Killian

My Passion & How I Inspire

While taking my GCSEs and A-levels I often struggled with aligning material from my courses with how I was thinking about the world. My approach to tutoring is to give students a way of thinking about their subjects that connects their own unique opinions and intuitions with the material being studied. Not only does this give a great flexibility and understanding of the subject to excel in exams, it also gives confidence in the student’s own thoughts and expression that will stay with them. This way of learning makes the lessons naturally enjoyable: I myself enjoy getting to know students and helping them to get the most from their studies.

Subject specific

Philosophy: my approach is to get students engaged in philosophical thinking from the start. Before tackling the core texts, I introduce a topic with a problem, and an opinion. I encourage students to get to grips with the topic by challenging my position, and feeling out the limits of different arguments. No question is too simple, and I make sure that students know that arguments in philosophy are there to be challenged (no matter who is making them!). This is designed to encourage confident, independent thinking, and will stand students in good stead both for their A-level exams and well beyond in terms of tackling philosophical (or all kinds of other) problems.

Economics: I work with a ground up approach that is both engaging and fun. The key to solving economic problems is to take mathematical ideas and translate them into economic concepts. I spend much longer on single topics than is given in schools, to develop a strong intuitive grounding that limits the time needed for revision and increases the student’s flexibility in exams. These thinking skills are valuable well beyond exams, and are valued highly both by employers and in academia.

Maths: I begin with the intuition behind mathematical concepts, an approach which gives students a long-lasting and thorough understanding of mathematical tools. Again I spend much longer on individual topics (that students struggle with) than is given in the classroom. This helps students think clearly on problems that many struggle with, and provides a great base for thinking about problems in many academic disciplines.