I didn't realise teachers went under some kind of assessment to teach particular parts of their subjects.
In the UK a mathematics teacher is just a mathematics teacher. They all have to teach calculus because that's part of the curriculum. If you couldn't teach calculus then you couldn't be a mathematics teacher.
(That's not a boast - we're poorer and less effective at maths than you are.)
What do you do if you're a mathematics teacher but can't do the calculus part? Handover to someone else for just that part of the year? Must be a bit professionally embarrassing?
> I didn't realise teachers went under some kind of assessment to teach particular parts of their subjects.
This is hugely variable within the US.
> In the UK a mathematics teacher is just a mathematics teacher. They all have to teach calculus because that's part of the curriculum. If you couldn't teach calculus then you couldn't be a mathematics teacher.
I think there's a lot of math teachers who would be a bit iffy teaching Calculus that have department chairs that schedule them to teach earlier math instead.
> (That's not a boast - we're poorer and less effective at maths than you are.)
I don't feel like our mathematics system is very good at all.
Sounds like the difference is in the UK a teacher teachers a cohort of students through all subjects, not a subject for all cohorts of students. We have one maths teacher who teaches you everything.
Maybe they're terrible at half of it? I don't know.
> Sounds like the difference is in the UK a teacher teachers a cohort of students through all subjects, not a subject for all cohorts of students. We have one maths teacher who teaches you everything.
Really? That's very interesting.
I had a different math teacher every year / level. I'm at a smaller independent school, where you may have the same math teacher a couple times but people definitely specialize-- we have the teacher who teaches mostly 6th grade math and pre-algebra, and a teacher who mostly teaches algebra I and geometry, and so on.
On the one hand, you lose continuity. But you also get a fresh start each year, with a new teacher who probably teaches the things you had trouble with in a different way...
This was not my experience in the UK - at a grammar school with a specialist mathematics designation (in the late 90s). There was a wide ability gap between the mathematics teachers, and very few could practically teach calculus.
Further, at that point in time, calculus was only part of the A’ level curriculum, and most people would never encounter it unless electing to do that course.
In the UK a mathematics teacher is just a mathematics teacher. They all have to teach calculus because that's part of the curriculum. If you couldn't teach calculus then you couldn't be a mathematics teacher.
(That's not a boast - we're poorer and less effective at maths than you are.)
What do you do if you're a mathematics teacher but can't do the calculus part? Handover to someone else for just that part of the year? Must be a bit professionally embarrassing?