Chris Fenwick's webpage

Career Summary
I have been a university mathematics teacher since 1990. I have taught mathematics at various levels to students from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities. I am currently associate lecturer at University College London's (UCL) and I currently teach on the following courses:

• the University Preparatory Course in Science and Engineering (UPCSE).
• the STEM groups of the International Pre-Master course (IPM).
• the Communication in Mathematics course (CIM).

My past teaching experience includes the teaching of a variety of undergraduate subjects such as Discrete Mathematics, Engineering Mathematics, Engineering Modelling and Simulation, Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Statistics & Probability, at various universities such as Brunel University, City University (London), the University of Westminster, and Richmond College, the American International University.

In the days when I used to do research I focused on the theoretical study, and practical application, of reading research, reading-to-learn, and experiential/self-organised learning, all related to the field of mathematics education.

More on my current employment
General description of the UPCSE course
UCL's University Preparatory Course in Science and Engineering is an elite course designed for international students whose academic qualifications are not recognised by the British education system, and whose English is not at the necessary level for immediate entry into a British undergraduate course, but who nevertheless have a high standard of education from their own country and who subsequently wish to pursue an undergraduate courses in science or en-gineering at a British university. Students come from a wide variety of countries and cultures such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, China, Japan, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Argentina, and Japan. Students passing the UPCSE course have gone onto undergraduate course at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, and UCL (amongst others) Full syllabus and notes can be found by clicking the relevant link in the menu on the left.

General description of the IPM course
Similar to the UPCSE course the IPM is a course designed for international students wishing to undertake postgraduate programmes at UK universities but whose academic qualifications are not recognised by the British education system, and whose English is not at the necessary level for immediate entry into a British postgraduate courses. On this course I teach the STEM group discipline specific aspects of scientific communication. The focus is therefore on how to learn to read and write in an Engineering style or a mathematics style or whatever other style is relevant to the discipline to their future postgrad course. Full syllabus and notes can be found by clicking the "Scientific writing notes" link in the menu on the left.

General description of the CIM course
I am also currently responsible for creating and teaching a course on communication in mathematics. This course is team taught with an English language teacher, and is designed to foster correct presentation of mathematics as well as the correct use of academic English as well as mathematical English. Full syllabus and notes can be found by clicking the relevant link in the menu on the left.

Past research
My past area of research focused on developing and implementing constructivist techniques to support students' learning and awareness of learning. Applied mainly to mathematics education and learning, my research was classified into two broad areas, namely

1. Creating techniques which allowed students to develop an ability at reading to learn from mathematics text (from the technical English used in mathematics texts to the actual mathematics itself). The aim here was to allow students to elicit their own personally significant meaning to, and understanding of, mathematics.


2. Developing structured methodologies which allowed the teacher to support students in their process of learning. These methodologies were based around a conversational paradigm designed to act as an underlying framework through which teacher and students could participate in developing a personal meaning to learning.

Both areas were founded on personal construct theory and, later, on the phenomenology of reading.

Past employment
1999-2002 : Dept. of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University - Lecturer in Computing (level 1) and 3rd year undergraduate project supervisor;

1991-2000 : Dept. of Technology and Design, University of Westminster - Part-time lecturer in Mathematics and Computing;

1997-2000 : Division of Business Studies, Brunel University - Part-time lecturer in Mathematics and Computing;

1996-1999 : Dept. of Mathematics, City University - Part-time lecturer in Mathematics teaching Numerical Analysis and various tutorials for other UG programmes;

1995-1998 : Dept. of Maths Sciences, Richmond College, The American International University - Part-time lecturer in Mathematics teaching linear algebra, statistics, quantitative techniques and calculus to undergraduate programmes as well as calculus on the MBA programme.

1991-1995 : The American College in London - Part-time lecturer teaching Mathematics to liberal arts students.

Academic Qualifications
Brunel University (1997-2001): PhD in Mathematics Education, "Reading-to-learn Mathematics".
University of Westminster (1996 - 1998): Postgraduate Teaching Certificate in Higher Education.
Brunel University (1992 - 1994): MSc Numerical Analysis.
Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) (1985-1989): BSc Mathematics with Computing
Lycee Francais Charles De Gaulle (1970-1984), London, UK