I have written before about the parlous state of mathematics achievements amoung our students in Ireland.  There is a pressing need to improve maths standards and there seems to be very little consensus on how to achieve improvements.  We have had suggestions of increasing the reward for studying maths at the highest levels - by increasing the points for mathematics in the leaving cert.  We have had suggestions of having a longer school year so that additional mathematics can be included in the curriculum (it might work) and we have had suggestions that industry should become involved to give students practical reasons for why maths is important.

Well, to add to the whole cauldron of variables in the numbers soup, we have a new publication that was undertaken in the US and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, a very prestigious and august publication.  There are four authors - 3 female, one male - and they work at Colombia University, one of the very best in the US.

The abstract of their publication is here:

People’s fear and anxiety about doing math—over and above actual math ability—can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers’ anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ beliefs about who is good at math. First- and second-grade female teachers completed measures of math anxiety. The math achievement of the students in these teachers’ classrooms was also assessed. There was no relation between a teacher’s math anxiety and her students’ math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year’s end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement. Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers’ math anxiety carries consequences for girls’ math achievement by influencing girls’ beliefs about who is good at math.

So, we may have a self-perpetuating situation in relation to mathematics education (there are no figures for Ireland, but I’m betting we are not so different).  Girls may - in some cases - develop maths anxieties due to the anxieties of their female teachers, who developed these anxieties from their teachers, etc.  The absence of this effect in boys might explain why boys are found in excess numbers in university courses that have a substantial mathematics component.

I guess this warrants further research and ‘fixing’ this issue is unlikely to have a major impact on people’s perception of maths in general, however, it seems more like causation that simple correlation to me. Could we radically change the outcomes for girls by putting some additional assistance into primary schools - getting teachers who are anxious about their mathematics abilities to self-identify and then to provide them with assistance?

It would seem disappointing, that a young girls perception of maths might not be based as much on their actual ability as their perception of their ability.

Link to the paper.

Yesterday I was at a meeting where some of the results of an independent study of our research outcomes was presented.

I was told I couldn’t see all the results, but nobody told me I couldn’t talk about the results that I did see.

The study was carried out by a Dutch company who specialise in this kind of thing.  It is to help NUIM focus on those areas where research output is the highest.

So, here it is.  The department of biology at NUI Maynooth is now rated as being about 37% above the average for a biological science department among the top 275 universities in the world.

Included in this comparison would be places like Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Imperial College, London etc.

What this means is that we would fit easily into a university that is in the top 100, despite NUIM only being in existence as an independent university for about 16 years, despite only receiving moderate amounts of funding for the past decade (in global terms).  I think this is a pretty awesome result.This report is an assessment of our research output.  Research is done by academics carefully reading huge amounts of literature, identifying research questions that are really important and getting the answers before their competitors get them.  This takes time, intelligence and hard work. Very hard work.

What is not being considered in this report is the amount of students that we look after - 15 permanent, full-time academics are teaching about 750 students.

We were reviewed a few months ago by a professor from the UK and a professor from the US.  Again, this is an independent view and believe me, these people are independent-minded.  Their verdict?  They couldn’t believe that we were doing to much work with so few resources.  The full report is yet to be published, but this is the feedback we have gotten so far.

At NUI Maynooth there are approximately 275 academic staff and about 5,000 undergrads and 1,500 post-grads.

At Imperial College London, there are approximately 9,000 undergrads and apporximately 4,500 post-grads (a little more than double the student population), however, there are 3,000 academics.  Yes 3,000!!!

When Batt O’Keeffe makes his comparisons with the UK, is he taking into consideration how much we work? How much value for money he gets? How much he would really have to spend if he wanted Irish students to have the same resources as the students at Imperial College?

His latest statement about Irish academics working four hours per week is embarassing for him and dangerous for the rest of the country - who wants to go back to a situation where our 3rd level students are being taught by people who have no research record?  Do we want the best for our students or do we not?  Do we want the best academics to leave because they are not getting support from the Minister who should be supporting them? Does Batt O’Keeffe know the difference? What do we want for our students?

If Batt O’Keeffe damages the 3 level sector any more than it has been damaged, it will be 2030 before we recover - these things take time.

This will mean that Irish academics will be heading to India or China to get jobs there, because believe me, the ministers for education in India and China are not so stupid.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski has been writing about Bat O’Keefe’s allegation that some university academics only work 4 hours per week, or at least teach only four hours per week.

