I have decided to do two separate posts. The first is this one, about my interview with the university provider and my second will be about both my school direct interviews. I applied for Primary PGCE (5-11) and for the schools direct routes I specifically applied for a Special Educational Needs specialised PGCE.
The university I had this interview for was Liverpool Hope University, the university I attended for my undergraduate course; so I was really familiar with it already. Hope has really good ratings for teaching courses so I thought it would be a good place to start. I applied for this course, got an email a couple of days later and was told my interview was in a week so I had a week to prepare. In the email I was told exactly what I would be doing on the day and I had absolutely no surprises, I was prepared for everything. This really reduced the stress of the interview.
The tasks I was given were:
A Literacy Assessment
Presentation
Individual Interview
Online Scenario Task
These were all pretty straight forward and I didn't personally have any issues preparing of delivering. For the literacy assessment all the interviewees were seated in the same room and had about 20/30 mins to complete a task. We were provided with an article discussing the attainment of students who come from low income families and had to write our response to the issue and the implications of it in education. If you apply for Hope you will have to discuss how you are: reflective, resilient, resourceful, and reciprocal. To be honest, these are all good things to think about whether you apply for Hope or not.
For the presentations we were put into groups with other interviewees and one/two interviewers. We were told a week before what we would have to present. The task was to do as follows:
Bring an artefact with you, and be prepared to explain to a small group how you could use this artefact in school to stimulate interest and learning. Your artefact could be a text (e.g. a story or a poem), a picture, a song or an object.
This artefact really could be anything, I remember a couple of things people brought, a lot of them were books, one person had a puppet and another a box with sticks inside. As long as you can make a few different lessons out of that artefact, feel free to use it. Most probably the wackier the better! I decided to take in some plastic cups. With these cups I thought of a English, Art, Maths and Science/PSHE lessons. The English involved writing verbs, adjectives and nouns on the cups and encouraging the students to develop their story writing skills. The Art included decorating the cups and having to advertise them, explaining its functions. The Maths lesson involved times tables, creating a game and using the number written on the cups to write and answer a sum. I also had a division lesson plan, this was to divide pebbles into the cups. This would work by giving students a sum, for example 10/2 and then placing pebbles equally into 2 cups and working out how many pebbles were in each cup, the answer being 5. The Science lesson included writing different food groups on the cups and having cut out pictures of various foods. Students would then have to correctly place each picture into the correct food group.
The individual interview went really well. My interviewer was absolutely lovely and I have included questions I got asked in each interview on my previous post so if you are interested in specific questions I got asked, go and check it out! The post is called Prepping for Interviews. It was pretty much a standard interview, sat across from each other having a discussion. I remember leaving the interview feeling really positive. Also, don't be afraid of having an actual real life conversation. The interviewers are only human, like the rest of us, if you stumble on a question, don't panic, take a breath and think out loud. They want to know that you can think on the spot but they also understand that you are under pressure. I have stumbled on questions many times but it is the way you handle it that counts.
Lastly, I was given a link that sent me to an online scenario-based task. Here I was given a paragraph or two explaining a school related scenario and I would have to select 'Strongly Agree', 'Agree', 'Disagree' or 'Strongly Disagree'. I wouldn't say these scenarios were difficult and I wouldn't worry about it too much. You aren't supposed to be a perfect teacher who knows everything before you start the course. The interviewers just want to know you have potential. If you put agree for what should be a disagree question, you'll get taught the right answer on the course. A shortened down example of a scenario would be:
'A pupil wants to disclose something to you and had asked you to promise to keep it secret. You should agree to keep it secret so that they will tell you what has happened.' And they you would have to select whether you agree or not. For this scenario, I put that I disagree. You should never tell a student that you promise you can keep it secret as you might have to break that promise depending on what they tell you. Instead, you should sit them down and discuss with them that although you can't promise to keep it secret you are happy to talk to them and it could be beneficial to get it off their chest.
I then went home and was told the next day that I passed the interview and had been offered a place on the course. Not every interview for a university provider will be the same but I hope this is useful in knowing what could be. If you do apply for Hope, I don't know whether the interview will use the same structure for you as they did for me so prepare for it to be different.
Good luck with any interviews you might have!
Take care and be sunny!
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