Averil Robertson, University of Bedfordshire
In early December last year, I posed a question to the SEDA list:
“A colleague and I have become intrigued at the behaviour of our colleagues taking our PgCertHE. We’re thinking of enquiring further into this – I’m struggling a bit with the literature search, so is anyone aware of research in this area that we could look at?”
This clearly struck a chord with many of you! In addition to a number of helpful pointers to the literature (which I’ve listed below), anecdotes came flooding in. It seems many of you running similar courses have noticed (endured?) behaviours in your colleagues that closely mirror those of the students they complain about, often apparently oblivious to the fact that they’re doing so.
Comments included:
- You are not alone! We have been variously irritated, amused and in despair over this since the inception of our PG Cert!
- One interesting thing I noticed is how quickly [the students] started to ask the question: When do we get our marks back?!
- my word – were you in our office on Wednesday??? We were having EXACTLY the same sort of conversation!!
- Definitely have staff complaining about lateness and a lot are late themselves. They also seem genuinely astounded I can’t run modules more than I already do to suit their work preferences. Getting some to realise the work involved in an M-level award is also interesting given we are a solely PG institution!
- I have a new programme leader this year for our PGCert equivalent programme – she is tearing her hair out as she’s not experienced this before. She’s a very experienced academic from one of our faculties and can’t believe the student behaviour she’s experiencing!
- As soon as I read your post it took me back to my first day as a student on my own teacher training course. The tutor was standing at the front of the class explaining how things were going to work. I was on the back row with my new-found recalcitrant friends. When the tutor announced that there would be an 80% attendance requirement on the course, I noticed my immediate neighbour scribbling furiously in her diary. What are you doing? I whispered. She replied: I’m just crossing off the days when I won’t be coming.
- My favourite is the one who turned up at quarter past the hour, dramatically put his bags on the table and interrupted the peer who was speaking with a long rant about students turning up late for his lectures. It turned into a bonding exercise for the rest of the group who were all a bit annoyed at being there but decided they didn’t want to be him.
- I remember a staff member having their employment terminated on the basis of repeated plagiarism. Which adds a slightly different inter-organisational aspect.
- One of the conversations I used to really enjoy on the PgCert I ran was when participants questioned the assessment regime. Because I was anti-grading, I managed to revalidate the course without grades. Naturally, this pleased those who didn’t feel that they needed to be motivated by grades (and displeased others, of course). But the interesting bit of that conversation was when I said, well, let’s transfer this conversation to your undergraduates. Pretty universally, the consensus was that undergraduates do need to be graded. Even many of those who weren’t motivated by grades themselves didn’t seem to want to have that conversation with their own students. Some just said that grades were the system. But why not challenge the system?
We’re hoping that we will be able to gather more such examples and anecdotes from our SEDA colleagues, which would form an appendix to a future journal article; the plan is to make this appendix open source so it can be updated on an ongoing basis and used by others.
On a more serious note; the question is of course related to identity, and many of you had useful comments to make, and suggestions as to the direction our research might take.
Themes included the necessity to make the PgCert a welcoming space and supporting staff to see themselves as part of a community with their instructors and each other. In their current unit, ‘Communicating with Professional and Academic Communities’, our students will be exploring the topic of Communities of Practice, so this fits nicely. Linked to this was the question of whether they actually wanted to be there or had been told that they ‘had’ to take the course – for most of them it’s the latter (though they do seem to be enjoying it so far!). One respondent made the observation that it’s often the situation rather than the motivation that causes the behaviour, which is an interesting point.
The importance of reflective practice came up repeatedly. All our activities and assignments involve discussion and a critical evaluation of practice in one form or another. I plan to use one of the synchronous sessions in my unit to run an informal focus group around the topic of identity, one of the themes of the unit, which I anticipate will provoke a lively discussion – our students have multiple identities as academic staff, as students, and as practitioners.
Some of you mentioned the psychology underpinning identity and transitions. ‘The emotion of learning and teaching’ (see below) was recommended as a resource that could be used to help both our students and us to understand motivations and behaviours, and to adapt our courses and support accordingly. I was particularly taken with the idea of ‘expert to novice’ mentioned by one person, and think this would resonate with our students, most of whom are health practitioners.
Several of you suggested looking at the literature around Students as Partners, co-creation etc., and I’ll be following that up. I was already planning to do a paired observation, which one of you thought would be a useful activity, and will be giving them plenty of opportunities to get feedback on their topics and the form of their submission as they develop them (they have wide scope in the format they can use).
Some of you pointed to your own work in this area. For example, Stephen May (Royal Veterinary College) not only told me about his own experiences with patchwork assignments (which we also use), but also shared some quotes from his research in this area:
“The fact that the patches were formative and not graded may have led to deeper reflection, as assessed reflective work can lead to less personal critical reflections. However, this led to many instances where participants’ requests for a mark for formative patches had to be declined by the tutors.“ Silva-Fletcher, A., May, H., Magnier, K.M. and May, S.A., 2014.
“Receiving formative feedback which was part of the ‘teaching’ or ‘developmental’ activity of the PGCertVetEd was hard for some participants who frequently requested a summative grade together with the formative feedback.” Silva-Fletcher, A. and May, S.A., 2015
Nice to see also that the discussion has had an impact already and has inspired others on the list to follow it up; “We are already planning to develop a resource based on the responses you are getting!”
The collective wisdom has supplied us with many ideas as to the direction of our study and we will be applying for ethical approval in time for beginning our research early next year. We will also likely be sending out a call for interview participants, to find out about experiences elsewhere, so stay tuned ….
Averil Robertson is Teaching Excellence Lead in the Academy for Learning and Teaching Excellence at the University of Bedfordshire, where she teaches on the PgDip in Academic Practice (with Apprenticeship) and on the PgCertHE. She also leads the University’s Experiential Portfolio Route to Advance HE recognition. She has previously worked as Academic Services Manager for the University Library at Anglia Ruskin University and as an Academic Liaison Librarian for the University of Bedfordshire, as well as in various library posts in the UK and in Hong Kong.
@Averil50
References
Adams, R. (2011). Exploring dual professional identities, the role of the nurse tutor in higher education in the UK: role complexity and tensions. Journal of advanced nursing, 67(4), 884-892.
Henry, G., Osborne, E. and Salzberger-Wittenberg, I. (2003). The emotional experience of learning and teaching. Routledge.
Mobilio, M. H., Brydges, R., Patel, P., Glatt, D., & Carol-Anne, E. M. (2020). Struggles with autonomy: Exploring the dual identities of surgeons and learners in the operating room. The American Journal of Surgery, 219(2), 233-239.
Orr, K., & Simmons, R. (2010). Dual identities: the in‐service teacher trainee experience in the English further education sector. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 62(1), 75-88.
Silva-Fletcher, A., May, H., Magnier, K.M. and May, S.A. (2014). Teacher development: a patchwork-text approach to enhancing critical reflection in veterinary and para-veterinary educators. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 41(2), pp.146-154.
Silva-Fletcher, A. and May, S.A. (2015). Developing teachers in veterinary education REDU. Revista de Docencia Universitaria, 13(3), pp.33-52.
White, E. (2014). Being a teacher and a teacher educator–developing a new identity? Professional development in education, 40(3), 436-449.
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