Dr Rebecca-Ann Burton BSc MSc MBA DPhil FHEA FRSA

I actively teach in addition to conducting research. I have thoroughly enjoyed my teaching experiences thus far, which has included lecturing and tutoring Medical and Biomedical (BMS) undergraduate students, MSc students, laboratory practical’s, selection of students for research projects and supervisory roles to Final Honour Students on the Biomedical Sciences, Medical degrees and graduate student training (MRes and DPhil). I have given guest lectures to pre-medical students from the USA promoting BMS and Medicine at Oxford. Other teaching experiences include laboratory visits abroad such as MIT, USA and Brown Medical School, USA to train several post-doctoral and research students in specialised experimental techniques. I have also participated in several Outreach programmes including high profile and large public events such as the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, London Science Museum Lates.

As part of the Oxford teaching skills development program, I have successfully completed the Teaching Skills courses organised by the Medical Sciences Division. I have gained further experience in student and postdoctoral teaching, training, and supervision. I have been an examiner for DPhil (PhD) and Master’s thesis Viva’s here at Oxford I recently successfully completed The TRS Fellowship Pathway awarded Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). 

My approach to teaching science curricula has been based on promoting active learning, inquiry, problem solving, cooperative learning and other methods that motivate students. I practice teaching methods that aim to prepare students to understand the modes of reasoning of scientific inquiry and for them to be able to use them in the future. My teaching approaches incorporate many and varied opportunities for collecting, cataloguing, observing, note taking, sketching, interviewing and surveying the available literature and promoting a variety of perspectives. Inquiry can be linked with a discovery approach or with development of process skills that are associated with rigorous scientific methods. In order to engage students in active learning, a mix of structured methods of guided inquiry, providing students with clear instructions and the use of heuristic devices to aid skills development are useful. I also employ analogy teaching, which helps break down complex, abstract concepts through other concepts that have been learned before or daily in a life context. I am also a big fan of employing digital technologies where appropriate to facilitate better teaching in the classroom or online. The pandemic brought major changes in our pedagogic practice. Digital training for teaching staff has helped improve and bring about more consistency in the use of digital technology for teaching. My aim is to train students beyond the traditional way of teaching so they not only pass the tests but also get a basic conceptual model of the subject, an approach inspired by 2001 Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman.