The Deakin STEME team has been successful in a bid to deliver new Graduate Certificates in Secondary Mathematics and in Secondary Science that support teachers without formal qualifications in teaching mathematics/science (‘out of field’ teachers) to gain knowledge and experience of mathematics/science ideas and best practice teaching approaches. The design and delivery of the courses will involve a Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology with cycles of planning, evaluation and refinement. We hope through this process to learn a lot about the context of out of field teaching, the experience of teachers across subject boundaries, and how best to support their learning.
The course has recently passed through the Deakin approval processes and planning is well under way for what will be a significant undertaking. The Department of Education is providing scholarships to teachers to take the course, including time release, and this arrangement may continue into 2022. There are 275 teachers projected for the 2021 courses, which will be online in Trimester 1 but move to face-to-face intensives in Trimester 2.
The course is structured around mathematics and science content domains but will have a strong classroom focus and will draw on STEME researchers’ considerable experience with researching teachers’ out-of-field experience, particularly a stream of projects led by Linda Hobbs, and the expertise of the team generally in researching with teachers.