The Australian Education Reporter
Mentors inspire STEM excellence
“If you’re thinking about studying maths, try to appreciate that it’s abstract and beautiful and that there’s a lot more to it than you can see.”
CANBERRA Girls Grammar School ( CGGS) Principal Anne Coutts is no stranger to STEM, coming from a science background.
Once the sole female science teacher in a previous school, she’s proud of CGGS’ predominantly female maths department and the culture within the school.
“We have very high levels of expectation, passionate teachers, proven results, great resources and lots of professional development for teachers,” Ms Coutts said.
And it’s working, with student Rowena Stening graduating last year after scoring the highest out of female Year 12 students in the Australian Mathematics Competition and winning the Cheryl Praeger Medal for female excellence in mathematics in Australia.
“Rowena was intrinsically good at maths and worked really hard, but we gave her time to mentor others and to really be a role model to the others which was just fantastic,” Ms Coutts said.
“Mentoring has a twofold effect. One that the older students are seen as role models and the younger girls know that it can be done, and two, they get a different take on it because the student may explain things in a different way,” she said.
According to the 2017 Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) Gender
Report 2017: Participation, Performance, and Attitudes Towards Mathematics, in 2016 there
were 61 girls for every 100 boys studying advanced mathematics.
Statistics are improving slowly, but the lack of female students mean there will be fewer female university students going on become STEM professionals, and even teach in schools.
“We’ve got students failing to take it in senior years of secondary education, failing to take these subjects in tertiary education and the thing that might make the difference to them is inspirational teaching in schools,” Ms Coutts said.
“That’s what I think the Chief Scientist means when he said inspirational teaching engages students and captures their imagination and enables them to see that maths isn’t a dry subject,” she said.
Ms Stening agrees with this, stating that inspirational teachers at CGGS encouraged her to look beyond the syllabus and pursue avenues of mathematics that interested her.
“I think is really important in subjects like this where it’s very hard to see the point in learning it if you don’t enjoy it,” she said.
“If you’re thinking about studying maths, try to appreciate that it’s abstract and beautiful and that there’s a lot more to it than you can see.”
While partnerships with universities and industry give students a glimpse into the real world applications of mathematics, Ms Coutts said if she was in charge of a co-ed school today with the current shortages, she would be actively looking to recruit female maths teachers and female science teachers; not only as role models but to mentor new graduate teachers and those teaching out-of-field.
“One of the things they’ve done in England is actually encourage graduates in science and maths to actually give their time to two years of teaching,” Ms Coutts said.
“They give them a small amount of training but these graduates are idealistic science and maths graduates and go into a school where there are established teacher mentors and put fresh eyes and a fresh spin on the subject from their recent study and experience.”
“I thought it was an interesting initiative to get some great graduates who wouldn’t have thought about committing to a life of being a teacher, just to dip their toe in the water,” she said.