Teaching & PhD

Its just a good way to make a bit of extra cash, no one really seems to take it that seriously, my supervisor is constantly telling me to not prepare, because at the end of the day you can be the best or worst teacher ever, but no one will care about it after you've finished your PhD. Also the first thing he said to me regarding it was 'if they wanted someone who is good at teaching, they would get a teacher, but they don't they want someone who is flexible and fairly cheap who will read some essays and can explain a few things,' and basically that sums up how you have to see it, having said that I actually quite enjoy it, and there are some really good students, but yeah, research first, teaching second, always.

This is where my undergrad perspective comes in. I'm on the Department's Staff-Student Group/Board of Studies and myself and the other student reps actually stopped any post-docs and PhD students from doing lectures/tutorials by arguing that the standard of teaching was falling and that there was no consistency coz we had some brilliant post-doc lectures and some crapppy ones. So, I think it depends on how strong the undergrad voice in your Dept is and whether the Dept is more undergrad teaching/postgrad research focused.

We're now pushing to have a student rep on the interview panel for new taching members of staff so that the hiring focus is not completely on research. I think with the higher undergrad fees, unis worry that undergrads will want more of a say in how they get taught but how student concerns are handled is different from uni to uni and dept to dept. I guess some unis/depts could formalise a requirement for postgrads to teach and train them accordingly if there is going to be a new focus on teaching too when unis hire people for academic posts.

I think this is a good idea and I wish you well. Out of interest, how would you be able to assess teaching performance in the interview stage; some applicants might have lots of teaching experience because they were worked in a former-polytechnic, for example, but that does not mean that they are actually any good at teaching? I know lots of secondary schools get applicants to teach a lesson as part of their interview process, which I think could be crossed over into higher education without many difficulties (so long as the number of interviewees was small).

So the way things work here is that applicants give a research seminar which is open to anyone tho not everyone knows that the person giving the seminar is an applicant. For the interview, questions are decided beforehand and the same questions are asked to every applicant to make things fair. The student reps (including myself) are still working on the proposal to the HoD about how we can look at teaching performance at the interview stage-maybe give applicants particular scenarios and ask how they would respond to those?

Any ideas?

I suppose it depends upon what area of study you work in, but the problem with research seminars for me in the humanities is that it is a rather sterile environment; yes, some students might attend but they almost never ask questions, which means the lecturer makes no amendments for his audience and it is basically just a conference paper in all but name.

Logistics becomes an issue as you have to provide the lecturer with the lecture in advance (i.e. he knows what the department wants to cover and in what way) and you have to ensure that the seminar is on a subject that the lecturer does not necessarily specialise on. The university lecturer who would have normally taken the seminar can sit in and assess performance too. In my opinion, it takes far more skill to control and stimulate discussion in a seminar than to present and answer questions in a research seminar. Again, it depends on the size of the department and university you work in as to whether any of these suggestions can be applied.