In 2017 I introduced the Visiting Teaching Fellow position to the school of Physics. The School of Mathematics and Statistics has had a visiting teaching fellow program for decades, I have been on their selection committee for a number of years and could see many benefits in introducing a similar position in physics. It has been very successful with the teaching fellow being very actively engaged in producing resources for teachers and school students.
A teaching fellow is a current high school physics teacher who works in a secondment position in the school of physics for one year. The visiting teaching fellow program aims to increase communication and links between schools and universities. The visiting teaching fellow will teach in the first year physics laboratory as well as teaching some first year problem solving workshops and helping out students in drop in sessions.
The school of physics will benefit from learning more about how high school classes are taught and the knowledge basis of our incoming students. We hope that schools will benefit from seeing where some of their students end up and learning about the way we teach students at university.
Our inaugural teaching fellow in 2017, Ingrid Mendes, now at Sydney Grammar, played a very important role in the 2017 SEIF grant I was awarded to develop depth study resources for high school students. She also developed one of the courses for the graduate certificate in physics for science teachers, PHYS9130. The depth study resources are available here: https://www.openlearning.com/unswscience/ I have uploaded our report about the SEIF grant below, this involved collaboration from people across the faculty of science.
Our 2018 teaching fellow Jess Budden introduced an excursion program for schools. This makes use of our equipment and lab space out of term time. The program has been further developed by later fellows.
Our 2019 teaching fellow Troy Garrett focused on developing the SciX program, a program to support extension science in which year 12 students participate in a week long summer school mentored by PhD students working with an academic. You can find out more about SciX here: https://www.science.unsw.edu.au/engagement/scix-school-extension-program this program also involved collaborating with people across the faculty. The summer school was very well received by the 65 attending students. I have uploaded a report about the January 2020 summer school below.
You can read more about our teaching fellows here: https://physics.unsw.edu.au/high-school/visiting-teaching-fellows