Teachers’ knowledge and experiences of Information Advice and Guidance: some implications for the current policy context in England

Good information and career guidance about what post-compulsory educational routes are available and where these routes lead is important in ensuring that young people make choices that are most appropriate to their needs and aspirations. Yet the Association of School and College Leaders (2011) express fears that future provision will be inadequate. This paper reports the findings from an on-line survey of 300 secondary school teachers, and follow up telephone interviews with 18 in the South East of England which explored teachers’ experiences of delivering post-compulsory educational and career guidance and their knowledge and confidence in doing so. Results suggest that teachers lack confidence in delivering information, advice and guidance outside their own area of specialism and experience. In particular, teachers knew little in relation to alternative local provision of post-16 education and lacked knowledge of more non-traditional, vocational routes. This paper will therefore raises important policy considerations with respect to supporting teachers’ knowledge, ability and confidence in delivering information in relation to future pathways and career guidance

On the Mathematical Constitution and Explanation of Physical Facts

The mathematical nature of modern physics suggests that mathematics is bound to play some role in explaining physical reality. Yet, there is an ongoing controversy about the prospects of mathematical explanations of physical facts and their nature. A common view has it that mathematics provides a rich and indispensable language for representing physical reality but that, ontologically, physical facts are not mathematical and, accordingly, mathematical facts cannot really explain physical facts. In what follows, I challenge this common view. I argue that, in addition to its representational role, in modern physics mathematics is constitutive of the physical. Granted the mathematical constitution of the physical, I propose an account of explanation in which mathematical frameworks, structures, and facts explain physical facts. In this account, mathematical explanations of physical facts are either species of physical explanations of physical facts in which the mathematical constitution of some physical facts in the explanans are highlighted, or simply explanations in which the mathematical constitution of physical facts are highlighted. In highlighting the mathematical constitution of physical facts, mathematical explanations of physical facts deepen and increase the scope of the understanding of the explained physical facts. I argue that, unlike other accounts of mathematical explanations of physical facts, the proposed account is not subject to the objection that mathematics only represents the physical facts that actually do the explanation. I conclude by briefly considering the implications that the mathematical constitution of the physical has for the question of the unreasonable effectiveness of the use of mathematics in physics