At Sussex All PGCE Students Are Asked to Write a 4,000 Word Educational Autobiography Before

from Pat Drake

At Sussex all PGCE students are asked to write a 4,000 word educational autobiography before they begin training. I’ve kept lots of examples over years from mathematics trainees. The extracts below are chosen to illustrate archetypes that we will recognise, and are 10 years old. I’ve changed the names, but I haven’t been able to contact the individuals to ask permission to use them, so I’d be grateful if we do not circulate them further, or quote from them except in the seminar.

Here’s Andrew, 1st class honours in Physics, talking about his A-level choices: I decided I wanted to do Maths and Further Maths at A-level. It would be misleading to suggest that the sole reason for this choice was my heartfelt love of the subject. I had decided that because of the nature of maths homework (lots of short solutions to problems as opposed to long essays) it would lend itself excellently to doing at the bus stop and on the bus to and from college. This would save me from doing any work in my own time. The natural subject to accompany double maths was of course physics as the syllabuses overlapped quite a bit resulting with less overall work to do. So, armed with my little-work-as possible choice of subjects I started sixth form with the full expectation of a year or so of leisure and then a couple of months of cramming for the final exams. .... I remember drifting through most of my first year....then three things happened that totally changed my approach. The first was that I became a Christian ... if I was doing it for God, then just getting by was not really an option. The second was that we were encouraged to start looking into going to university, and I was shocked to discover that the University of Birmingham would not be satisfied with the assortment of Ds and Es as I was currently getting. Third, I was finding it harder and harder to ‘get by’ because...as I didn’t understand yesterday’s work I found it almost impossible to grasp what we were doing today. .... My second year of A-levels was the first year in my life that I can remember really working hard. I found it very satisfying to be able to take on a problem and after wrestling with it, to solve it. It was a sense of achievement and of doing something well. I hadn’t really noticed it until then but the whole ethos of sixth form college was different from school. If I’d worked this hard and done well at school I’d have been classed as an ‘egghead’ and a ‘girl’.

Here is Pete, degree in Computer Science, and about five years experience in industry, talking about his approach to studying:

I’ve no doubt that I was much happier in lessons than out, especially in the last couple of years where streaming brought about more taxing and probably better behaved lessons. I suspect that I wasn’t a particularly interesting student to teach. I was probably a very poor contributor to lessons. My approach to learning was a solitary one. As a result I rarely remember getting much attention from the teachers, and now no teacher stands out in my recollection above any other. ... During my secondary school years my

1 from Pat Drake solitary but strongly self-motivated approach to my own learning became more of a feature. In school, after taking my maths O’ level in November I spent 6 months studying for a statistics O’level from worksheets before doing well in the exam. And at home I spent hours unravelling the deepest secrets of my computer. Although I hope that since this time my experiences have helped develop a more open and group oriented approach to learning, the ability to quickly teach myself something from a book has stayed with me and proved invaluable. ... The change from 2 year O’level course to in particular a 1 year Maths A’ level was a significant step up. I was fortunate enough to be taught at this time by the most outstanding teacher of my academic experience, Mr Looward... a definite team atmosphere developed in class and for the first time I started to move away from my predominantly solitary approach to learning. ...[ at York university] the course was well planned and run by a very professional department [who] gave the impression of being at the leading edge of the subject. The standard of students seemed high and after years of being at the top of the class I had to get used to the new experience of being somewhere in the middle.... for the first time I came up against work which, try as I might, I had to finally admit was beyond me. ... Apart from providing me with an excellent preparation for work, my time at university also prepared me for life outside work. Towards the end of my second year I was given the option of a year long industrial placement, sandwiched between my second and final years of study. Taking it proved to be a good decision and left me feeling more confident and better informed about the world of work outside. Today, nearly all my interests and involvements can be charted back to my university days. In both the professional and private sides of my life, university has proved to be a springboard for virtually everything that’s happened since. ... Jiu Jitsu was one of the many activities I became involved in during my first year of university, and has turned out to be the most enduring. In the study of Jiu Jitsu the link between teaching and learning, in particular learning through teaching, is constantly emphasised. From a very early stage students are encouraged to become involved in the development of less experienced participants. ... students are required to have a certain amount of teaching experience before they can be tested for the next grade. With each grade the level of teaching increases until the instructor graded is reached and the student is ready to be a fully fledged teacher.

Here’s Janet, beginning PGCE in her mid-thirties: Apart from my mathematical education I have very few memories of other subjects or their teachers. I learned in the shadow of my sister who is my elder by 4 years; and felt that if she couldn’t do something then it would be pointless for me to try. Fortunately I also followed my sister’s strengths (primarily mathematics) but I was never able to escape the mental block of feeling I would only ever fall short of her accomplishments.... At the end of the second year I sat examinations which were intended to stream my year group for Mathematics, English and French. The day before the exams I had a serious cycling accident; I broke both my front teeth, badly cut my hands, elbows and knees and suffered concussion. In the Maths test I still managed to achieve 98% and was top of the year.

