 1: Definitions of selected term
Page 21: Table 3.1 Responses to survey of he
Page 25 and 26: Table 3.5 The number of respondents
Page 27 and 28: Table 3.7 Range of teaching respons
Page 29 and 30: • The expectation of most heads w
Page 31 and 32: In light of the recognised differen
Page 33 and 34: Chapter 5: Mathematics teachers - t
Page 35 and 36: Table 5.2 Number of units of mathem
Page 37 and 38: 100% 80% 60% 40% major less than ma
Page 39 and 40: Table 5.6 Teachers’ perceptions o
Page 41 and 42: Table 5.7 Teachers’ comments rega
Page 43 and 44: Further analysis revealed a relatio
Page 45 and 46: 5.6 Tertiary qualifications of math
Page 47 and 48: Table 6.1 Responses received to the
Page 49 and 50: difference was marked by a ‘spike
Page 51 and 52: 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 20
Page 53 and 54: 250 200 < 5 yrs experience (n=479)
Page 55 and 56: Table 6.8 Career plans of early car
Page 57 and 58: Chapter 7: Recruiting and retaining
Page 59 and 60: In previous years I have had little
Page 61 and 62: 7.2 The career plans of mathematics
Page 63 and 64: (Yes) - Getting too old to teach PE
Page 65 and 66: have contributed to this trend, inc
Page 67 and 68: Chapter 8: What attracts people to
Page 69 and 70: 8.2 Suggestions for attracting more
Page 71 and 72: Chapter 9: Conclusions The growing
Page 73 and 74:
Appendix 1: Schools surveyed - addi
Page 75 and 76:
Table A1.4 Number of responses from
Page 77 and 78:
Appendix 3: Demographics of mathema
Page 79:
References Barrington, F. and Brown
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