PhD students

application Form
and guidance
2011 The Brilliant Club

www.thebrilliantclub.org

Dear applicant, Thank you for your interest in applying to work as a Brilliant Club tutor. This application form and guidance document contains everything that you need to complete your application, and is split accordingly into two sections: 1) a guide to the application process and 2) an application form. Please read the guidance carefully before returning your completed application form along with a copy of your academic CV. Note To complete the application form you will need to fill in each of the fields, save the document as a PDF and then return to us via email at apply@thebrilliantclub.org. If you have any specific questions about the application process, or about The Brilliant Club more generally, then please get in touch with Simon Coyle and he will be happy to help you. Email: apply@thebrilliantclub.org Phone: 07939 800 226

1) Guide to the application process

We want to ensure that we recruit exceptional tutors and we have worked hard to develop an application process that is thorough and effective, as well as being transparent and consistent. We believe that an effective application process is one where we see you perform at your best and so we have created this guidance document to help support you throughout the application process. The application process is broken down into two stages: the application form and the interview. Whilst you may have already met (or arranged to meet) with us for an informal discussion about what we do, how we do it and how you can get involved, we do not take anything from these discussions into consideration as part of the application process. We will address the different stages of the application process in turn after we have briefly outlined what we are looking for in tutors.

What we are looking for in tutors Our application process is designed to identify applicants with the key skills that we believe are central to outstanding teaching and learning, who share our core values and will strive to embody those values as a Brilliant Club tutor. We have included our planning diagrams below in order to give you a clear idea of what we are looking for in our tutors:

As these diagrams show, we are looking for applicants who have the potential to deliver excellent small-group tutorials and who are highly motivated to help support The Brilliant Club in our mission to widen access to top universities. We are working to create an education system that connects challenging schools and the postgraduate community, fostering effective, lasting and meaningful links that are underpinned by excellent teaching and learning and by positive action to widen access to top universities. Indeed, one of our main goals is that the chance to work with these students will become an aspirational choice for a significant proportion of PhD students. In order to make this vision a reality, we are looking to recruit PhD students who not only meet our requirements in terms of key skills and core values, but who will ideally share our commitment to social justice and champion our cause within postgraduate communities. Whilst school students are our primary beneficiaries, we think that working for The Brilliant Club offers fantastic opportunities for PhD students too. More than just providing meaningful community engagement, we aim to support your development as educators with a programme of high-quality training and support. Applicants often ask us whether they need to have previous experience of teaching or working with young people; the short answer is no. We do not require applicants to have relevant experience, although we do look favourably on evidence of success working as a teacher or working with young people. What we are looking for are people who share our attitude to education, who demonstrate our key skills and core values, and who are excellent problem-solvers. We are not looking for the finished article. We are looking for applicants who have the potential to deliver excellent small-group tutorials and who are motivated to make a difference. We are confident that our interview process accurately identifies these people and that our training and support programme ensures that they will do an outstanding job. So, to give yourself the best possible chance of success, please read this guidance thoroughly and think carefully about how you can demonstrate what we are looking for.

The application process: step-by-step

Guide to the application form Step 1) The application form The application form is designed to help us assess your motivation to apply to become a tutor, any experience that you have of teaching and of working with young people, and your suitability to deliver (and potentially develop) programmes of study in different subject areas. Please limit your answers to a maximum of 200 words and try to prioritise your answers as indicated in the question.

Step 2) The academic CV Along with the application form we also ask you to submit an academic CV. As well as being a source of information that you may not have been able to fit on the application form, we also use the document to help us assess your academic record and areas of expertise. Please ensure that the CV you send is up-to-date and includes full contact details.

After we have received your application form and academic CV we will consider your application and if you meet our requirements we will invite you to an assessment centre at our offices in London.

Guide to the assessment centre The assessment centre is split into four constituent parts: A seven minute mini-lesson A short written evaluation of the mini-lesson A one-to-one interview A fifteen minute paired activity

Step 3a) The mini-lesson As part of the interview process, we ask you to prepare and deliver a seven minute mini-lesson on an aspect of your PhD thesis. We recommend that you think about the challenges associated with delivering such a short lesson and ensure that your lesson has a clearly stated learning objective. The lesson should be accessible but challenging, and should be pitched at a level you would expect 16 year-old Brilliant Club students to meet. Your interviewer(s) will act as 16 year-old Brilliant Club student(s), and you are expected to interact with us as such. Please do not expect any behavioural issues/interruptions from your interviewer(s); they act as students not to test your behaviour management skills but in order to assess your communication, empathy and leadership skills. We also use the mini-lesson to assess your organisational skills and we are looking for applicants to plan lessons into appropriate sections and manage their timings effectively. Your mini-lesson will be strictly timed and you will not be allowed to run over seven minutes. You will be able to use a whiteboard and/or a projector if you want to. We will provide whiteboard pens, biros and paper but any other resources you wish to use you will have to bring yourself, including a USB stick with any PowerPoint documents. Finally, we would like to stress that we are asking you to plan a lesson and not a presentation. To aid further preparation we have included an excerpt from a short article that addresses the question: What makes an effective teacher?
Tradition in literature and films show the charismatic teacher as the heroic figure from H.G. Wells Mr Chips to Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. But what does research tell us? In the 1970s, an observational research and classroom learning evaluation study based at Leicester University investigated teachers classroom behaviour and its impact on pupil progress.

