Libby Jared will retire in September 2013 having spent 25 years in teacher education in Cambridge, first at Homerton and, from its founding, at the Faculty of Education. This edition of NRICH is by way of tribute to Libby, her work as a teacher educator and her involvement in the setting up of the hugely influential and important NRICH website.
Under the guest-editorship of the PGCE class of 2013 we have collected together problems that were either introduced to the student teachers by Libby, or ones which the trainees found particularly useful and interesting in their own teaching. The trainees have also written some articles about their use of NRICH and we hope that this collection of materials will be useful for all teachers,
but particularly those who are new to using NRICH. This group of trainee teachers started the year as NRICH-novices, and have finished as enthusiastic advocates of rich tasks.
An NRICH collection that promotes the use of rich tasks and problem-solving and which is aimed at supporting new teachers is a tribute in itself to Libby's work, but we also wanted to record Libby's involvement in NRICH and the way she has influenced its development.
NRICH, which was officially founded in 1997, began its gestation a year previously. This was the early days of the use of the internet in education and was also early in the process of the different areas of education in Cambridge coming together to form, eventually, the Faculty of Education.
While the name clearly recognises the rich tasks for which it is reknowned, NRICH originally stood for 'National Royal Institution Cambridge and Homerton' because there were representatives of the RI and of Cambridge University involved. The Homerton involvement was through Libby, so the 'H' in NRICH refers to Libby and her work.
The NRICH website was originally aimed at pupils who attended the Royal Institution mathematics masterclasses. The idea was to give masterclass students, and their teachers, enriching mathematical activities that could be shared with their classmates, or enjoyed independently, so that their 5-week masterclass experience would be extended and their links with Cambridge maintained.
Initially the problems were aimed directly at children (rather than being written for teachers to present to pupils as is largely, though not exclusively, the case today) and solutions were compiled from answers submitted by the youngsters who had worked on them.
Libby was heavily involved as a member of the NRICH Steering committee in its first few years. After that she took a lead role in the research project on problem solving which involved schools in England, Hungary and Denmark. Most recently Libby has taken a keen interest in Ask NRICH and her recent research into this part of the site has formed the basis of her PhD thesis.
In her 25 years in Cambridge Libby has taught huge numbers of undergraduate and graduate students. Her influence will have been felt by those students, by the new teachers she has nurtured and by the pupils they have taught. Through NRICH Libby has had an enormous influence on teachers and pupils not just within Cambridge but across the globe.