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teaching / lecturing

Hi. I'm trying to decide between a career as a teacher and a career as a lecturer. As I see them, the benefits of teaching over lecturing are:

-chance to make a greater contribution to a student's education
-job security
-shorter hours
-better pay

The benefits of lecturing are, probably:

-opportunity to research and to keep abreast of developments in your subject
-more interesting work
-opportunity to travel
-chance to write and be published etc.

Anyone agree / disagree?

Reply 1

MadNatSci

12

You get the longer holidays as a teacher whereas lecturers have to continue their research; having said that, mine always seem to be buggering off on sabbatical so it doesn't seem such a hard life.

The overriding question for me was: do I want to inspire kids or do I want to teach the ones that are already inspired? I'd rather inspire them in the first place. Also teaching is more personal - lecturing you'd never really get to know all your students. But if you want to do research, lecturing is the only way to go...

Reply 2

Nylex

10

Slightly off-topic, but if you do research at a university, do you have to lecture as well?

Reply 3

MadNatSci

12

Nylex

Slightly off-topic, but if you do research at a university, do you have to lecture as well?

Speaking, obviously, from my limited experience of one subject at one university - no. A lot of the research scientists seem to supervise students and/or act as demonstrators in the practical lessons, but I don't think they all do and they certainly don't all lecture. I think you get paid more if you lecture though.

Relief, thanks.

OP

MadNatSci

Speaking, obviously, from my limited experience of one subject at one university - no. A lot of the research scientists seem to supervise students and/or act as demonstrators in the practical lessons, but I don't think they all do and they certainly don't all lecture. I think you get paid more if you lecture though.

I don't think you can really lecture without researching anymore. Now that the research a university does determines its funding, a lecturer who doesn't research is seen (I think) as dead weight. So you'll almost certainly have to do some research, Nylex.

Reply 6

Nylex

10

d750

I don't think you can really lecture without researching anymore. Now that the research a university does determines its funding, a lecturer who doesn't research is seen (I think) as dead weight. So you'll almost certainly have to do some research, Nylex.

My question was would you have to lecture if you were doing research, not the other way around. I don't wanna lecture, but I want to do research.

Reply 7

d750

OP

8

Nylex

My question was would you have to lecture if you were doing research, not the other way around. I don't wanna lecture, but I want to do research.

Oops sorry. Why don't you want to teach, by the way? A fair few people say that they want to teach but not research, but I haven't heard anyone say the opposite before.

teaching / lecturing

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