Lads and ladies,
Doing a good bit of part-time work (luckily enough, its on campus and is teaching). Finding lately that it is proving to be a bit of a distraction but god knows I need the cash (car insurance/tax, health insurance and house deposit due at end of the month alone). Anyhows, do any of ye find that ye throw yerselves big-time into this work to somehow justify doing Jack Diddley with your research? Been thinking this might be a bit of a problem for others as from reading the threads, there is a lot of people doing PhD's in order to teach.

Also, do any of ye find that the whole "You need a PhD to lecture" thinking a load of cr*p which produces brilliant minded but socially inept lecturers? Surely if you were interested in teaching you would require some level of formal training and not spending time doing essentially introverted research. As stated earlier, a lot of us are doing PhD's primarily because we want to teach at third level, so why isn't that specific need answered?

Sorry for the Friday 6.00 ravings of a lunatic - the teaching thing is a pet peev! Anyhows, I hope ye have a good weekend and no matter what's happening, take one of the days off and spend it chillin' like Bob Dylan

:-)

Hi Bonzo (Are you Scottish?) It's just the "ye's" that make me ask. :-)

Okay, let's see. Yes, part-time teaching is both a boon and a bind. Need the money (good), gives experience (good)... takes up all your time (bad). I've been doing pt stuff on and off for the last two years. It was great at first, and manageable, but now I'm into the final stages of my PhD, not so good... too distracting (as you say) so I'm easing off as much as possible. I can't say I've ever thrown myself into it 'big time' (although I work hard and am conscientious about it) - my PhD's always more important to me somehow.

I don't agree that you need a PhD to lecture (lots of people I know lecture who have, at most, a Masters... but, a PhD is generally expected). I don't think PhD's make for inept lecturers... I think they make for specialised ones, and good ones know their stuff and are valuable members of staff (well, at least the one's I know - in education and social sciences).

Not all research is introverted... lots of research involves people. You should ask what training is available with HR if you want some. Most new lecturers these days are expected to take training in post-compulsory education at some point (as far as I know). I think training helps, but so does mentoring and experience (in and out of teaching).

Planning to have a good weekend also (after long day of writing/revising/reviewing journal articles and juggling PhD analysis - somewhat unsuccessfully - so it's not only teaching commitments that get in the way). Bob Dylan's great, isn't he... (up)

Bakuvia- Not Scottish at all (but not a million miles away) .
I suppose wasn't really thinking when originally posted the thread - point I was trying to get was that there is little emphasis on the whole notion of actually preparing people for teaching in the classical PhD. I just find it contradictory that there seems to be a growing need to get the PhD for lecturing but yet no training for that role when doing your research (at least to get the decent posts). And I take your point that not all research is "introverted" - what I meant there was that we all have our own little research and don't communicate with others our findings or thoughts.
After a few pints tonight (although not toasted) so not a bad start to the weekend ... a colleague just had her viva so not a bad excuse.

As for the Bob Dylan - well, I'd prefer a bit of Opeth or Explosions in the Sky to be honest, but whatever gets ya thro' ... keep the flag flying

Irish??? We say 'ye' a lot here too :-)

I agree it's distracting but a welcome distraction in my case! And as my whole reason for doing a PhD is to get a lecturing job I think the more experience I get the better... I also agree about the teaching qualification, some lecturers may be experts but if they can't get the material across to students then it's pointless! I think I'd like to get a teaching qualification of some sort if/when I finish the PhD... part-time of course!!!

Rosy - correct on both counts (I'm a 100% Paddy and on your point about the teaching).
I agree that it is a welcome distraction but I find that I spend too much time prepping for it. It is great to sometimes see the stuff getting thro' to the students though which is uplifting.

Probably will look into some sort of teaching courses when finished the Phd. Seemingly there is a stronger emphasis on the teaching aspect in some of the US colleges.

Hope the weekend is going good. The hangover is not as bad as I would have thought ... another reason to stay off the ciggies

I don't think it's contradictory really. It's difficult to separate any provision for training or preparation for teaching (or lack of provision) from the way teaching is valued in comparison to research in HE in the UK, and how HE is funded. There were a lot of articles in the THES and Education Guardian during the run up to the RAE about the way teaching and teaching-orientated staff were seen as less valuable to an institution than more research-active staff, because of the way HE is assessed in this country. Research brings in funding and status for a university, which teaching doesn't necessarily do, despite the fact that teaching is an integral part of the curriculum at undergraduate level, students are paying for it and without students, the colleges probably wouldn't exist anyway.

I felt quite uncomfortable during the data collection period of the RAE, seeing the way staff were ranked according to their research, with purely teaching-orientated staff coming further down the scale and being seen as less valuable in that context. It's not just an arbitrary ranking system as it affects career prospects across the board. It's a weird situation, because it's hard to be a good lecturer as it needs such different skills. You seem to need everything for the jobs I would like, PhD and an ongoing research profile, as well as teaching experience and a qualification.

I'm also going to do a teaching qualification post-doc, not just because it'll be needed, but I really like doing it. It lets me make my subject relevant to a different audience, instead of being in some obscure higher academic research vacuum. Also, students feed the research by asking questions I'd never have thought of and are quite critical too, plus it's so nice if they get really excited about the subject and carry on doing it for the next few years. Undergraduates are definitely my favourites. Having said that, I withdrew from teaching this year as it's too near my submission date and can't afford any extra distractions from that.

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I'm also in that situation, although my case is a bit different since I was a full-time lecturer before the PhD. I started the PhD as a full-time student, but had to go back to work when ran out of funding. I also thought that I should get a part time job so it doesn't interfere with the PhD, but at the end found out that to make it worthwhile, you have to take on so many hours, that it makes it too much time consuming. Instead I went for a full time job, since you almost have to put in as many hours, but at least you get the job security and better paid. I was very lucky, and I think I only got the job because I already had teaching experience.

Now, the College I work in want people to do research, but there is not much support for that since the priority is teaching. I'm only doing research, because I'm finishing the thesis and still attached to the university where I'm doing it. Otherwise I would find it very difficult. In my opinion, to be able to do research you need to have a teaching load of no more that 6hrs a week, other wise it is impossible. Well, that also depends on the area you are in; social sciences and humanities could work this way. Hard sciences, I think is a different story.

In terms of teaching skills and development, it is like a craft; there is no real qualification, universities and colleges have no objective way to assess it and most people, who care about this, would be autodidactic. They take short courses and seminars here and there and join networks with other interested lecturers to share best practices. We can discuss specific teaching strategies if you are interested; such as teaching through cases, problem based learning, blended learning, etc.

Another thing to consider is that ideally research should also inform your teaching. That is, you teach the same subject you do research on. So conceptually, you have a better understanding of it and thus you can explain it better, not to mention that your capacity to constantly update and improve the course is also better. You can take it even further and do research on the teaching of your subject, to find out how best to deliver the content and so on. But as I said before, there is only so many things one can do, so the balance between contact hours with students, faculty administrative tasks, research activity and other responsibilities has to be balanced.