Dr Steve Tobias

Adjunct Professor - Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education; School of Education

Steve Tobias

Biography

Steve Tobias is now an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics Education in the School of Education at UNE. He is a qualified secondary mathematics and science teacher with a decade of teaching experience prior to entering teacher education as a mathematics lecturer at La Trobe University in 1989.  He has also taught at James Cook University in Townsville and  moved to the University New England at the beginning of 2009.

His research interests have focused predominantly on teaching and learning mathematics at the school and university levels with a particular emphasis on the factors that affect learning. He is an active member of the SIMERR research centre located at UNE

Current Faculty and SOE roles:

  • Faculty representative UNE SSP committee
  • Chair of the SOE Board of Examiners
  • Academic Staffing Coordinator
  • SOE Executive member
  • Member of Head of School's Research committee
  • Member of the National executive of SiMERR
  • Mathematics Education Team Leader

Qualifications

BA (ANU), DipEd (La Trobe), MSc (Curtin), PhD (La Trobe)

Teaching Areas

  • EDME145 Unit Coordinator (Internal students)
  • EDME313 Unit Coordinator
  • MATH122 Unit Lecturer

Research Interests

  • Partnerships in teacher education
  • Pre-service teachers' backgrounds in mathematics
  • Mathematics Education reform (primary, secondary & tertiary)
  • Affective domain including Beliefs, Attitudes and Self-efficacy
  • Motivating students, building resilience and perseverance through game play and in particular through chess
  • Remote and rural education

Consultancy Interests

  • Student centred-Vygotskian teaching and learning approaches
  • Problem solving & challenging tasks
  • Open ended questioning
  • Visual thinking routines
  • Whole school assessment in mathematics
  • Indigenous learners