2 from Pat Drake

... I did encounter one very effective source of pressure. His name was Noel Masters. When we were streamed and introduced to the boys in our class I found that I had really met my match. Mr Clutton would regularly set us tests in class, and when the results were announced one or two lessons later, my adrenalin levels would be sky high. I HAD TO BEAT him (sic). It was as if the reputation of my sex depended on it. ... Defending my position quite so aggressively didn’t come without a price. As I assumed my position of superiority I did become quite isolated. ... My father was ecstatic when my sister got accepted into Cambridge. He didn’t have any other topic of conversation and my mother and I slipped into the background. Nothing was too much trouble for Lizzie and she knew it. My father regarded Cambridge as an elitist institution and (I suppose to hide his feelings of inferiority) he gave my sister a small fortune which she mostly spent on entertainment. Meanwhile my mother and I economised and listened to my father huffing and puffing about where he was supposed to get all the money Lizzie needed. ... About the time I was taking my GCEs my sister was nearing the end of her first year at Cambridge. I had just sat the final exam when the bombshell dropped. My sister had failed her first year exams. ... My father wrote a letter to Lizzie’s tutors begging that she be given a second chance and luckily they agreed. Apparently they had overlooked the fact that she’d never studied Applied but had opted for Statistics, and at Cambridge a large proportion of the course was devoted to Applied. My GCE results were very good, better than my sister had done. I wanted to move to a different school to study for A-levels and this was my opportunity. My father initially advised me not to take A levels after all, further education was simply causing distress to my sister and consequently to my father. So I attended interviews for bank clerk positions, but as I got plenty of job offers I felt that I would just be taking the easy way out, and so I proclaimed myself committed to A-levels. My father sought the advice of our neighbours who being head teachers knew about good schools. Their daughter had done well at the Convent school in Brentwood, and they generously offered to introduce me to the Reverend Mother. As [my boyfriend] Keith travelled to school in Brentwood I was quite happy with the idea of accompanying him on the bus. ... Academically I was way behind the other girls, who had sat more difficult boards than I had and were therefore more advanced. My maths teacher was a lovely lady, full of smiles, humour, motherliness, enthusiasm and excitement. My maths lessons were fun, the work was very exciting and varied as were the lessons. Some of the lessons were taking notes from the board, followed by lots of homework; some were working through question sheets; some had pupils working through questions on the board in from to of the class with hints and suggestions being offered; some were just troubleshooting debates about difficult topics. Our teacher came across as if she too were working out the answers for the first time and had as much to learn as us. We would end a lesson not having discovered an answer and come to the next lesson hoping to be the one to have solved the problem in

3 from Pat Drake the meantime. Mrs Matton recounted how she always slept with a notepad by her bed, as sometimes the answers would come to her in the middle of her dreams. I empathised with this as it often happened to me. ... Maths progressed steadily, however my weakness was Applied. By now Lizzie had failed her second year at Cambridge because of her Applied marks. This time she was politely asked to leave. Her failure was never discussed at home. Mrs Matton made light of my drawings with their forces going in the wrong directions so I persevered. Keith tried to help me with some concepts but many times it resulted in an argument so we didn’t pursue it. To this day I don’t feel as if I did well in my A’s and if possible will avoid disclosing my grades. I was fulfilling no real goal by going to [Sheffield] university except to occupy the 3 years that Keith would be away [at Oxford]. His mother made it plain that were I not to go to university I would not be good enough for her son. .... When Keith and I visited each other our different study techniques became blatantly obvious even though we were studying the same subject. Keith worked a lot harder than me, he would spend a greater time trying to resolve a tutorial problem, even researching external material where necessary. This was a complete revelation to me. If I couldn’t complete the tutorial exercises using lecture notes I would study the answer sheets given out after the actual tutorial class. Keith’s secondary schooling had obviously trained him to work independently and he never felt it a hardship to go back to first principles to work something out. The depth of his understanding was far greater than mine. ... I achieved a 2.2 which Keith said was average so that was OK, but not as good as Lizzie had done [Lizzie finished her degree at a London Polytechnic and got a first]. My parents sat quietly and sombrely at my graduation ceremony. When I asked my father if he was enjoying himself he just said “ Well it’s no different to your sister’s graduation, once you’ve been to one I guess they’re all the same.” He didn’t appreciate that this occasion was a celebration of MY achievement and I was definitely left with the feeling that I hadn’t quite made the grade.