The preparation of Mathematics Teachers in Australia - ACDS

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Table 7.3a Profile of the group of 1298 teachers who intended to continue mathematics teaching until at least 2010 (age, years of secondary school teaching, teaching responsibilities and gender) AGE TEACHING EXPERIENCE MATHEMATICS TEACHING GENDER Less than 30 years 30 – 39 years 40 – 49 years 50 years or older 10.3% 24.6% 39.5% 25.6% Less than 5 years 5 – 9 years 10 – 19 years 20 years or more 15.9% 14.2% 27.6% 42.3% Senior Junior school Middle school Senior school intermediate / advanced 62.5% 75.5% 77.0% 50.2% Female Male 49.2% 50.8% Table 7.3b Profile of the group of 452 teachers who intended to leave the teaching profession before 2010 (age, years of secondary school teaching, teaching responsibilities and gender) AGE TEACHING EXPERIENCE MATHEMATICS TEACHING GENDER Less than 30 years 30 – 39 years 40 – 49 years 50 years or older 8.5% 6.7% 10.3% 74.6% Less than 5 years 5 – 9 years 10 – 19 years 20 years or more 10.3% 7.6% 9.4% 72.6% Senior Junior school Middle school Senior school intermediate / advanced 59.5% 73.0% 70.8% 42.7% Female Male 41.7% 58.3% Table 7.3c Profile of the group of 1133 teachers who were undecided 1 about their career paths (age, years of secondary school teaching, teaching responsibilities and gender) AGE TEACHING EXPERIENCE MATHEMATICS TEACHING Less than 30 years 30 – 39 years 40 – 49 years 50 years or older 17.7% 21.0% 24.3% 37.0% Less than 5 years 5 – 9 years 10 – 19 years 20 years or more 20.0% 16.9% 22.4% 40.7% Senior Junior school Middle school Senior school intermediate / advanced 62.3% 72.3% 68.5% 37.4% GENDER Female Male 52.1% 47.9% 1 Includes ‘probably’ and ‘unsure’ responses to the question: Do you think that you will be teaching secondary school mathematics in 5 years time? The most common explanation from this group referred to the rewarding nature of teaching (n=250/407 written responses), while one in ten responses referred to a lack of other professional options (n=42/407) (Table 7.4). (Yes) – Enjoy the job and would expect to still be doing it for a long time yet [male; age 29yrs; teaching experience 7yrs] (Yes) - I love what I do. Teaching is more than a job for me. I cannot imagine doing anything else [female; age 41yrs; teaching experience 20yrs] 49
(Yes) – Getting too old to teach PE (Physical Education) all the time [male; age 41yrs; teaching experience 18yrs; teaching junior mathematics, middle and senior school PE] (Yes) – I enjoy my work and currently have a mix of teaching and administration [male; age 57yrs; teaching experience 34yrs] (Yes) – I love teaching maths and want to study to become qualified to teach it [female; age 28yrs; teaching experience 5yrs; teaching junior, middle and senior (elementary) mathematics, junior and middle school science] (Yes) – I’m committed (till age 54yrs 11mths for superannuation reasons) [male; age 48yrs; teaching experience 2yrs] (Yes) – Too tired to do anything else, too old to retrain, too much financial baggage to break-free [male; age 50yrs; teaching experience 25yrs] Table 7.4 Teachers’ comments regarding their career plans for five years time Teachers’ comments in response to the question: Do you think that you will be teaching secondary school mathematics in 5 years time? Proportion of responding teachers in each group to make the comment (%) Yes Probably Unsure No Number of teachers offering explanatory comments 407 294 273 320 Rewarding nature of teaching 61.4 13.3 1.5 0.6 General statement of commitment 21.6 3.1 0.0 0 Contingent upon contract renewal 2.5 13.9 7.0 0.6 No other professional options 10.3 6.8 1.1 0.6 Family commitments 5.9 8.5 4.8 2.5 Stressful nature of teaching 2.7 10.9 14.3 7.8 Retiring 3.7 21.8 36.3 74.4 Moving out of teaching profession 1.0 13.6 20.1 10.6 Moving out of mathematics (still teaching) Moving into school administration (still in school system) 0.7 9.9 8.4 5.0 1.0 3.4 5.1 1.9 Moving to part-time employment 2.2 6.1 3.3 1.9 ‘No’, not teaching in five years time Of the 452 teachers committed to leaving teaching within five years, the majority were at least 50 years of age, experienced teachers and male (Table 7.3b). More than half stated they were retiring, and another seven per cent explained that they were moving to another profession (Table 7.4). 50
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The Preparation of Mathematics Teac
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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 and 22: Table 3.1 Responses to survey of he
Page 23 and 24: 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% New South Wales Q
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: 7.2 The career plans of mathematics
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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The preparation of Mathematics Teachers in Australia - ACDS

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