Mathematics and teaching over time: voices of teachers and teacher educators: Compiled by Laurinda Brown

2013 marked 100 years of teacher education at the University of Bristol, currently a Graduate School of Education. To mark this occasion, on 28th June 2013, we formed a panel of mathematics teachers and teacher educators spanning as many of those years as we could, co-chaired by two of the people who had worked with the group of one-year teacher education student teachers, Laurinda Brown and John Hayter. We had, with Jan Winter when the three of us worked on the PGCE course together, asked questions, amidst concern about why teachers left the profession, about why teachers stayed in teaching. The panel consisted of representatives from the PGCE group over time, about twenty years apart, from the 60s to the present day together with Alf Coles, recently appointed to the full-time role replacing Jan Winter, who represented the future of mathematics teacher education at the University of Bristol. We had a public discussion for an hour focused around:
• What’s the experience of becoming a teacher of mathematics?
• What are the links between the PGCE year and the professional life of a teacher?
• What are our experiences on the panel?
• What are your experiences in the audience?
• Why do teachers stay in teaching?
• What do we believe is desirable for teacher
education in the future?
So, here are short pieces of writing that were invited from members of the panel and members of the audience after the event, followed by some comments by Laurinda Brown who had the task of summing up the discussions at the end of the session.