It is not clear why this figure came out from Bat O’Keeffe’s mouth, but it smacks of a ’softening up’ of the third level sector in an effort to reduce funding even more than before.

In my department, we have a total of 15 permanent academic staff right now and 14 who have a full teaching load.  We are dealing with about 750 students.  It is relatively easy to do the maths and see that this is really not a good way to try to teach.  We have massive classes and any degree courses that have small numbers are being shelved, even if they are, arguably, useful degree courses.

We put together demonstrations for the Young Scientists exhibitions, we constantly visit schools, hoping to inspire young people to go to university, we deal with student issues - both academic and personal, we write grant proposals (almost endlessly), we read research papers (day and night), we write research articles (http://bioinf.nuim.ie/pubs.html), we mark exams (almost all of January was taken up with this), we design new courses, we deal with endless administration, audits, quality reviews, benchmarking exercises…

And now we endure being demeaned and denigrated by the government minister who is tasked with building and improving the education sector.

O’Keeffe might have worked in the third-level sector once, but clearly either he wan’t suited for it, or it wasn’t too kind to him.  Either way, he didn’t make a lifelong career out of it.  Clearly, either he has no idea what is involved when you are working in an Irish University, in which case he is a fool, or he does know and is being dishonest.

You might want to read this today about Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a scientist who caused much of the controversy about the MMR vaccine and his claim of a link with Autism.

The problem with this is that it comes 12 years after his initial publication (13 authors on the publication, the journal was the Lancet and now 10 of the authors have retracted the paper) and by now, there is firmly a link, or question of a link between MMR and Autism planted in people’s minds.

Naturally, this has led to a decrease in uptake of the MMR vaccine and unquestionably the unnecessary deaths of innocent children who might otherwise have been safely vaccinated and who would be alive today.

That a scientist can hide data from other scientists is nothing new and that graduate students go along with the dishonesty of their supervisors is nothing new.  As a graduate student, you are in a bit of a bind - if you go against this person who is in charge of your career, then where does this leave you? You might never graduate, your parents, friends and family will wonder about it and you don’t get the qualification and career that you dreamed about.  So, stay quiet and get your qualification and move on…

But now, do you have blood on your hands?

Parents who were spooked by your publication refused vaccination for their children as a consequence?

Parents now refuse other vaccines because “if there is  aproblem with one vaccine, then there might be a problem with them all”…

It is a lot of responsibility to place on the shoulders of a young and inexperienced scientist.

This is why Science needs tight regulation - to stop rogue scientists.

Fortunately, they ALL get caught out.

You see, one of the most important facets of the scientific method is that science is reproducible and also that it is reproduced.  Every paper I publish is met with emails requesting copies of my data, details of the analysis method, etc.  You can get away with nothing!!

And this is how it should be.

So Apple are going to release a new computer today.  It will be called the iSlate or the iTablet or something like that apparently (just google some techie blog to get some more information on that.

The Apple share price has doubled this year, which is amazing given the economy and how the recent recession has hurt the computer types, but what makes this even more amazing is the fact that Apple’s share price has grown from about 16 dollars per share six years ago to about 200 dollars per share today.

This is proof - yet again, as if it were needed - that real innovation can beat recessions.

Unless we have proper broadband in Ireland - and I mean proper, cheap, 50 Megs, always-on, wireless - in every single town and home then we have precious little chance of being real innovators.  We won’t develop the culture, we won’t develop the language.  How can you have ideas for what you might do with Skype if you have no idea what Skype is? How can you develop clever apps if you have never downloaded one? How can you develop a conversation with somebody about technology if you are the only technologist in the village.

In the past 10 years we built a number of roads and they were pretty good, we built the LUAS, we built industrial estates such as CityWest and Millennium Park etc.  What is really, really needed is a proper broadband infrastructure.  It is more important than any other issue in innovation in the country.

It will cost a small fortune, but can we afford NOT to do it?

So, today there is a work to rule on with the public service unions.  This is indeed a controversial issue and one where there is no right side and no wrong side.

Naturally, as a public service worker, I have a particular interest in this dispute, though I am not on a work to rule, whatever that means.

I have taken two pay cuts in the past 8 months and these have not been nice.  They amount to the fact that I am working one day a week for free and only get paid for four out of five days now.

The staff of AIB and Bank of Ireland - two of the institutions that are responsible for the mess we find ourselves in - have been given pay rises in that time.

