Austrian preparation course for teachers’ mobility

After distributing flyers and announcing the course, both in schools and in the Faculty of Mathematics, two teacher students and two in-service-teachers confirmed their interest in taking part in the course. These low numbers have several reasons: For the teacher students, this course is completely voluntary and can not be used to get credits towards their studies. We attempted to include the course in the regular study program, but “traditional” courses prevailed. As for the in-service-teachers, they have to do the course in their spare time (it is rather difficult to get a leave granted for training activities, particularly if they take place on several days). Also there is no tradition in Austria in teacher mobility, both with school teachers (pre- and in-service) and with university teachers (the Faculty of Mathematics could not even fill its (rather small) quota for Erasmus exchange students and teachers this year). We were anyway able to find these dedicated four people who now participate in the course.
As the course takes place until the end of the summer term 2008, this report is preliminary and covers both the activities that already took place and the planned activities.

Part 1 – English for Mathematicians (October 2007 – January 2008)
This course was attended also by other students not further participating in the project but interested in teaching in a foreign language. This part of the course concentrated on giving a presentation about a mathematical subject in the English language. As we plan to send teachers to Denmark, and were not able to find any Danish-speaking teachers (that are not either studying Danish or are of Danish descent), it was agreed earlier in the project that the lessons at the Danish schools will be performed in English. Each participant could freely choose a subject of their liking (within mathematics) and talk about this subject in front of his/her peers. These presentations have been videotaped. In the middle of the course the videos have been watched and commented on by the participants. In the second half of the course the participants were to give another presentation of another mathematical subject, taking into account the comments of their colleagues and the teachers.
The course took place weekly, conducted by a Language Teacher and a Mathematics Education Teacher, 10 units, with 45 minutes presentation time and 45 minutes discussion time.
The idea behind this part was to give the participants a degree of security in speaking about their subject in English (which none of them has done before). Comments were very positive; particularly the video feedback was well received.

Part 2 – Getting ready to teach abroad (March 2008 – June 2008)
This course is conducted in a blocked form (four afternoons/evenings), as it turned out to be easier for the participants to get leaves four times a semester than every week.

Unit 1 – The project, the Danish schools

In this unit, the participants got introduced into the Danish school system, and also got a concrete description of the host school (geography, structure, school culture etc.).
Organisation details have been clarified.
The two selected topics (equivalence of fractions and theorem of Pythagoras) have been introduced.

Unit 2 –Theorem of Pythagoras, Classroom language

Using several materials, the participants developed a teaching unit for the given topic.
The “classroom language” file of Birgith and the “Conducting a lesson in English” file of Marie have been discussed. Useful phrases have been selected for translation.

Unit 3 – Equality of fractions, special vocabulary

Using several materials, the participants will develop a teaching unit for the given topic.
Vocabulary particular for the two topics will be introduced and discussed, using the book “Mathematisches Fachwörterbuch”.

Unit 4 – Test teaching

The participating students and teachers will “test conduct” parts of the lessons.
Discussion about the tested units
Clarification of final details