A Career Perspective on Teaching & Academic DevelopmentProfessor Bairbre Redmond, University College Dublin

Scope of Paper

• Phases of the academic career

• Challenges at individual phases

• Learning from international research in each

phase

• Creating links between phases

• Creating intra-institutional links

1. Induction Phase

2. Mid-Career Development Phase

1. Induction Phase

2. Mid-Career Development Phase

1. Induction Phase

3. Senior Academic Phase

Induction PeriodIssues

Teacher Training- Effective or not?Mandatory or not?Shareable of not?

Teacher Training - Research

• Substantial induction training of between 120-500 hours now embedded in many institutions. No clear decision about mandatory nature of training.

• Training can increase ability to become more student focused. Control group (no training ) became more teacher focused (Gibbs & Coffey 2004)

• To be effective training should be at least 30ECTS over 1 year; short courses may undermine teacher confidence (Postareff et al 2007)

• However - short courses in teaching concept change (rather than techniques) shown to result in reflective changes that positively impact on student satisfaction and performance (Ho et al 2001)

Teacher Training

• Need to tackle decision about mandatory early T&L training.

• Need to identify most effective approaches for early stage academics

• Find appropriate mix between generic training and disciplinary-specific work

• Staff defensiveness increases through career: introduce peer mentoring early.

• Explore short concept-changing workshops, especially for more advanced academics

Induction PhaseEstablishing sound T&L skills and attitudes

Academic Mid-Career Development PhaseIssues

Effective T&L recognition and rewardEffective Peer support

Effective disciplinary-specific teachingCreating Communities of Practice

Induction PhaseEstablishing sound T&L skills and values

Reward Schemes - Research

• No clear link between performance of award-winning and non-award winning staff.

• Considered symbolically important but potentially alienating (Jacobsen 1989, Ramsden & Martin 1996)

• Can be tokenistic; divisive; labelling recipients as non-researchers (Warren & Plumb 1999)

• Only 50% of winners in UK cohort had subsequently contributed to academic staff development (Frame, Johnson et al 2006)

• Prospective schemes more effective than retrospective ones.

• Promotion/bonus much more effective in raising teaching quality (Ramsden et al; Warren et al.)

Reward Schemes

• Need to articulate the goals for the scheme, then design the scheme to best reach these goals

• Have clear criteria, match to desired outcomes

• Consider using prospective rewards – but be prepared to put work into them. Try and create communities of practice within schemes.

• Design rewards to address issues of institutional strategic importance

• Include leadership capacity as a core function of reward scheme

Induction PhaseEstablishing sound T&L skills and values

Academic Mid-Career Development PhaseSupporting quality T&L

Building Communities of Practice

Induction PhaseEstablishing sound T&L skills and values

Senior Academic PhaseIssues

Developing Academic LeadershipUsing Leadership to Support T&L Excellence

Supporting Teaching Scholarship

Academic Mid-Career Development PhaseSupporting quality T&L

Building Communities of Practice

Successful Academic Leaders - Research

• Have ability to work in complex and paradoxical structures. (Askling & Stensaker 2002).

• Have capacity to revitalise and energise colleagues to meet the challenges of a changed and changing environment (Ramsden 1998).

• Have capacity to lead in T&L area through pedagogic scholarship (Healy 2000)

• Can significantly influence T&L attitudes in both staff and students (Ramsden 1994)

Developing Academic Leaders

• Create environments for individuals to work together on areas of strategic importance

• Create environments for individuals to work together to explore new approaches to institutional complexity

• Encourage cross-institutional pedagogic scholarship at disciplinary level

• Create academic leaders that inspire confidence and who others wish to emulate

Senior Academic Phase

Developing Academic LeadershipSupporting Teaching Scholarship

Academic Mid-Career Development PhaseSupporting quality T&L

Building Communities of Practice

Induction PhaseEstablishing sound T&L skills and values

Summary of Phases

Senior Academic Phase

Teaching ScholarsDisciplinary T&L experts

Fellows

Academic Mid-Career Development PhaseSupporting quality T&L

Building Communities of Practice

Induction PhasePeer mentoring/Disciplinary Skills

Linking Phases

Can We Work Together?

There are opportunities at each phase for DCAD collaboration:

Shared Training Modules

Disciplinary specific groups (teaching/scholarship)

Cross-institutional peer-mentoring

Schemes (such as Fellowships) – with clearly shared strategic objectives and recruitment criteria

Pedagogic scholarship support groups (inter/intra-institutional)