That’s enough of the finger pointing - it doesn’t get us anywhere.The thing that disappoints me most about the current economic nightmare (yes, I chose my word carefully, it really does give me cause for having bad dreams) is the assertion that the public service have not been overperforming in recent years.  In my department we have ony 15 permanent academic staff (25% more than a decade ago), but we teach about 250% more students and have twice as many degree courses.  We are flat-out all the time trying to provide this service and the thanks we get for it is IBEC and people like Shane Ross saying that there were no changes in how we worked.

Naturally, the statistics that are used are averaged out over the entire public service, so maybe there are places where productivity has gone down.  If this is the case, then those of use in 3rd level education are really being short-changed (having our pay cut and being told we are lazy).  We are now running a department of biology at Maynooth that is lean, stressed-out, losing staff, carrying out top-quality internationally-competitive research, teaching more students than I ever thought possible with such small numbers of staff and at breaking point in terms of when people are just going to pack it in.

The university has to lose another 3% of its staff in the coming year - mostly this will be achieved by retirements.  We will all have to teach more, do more administration and less research.  Nobody with a good research record will want this.

The one thing that Garrett Fitzgerald did not hit in the recession in the 1980s was education.

That was excellent foresight.

Well, so much has happened since I last blogged. Where to start?The public service have taken a pay cut and there is an embargo on hiring and promotions for the past while.  I do understand how this has come about - we spend something North of 50,000,000,000 Euro per year and we only take in about 30,000,000,000 in revenue.  therefore, the mathematics says that something has to give.The wealthiest in our society still benefit from about 7,000,000,000 in tax breaks and we are going to borrow about 20,000,000,000 this year just to make ends meet.In my department at NUI Maynooth, we have a huge challenge.  We have about 850 students to be taught and we have only 15 permanent academics to do the teaching, with some of them absolved from teaching duties, this means that a LOT of teaching is going to be done by a small number of people.While this brings stresses on the academics themselves, it also means that we have stopped or curtailed a lot of the activities that we would normally provide for students, simply because there is not the staffing to continue.We are almost certainly going to lose more staff over this (we have lost 2 staff members in the past 3 months and they are not to be replaced) - who would want to do this kind of thing?  It’s like trying to hold back the sea.But this is what recession looks like.  There is no money to pay for anything, so we must do more with less.  It’s not fun, it’s not really fair to our students - their education won’t be as good as their predecessors - and it is stressful.One of the hopes for the future is that we would start to produce more of our own innovative technologies - new start-up companies that use Irish people and Irish technologies.  Well, right now we have Irish academics leaving to take up jobs abroad where they have the financial support to work on these technologies.  While we are understaffed and struggling to meet our commitments to teaching undergraduate students, we will never be able to devote the time that is required to spinning out these new technologies.Right now it seems like a downward spiral with little end in sight.

Tá áthas orainn in iúl duit go bhfuil tú bhuaigh an tsuim
de 485,000.00 GBP ó Yahoo! MSN (Windows Live) Gradaim
chlár.

ÍOC duais AGUS ÉILEAMH
Beidh Buaiteoirí a íoc i gcomhréir le aige / aici Lonnaíochta
Ionad. Ní mór Yahoo Gradam Duais ní a éileamh déanaí ná 15
lá ó dháta an fógra a Dear. Aon duais ní éileofar
Beidh laistigh den tréimhse sin a forfeited.

Tá Tugtha thíos d’uimhreacha aitheantais:
Bhaisc UIMHIR: YPA/07-43658
Uimhir thagartha: 2007234522
UAP: 1206

tá tú leis seo comhairle a fháil ar ais chugainn ag
i dteagmháil le d’Oifigeach Imréiteach Rev Dr Robert Hooks do do Éileamh.

Déan teagmháil le: Rev Dr Robert Hooks.
Ríomhphost: rev.dr.roberth@sify.com
rev.dr.roberthooks@suez.cc

Fón: +447024067872

Is mise le go dílis,
Mrs. Carol Jones
Ar líne co-ordinator

That table in the TV3 filming room is getting a looooooad of business.  It is the same table in all TV programmes, just that they project a different front on it for the different programmes.

The Fas board is being replaced. The Ceann Comhairle is being replaced. The Anglo Irish Bank crowd has been replaced. blah blah blah.

The Fas board replacement is entirely dependent on the composition of the new board.  will it be the union chiefs once again? Will it be political appointments?

Will the new Ceann Comhairle be spending money like water?

The Anglo Irish Bank board is full of the proteges of the old board.

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

(apologies for not being able to do the accents, my computer won’t comply).