Joshua

Hi! My name is Josh and I have been working as a Biologist since I graduated from the University of Edinburgh. My main area of work has been in human biology and disease, most recently at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where I worked on developing anti-malarial drugs. Here I had the opportunity to start teaching and instructing students in the lab. Having found this process greatly rewarding, I decided to begin teaching biology online in my spare time.

Tutoring Experience

My experience with teaching began almost a decade ago when I became a tutor for Explore Learning, an extra curricular tuition school teaching Maths and English. I found this experience hugely rewarding as I saw my students develop in their understanding and knowledge. I went on to study Biological sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and have since pursued a career in malaria research. As I aim to maintain teaching as part of my career I have tutored Biology, English and Spanish alongside my job, where I also instruct Masters students in the lab.

Tutoring Approach

My approach is different from that commonly taught in schools and universities. I believe learning should be derived from discussion, not instruction, and I always try to elicit responses and ideas from my students first and foremost. I have found this approach to be far more engaging for my students, as we arrive to answers together having drawn on the knowledge and logic that they already possess. This approach also makes the process of memorisation far less taxing, as we work from first principles to come to our conclusions. Solidifying the foundations of my students' biological understanding and placing everything we learn within a wider context is my priority. In this way I hope to ensure that learning becomes less about memorising terms and more about understanding the processes and systems behind them.