Dr Justin P.

True wisdom is knowing you know nothing at all. This was the principal behind the Socratic method and earned Socrates a death-sentence (by Hemlock) because he made Athenian wise men look foolish by repeatedly asking them "Why?" until they cracked - they clearly didn't appreciate that this was great preparation for university interviews!

Embedding the Socratic approach in my teaching style, I guide students to continually question their assumptions and present them with questions and scenarios carefully designed to identify misconceptions through cognitive conflict, which makes corrective thinking really impactful and long-lasting.

By encouraging students to get off the fence and take risks they become open and comfortable with making new mistakes and learning from mistakes made by themselves and others (either in group tuition and/or examining examiner's reports), they are able to adopt a growth mindset.

With 13+ years examining experience (assistant examiner, team leader, principal examiner etc.) I will frequently drop in examiner wisdom into the lessons, but my primary focus is to actually teach physics for the love of physics, and this rubs off on my students. I'll rarely present scientific laws as statements to be accepted with no background information, as you'd find in many textbooks. I encourage and embed curiosity in my students, and I light up when they ask "but how was that discovered?" Having developed a six-lecture series on the "History of Science - a 2,500 year journey", I am uniquely placed to tell the stories of hundreds of philosophers and scientists and set up the context that led to key experiments and discoveries.

My priority is to get students hooked on the beauty of the physical world and take enjoyment in understanding how nature works. Getting knocked down and actually realising and accepting how little we know about the universe before building up again gives my students the confidence of knowing that others don't know what they don't know. When we are truly ready, we'll tackle some of the toughest questions, which will make the exams feel like a walk in the park.

I have designed 2 courses for small (3-6 students) online groups. They are "GCSE Maths for Science" in 12 90-minute lessons and "AS Revision in 24 2-hour lessons", which offers fantastic value for money. Many of my students will enroll in the AS revision course and bolt-on a block of 10 private lessons to cover year 13 content and/or do some interview practice. I have also written the majority of the new "Preparing for Oxford Physics" course which is new for 2026 to replace the "Preparing for the PAT" course, which I first co-wrote for 2018.