Oxbridge Teacher Seminars

Using Cambridge's extraordinary historical resources, this Study Group explores a selection of themes lying at the interstices of history as it is taught in secondary schools, and history as it is researched in universities. Drawing on examples from all periods, sessions address pedagogical questions such as how to incorporate literature, art, and cinema, as well as the social sciences such as anthropology and archaeology, into the syllabus; and how best to convey the value, uses, and abuses of history to the next generation of students. The Study Group also addresses research topics, privileging areas that are all too often excluded from syllabi, such as the long-term historical influence of environment, geography, and disease, as well as how the changing nature of war affected the human experience and transformed political institutions.

How do we excite today's students about English Literature? With this question in mind, the Study Group reads and discusses selected texts by major writers, exploring key ideas in literary criticism and how these may be presented in classrooms around the world. While considering texts that can stand on their own or be integrated into thematic courses, the group examines canonical writers from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf, along with others who have a particular connection to Cambridge such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Rupert Brooke, Sylvia Plath, and Zadie Smith. Participants visit special collections, the colleges of famous authors, and other sites of special literary interest around Cambridge.

This course is designed to assist educators in developing the tools and ideas with which to teach media literacy and news analysis. Working through talks, discussions, and case studies, the course is designed to provide a deep and up-to-date understanding of contemporary journalism and the different media through which it is consumed while considering the possible evolutions in news dissemination students will have to contend with in coming years. It will go on to discuss strategies for analyzing and assessing media, to help students develop the critical skills they need to help them evaluate and negotiate their way through information, with the intention of coming up with methods for promoting responsible news consumption.

We hope that our students leave us as confident, curious, and resourceful mathematicians. But how can we contribute to making it happen? There’s plenty of stimulating material on offer, but what do we pick and how do we use it? This Study Group is intended for teachers wanting to create a culture of enquiry and activity in their classroom. The course will offer an opportunity to explore activities that challenge students to think mathematically, and consider how the activities can be integrated into the school curriculum. It will introduce participants to the range of rich mathematical tasks which are freely available on the NRICH website and will consider the opportunities they offer for developing students’ reasoning and problem solving skills, and deepening their mathematical understanding.

Taking place in one of the world’s great scientific universities, Newton, Herschel, and Dirac’s alma mater, this Study Group has two intentions: to expose educators to the latest research being undertaken in fields as varied as the Big Bang, Dark Matter, the formation of galaxies, and the study of Exoplanets, and to discuss the best approaches through which to convey these often abstruse concepts and theories into the classroom. The Study Group will also address the latest developments in space exploration – including the James Webb telescope – and discuss how that, too, can be relayed back into the classroom.