Some behavioural features were consistently exhibited by more effective teachers: High numbers of interactions with pupils Higher level questioning of pupils Regular constructive feedback Encouraged independence - pupils think things through for themselves (The Oracle Study, 1970) Furthermore, in 1979 Michael Rutters landmark study found that effective teachers: Created a work-centred environment Often engaged and interacted with the whole class Had high expectations of pupils Provided stimulating learning activities that were challenging Used higher order questioning of pupils Consistently praised pupils for their achievements (Rutter et al, 1979) You can read the rest of the article at the following site:
https://czone.eastsussex.gov.uk/sites/gtp/library/professional/Documents/induction/Effective-teachers.pdf

Step 3b) Evaluation of the mini-lesson In order to assess your reflection skills we will ask you to complete a short written evaluation of your mini-lesson. The evaluation usually takes about five minutes and there is nothing you need to do to prepare in advance. Step 3c) The interview The interview is designed to assess your attitude to education, the skills you have developed as a result of your experiences and the approaches that you might take in certain situations. It is broken up into three sections according to these three criteria. The interview usually takes about thirty minutes and you can prepare by thinking about examples where you have demonstrated the key skills and core values that we are looking for. Step 3d) The paired activity The paired activity is designed to assess your interaction with others as well as your key skills and core values. Before the paired activity starts you will be given a brief to read through and then the chance to ask any questions. The paired activity is strictly timed and you will not be allowed to run over fifteen minutes. There is nothing you need to do to prepare in advance.

2) Application form

Personal/Work Details Name: Date of Birth: Nationality:

PhD thesis title: University: Expected date of completion:

Do you have permission to work in the UK? If not then are you planning to get permission in the next six months? Do you have an enhanced disclosure CRB check? If so then when is it dated from?

YES YES YES

NO NO NO

Given your likely schedule, please indicate which of the following periods you expect to be available for work over the next academic year: Sep-Oct Nov-Dec Jan-Feb Feb-Mar Apr-May Jun-Jul YES YES YES YES YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO

Your Motivation Please answer all questions in no more than 200 words 1. Why are you interested in working with outstanding school students?

2. What do you hope to get out of the role on a personal and/or professional level?

3. How does working as a Brilliant Club tutor fit into your longer-term plans?

Your Experience Please answer all questions in no more than 200 words: 1. What teaching experience do you have? Prioritise undergraduate teaching (especially tutorials), then classroom teaching, then other teaching.

2. What experience do you have of working with young people? Prioritise experience with young people aged 14-18 and/or within multi-cultural communities.

3. What leadership experience do you have? Prioritise experience where you have championed a cause.

Delivering Programmes Please answer all questions in no more than 200 words Whether you have teaching experience or not, explain why you think that you are well suited to delivering excellent small-group tutorials to outstanding students.

Which of the following subjects do you feel confident that you would be able to deliver excellent small-group tutorials to outstanding students:
Please put an x under the relevant headings Subject Area studies Chemistry Economics English Literature History Law Philosophy Politics Confident Very Confident Subject Biology Classics English Language Geography Int. Relations Mathematics Physics Psychology Confident Very Confident

Developing your own programme

In order to maximise engagement from PhD students, we strive to minimise the amount of preparation that is required of them as tutors. Indeed, we are committed to the principle that we will always offer tutors the option of delivering programmes that are pre-planned and out-of-the-box. However, whilst it is not the expectation that PhD students will develop their own programmes, we are equally committed to the principle that we will encourage, support and pay them to do so. We are committed to this principle because, in our experience, the quality of teaching and learning often compares favourably to out-of-the-box tutorials. We strongly believe that it is also a great opportunity for PhD students to develop their teaching skills under guidance from qualified teachers. If you are interested in developing your own programme please indicate this by deleting the appropriate text in the box below. If you are interested in developing your own programme and you have initial ideas in mind at this stage, could you also outline the content and rationale in the box below: Please tick the appropriate box Interested in developing a programme I do have initial ideas at this stage Not interested in developing my own programme I do not have any initial ideas at this stage

If you are interested in developing your own programme and you have initial ideas in mind at this stage, please outline the content and rationale Please explain in no more than 500 words