How will I be taught?
While a student in the Education Tripos, you will encounter a wide range of different teaching and learning styles. These might include:
- Lectures provide you with the basics, upon which you will build your knowledge with your own research and reading. As many of your lecturers will be working at the forefront of their fields, their lectures enable you to engage with the very latest ideas and debates.
- Seminars and classes are where lecturers explore a particular topic with groups of students, are less formal than lectures. You are expected to contribute actively to the discussions.
- Supervisions are one of the unique advantages of teaching at Cambridge. Supervisions are teaching sessions for pairs or small groups of students. You hand in written work in advance and then have the opportunity to discuss it with the supervisor and other students and to explore the subject further with them. This allows you to explore new approaches and discuss both the set topic and other aspects of the course in depth.
- Subject specific teaching might occur in your chosen subject studies, it could be anything from practical work in laboratories to drama studios, fieldwork or language classes.
- Classroom experience is vitally important if you do wish to become a teacher. You should plan to make arrangements to spend some of your vacation time in schools or working with children and young people and you should choose to base your research project in a school.