Visiting Lecturer, Dr Sharon Mc Auliffe, Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Dr Sharon Mc Auliffe, Senior Lecturer: GET Mathematics Education, Faculty of Education – Mowbray, Cape Peninsula University of Technology visited EPI•STEM on Wednesday 3rd October 2018. Dr McAuliffe is part of a National Department of Higher Education and EU project for primary initial teacher education - PrimTEd (2016-2020).
About the Programme:
Drawing on outputs from the national symposium held in March 2016 and further deliberations by an interim national programme coordinating team led by DHET, the following 4 project areas will be taken forward in the PrimTEd Programme, led by 5 working groups (WGs):
- WG 1 & Project 1: Developing new teacher graduate’s ability to teach English First Additional language and African languages, with a special focus on reading.
- WG 2 & Project 2: Developing new teacher graduate’s ability to teach number sense and early algebra.
- WG 3 and Project 3: Developing new teacher graduate’s ability to teach geometry and measurement.
- WG 4 and Project 4: Developing new teacher graduate’s ability to think mathematically and to infuse their own teaching with a mathematical thinking approach.
In addition to the 5 discipline-based working groups, 3 cross-cutting working groups (CCWGs) will be established to focus on important cross cutting areas
- CCWG 1 & Project 5: Knowledge management, including materials development, M&E liaison, communication, marketing and network coherence
- CCWG 2 and Project 6: Assessment
- CCWG 3 and Project 7: Work-integrated learning
She is involved in part of WG4 and each group is tasked with developing the following:
- Teaching standards (knowledge and practice standards/competence standards) for the component of mathematics or languages /literacy teachers that are the focus of the working groups.
- Curriculum frameworks for the respective component based of teaching standards. (Curriculum frameworks are guidelines which indicate how the component should be addressed in initial teacher education programmes for primary teachers.)
- Well-designed comprehensive courses and materials that support the delivery of the language/literacy and mathematics components of initial teacher education programmes for primary school teachers, including the work-integrated learning component of the programmes.
- Assessment tools that enable the reliable assessment of initial teacher education students and newly qualified teacher’s ability/competence to teach children to read, write and do mathematics, including assessment tools that can be used in the work-integrated learning component of initial teacher education programmes.
- Capacity development opportunities for teacher education academics involved in these two areas of primary teacher education.
She has been in involved in the design of a draft conceptual framework for MT to guide the standards and task design.
Dr Mc Auliffe visited EPISTEM to discuss the work done so far in WG4 and to get the insights of the Director and EPISTEM researchers in relation to their work on similar projects.
Pictured from left to right: Kathy O’Sullivan - Coordinator PDMT & PhD student, EPI•STEM, Dr Niamh O’Meara – Lecturer in Mathematics Education, EPI•STEM , UL, Dr Sharon McAuliffe – Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Professor Merrilyn Goos – Professor of STEM Education & Director EPI•STEM, Jill White – PhD student, EPI•STEM