Teaching & Scholarship contracts - yay or nay?

[ArmchairActivist]

Just wondering what people's opinions are.

Sitting here struggling to write a paper I think they seem quite attractive! But ... it depends on how you feel about research and where your ambitions lie. The people at my institution who are on teaching and scholarship contracts get pretty heavy teaching loads and there are more limited opportunities for promotion - although the official narrative is that this will change and, perhaps with the TEF, it might

Thank dame (love the username).

That's interesting to hear about better possibilities for promotion. But do you think the TEF will make T&S contracts just as pressurised / cutthroat as T&R contracts, without the benefit of having time to publish?

(Not sure in what way they could be made cutthroat. Not sure what the hoops will be that you'd need to jump through on T&S. Am sure they'll think of something!)

Not sure (and thanks)!

I think T&S will remain lower status than T&R regardless of the TEF. Which is not to say that T&S people are disrespected as individuals where I am, but I think institutionally and culturally the position carries less weight and I don't see that changing very fast. That shouldn't matter necessarily, unless you care a lot about status. And that will probably depend to some extent on the institution.

It seems to me that the general trend is always towards more pressure, and that will affect people on both T&R and T&S contracts, but probably in slightly different ways. Both will be under the same pressure to maximise feedback scores from students, and that pressure might continue to increase.

Are you deciding whether to take up a T&S contract?

ie status differentials will differ according to the institution, not whether you care!

I am indeed trying to decide whether to go for a T&S contract.

I've neen a postdoctoral researcher for several years now (5), and if I take a T&S lectureship it may give me a bit more security, but it sounds like I'll be saying pretty much goodbye to research.

Is it a bit dead end, or does it come with advantages that may outweigh the lack of research time?

I do enjoy teaching; I suppose my worry is there seem to be more T&R positions, so would I be able to get another job after this one as easily if I'd gone down the T&R route?

I'm not worried about status so much as stability. (Though it would be nice to earn over £40k at some point in my life!)

Oops just seen your last post. In my university (RG), T&R does trump T&S status wise, definitely. But luckily yes, I'm not too bothered about that. Just stability and longer term, employability in other institutions.

In my discipline (a Humanities subject) it's pretty normal to start one's career post-PhD with a Teaching Fellow (teaching only) contract. And TBH, if all I had to do was teaching & admin, I'd have an easy nice life & be able to fit my work into the 37 hours the university thinks it pays me for.

If it's the first step in a post-PhD career, I think you have to suck it up, see it as a few years of very valuable teaching experience, and work to publish our way to a teaching & research contract.

And I'd say that sometimes a teaching-only contract at a good place may be better than a teaching & research contract at an ex-poly where there's the expectation of a high teaching load AND research, but very little depth of research culture or research support.

Just to add to this I think it does depend a lot on the institution, as WeyHay says, because teaching and admin loads do differ. In my discipline (and institution) a T&S contract would not mean you were excluded from a T&R contract forever, as long as you found time to publish. There's a lot to be said for security so I understand why you are considering it, especially if T&R contracts are hard to come by.

I took a 2 year TF post right after my postdoc at a research intensive institution. My wonderful HoD recognised that I was still very much research active and wrote a successful staffing case for the TF to be readvertised internally as a permanent lectureship. I interviewed for the lectureship and got it (unsurprisingly since it was exactly my profile). What was originally a strategic gamble paid off through going beyond the stated duties of the TF and having a supportive department. If I hadn't had such luck I would have applied for other more competitive lectureships. Good luck - I think the right academic employment can work as a productive stop gap and present interesting opportunities, an affiliation, and connections to relevant networks, even if it's not your dream post.

I've just finished a two year teaching-only postdoc. It's swings and roundabouts, I think. On the one hand I had less research time than regular staff and far less than postdocs with things like JRFs/Leverhulme. But I do think it pushed me in a good way, and realistically, learning to fit research around teaching is a much more helpful skill than spending 2/3 years when you might not teach at all. Does have its downside though.

weyhey, does anyone do a teaching-only post and only do teaching and admin? AFAIK, the reality is you try to do as much research as regular staff. If I'd frozen my research for two years I am quite sure I'd never get another job. And I have been told in feedback for unsuccessful job applications that the interviewers liked me, but expected more publications to compare to someone coming out of a JRF.

I have a teaching only contract this year: it's left little time for research. My mental health can't deal with staying up until hours after teaching to write another paper etc. I'm not willing to impact my life like that, and realize it might cost me job-wise. But then, I'm no longer desperate enough to stay in this subject at all costs.

There are a few T & S permanent contracts at my institution, and I haven't noticed that such people are treated any differently.

What does worry me are the rise of fixed-term teaching contracts. This year has been a good experience, but to take another full-time one would be career suicide as it's all about pubs for me now. The ones coming up in my department are a bit worrying in terms of the amount of modules people will be expected to cover (4+). It's unlikely you'll get publications around that teaching load, and be left in a very precarious position once the contract ends.

I am also not sure it is the best scenario for students either. But that's another issue.

I think I'd be happy with a more secure teaching only contract, and wouldn't regard it as "lesser" - it takes off a lot of the pressure, and you can go at your own pace rather than the slightly insane one now demanded by departments. But these one year things? Very bad.

weyhey, does anyone do a teaching-only post and only do teaching and admin?

No of course not. I wrote:

work to publish your way to a teaching & research contract

I did read your post - I was just unclear, because you started out by mentioning that if you did, you'd fit into the 37 hours. I wasn't sure whether you were mentioning that as an option some people actually took. You seem to be saying publishing is only important if you want a teaching + research contract, but I think even jobs advertised as teaching only tend to go to people who've been research-heavy. Maybe just what I've seen.

My comment about the 37 hours was partly a joke! But during term time & for quite a lot of the time outside of the teaching term (and mine is 12 weeks compared with Oxbridge 8) I do very little but teaching & admin.

In my field in the Humanities (and pretty much everywhere in the Humanities), it's very rare to start straight into a standard "three-legged" contract ie teaching, research, administration.

So you need a strategy to publish your way out. For someone in a junior position such as a Teaching Fellow, there will rarely be huge demands for admin/teaching outside of the teaching terms, so the student vacations are your answer there.

And yes, you are expected to be publishing while on early, possibly teaching-only contracts. I had a Teaching Fellowship throughout my PhD, and started to publish then. So I had 5 years of really good teaching experience, including running my own module towards the end of the contract, plus a PhD (+MPhil - the two were in a combined programme over 5 years), plus 2 articles in peer-reviewed journals. But I had very little admin -- apart from looking after my 150 tutees!

But the important thing is to be demonstrating a research trajectory - to know what your 5 year plan is, and why you'r doing what you're doing. And what is the feasible plan for what's next.

So, in answer to the OP, like everything in life, "It depends." I have had to talk a bit sternly to a newly minted PhD of mine, who said that they weren't interested in a teaching fellow post - nowadays in the Humanities, you can't afford that sort of attitude.

That's fine! Sorry, I'm sleep-deprived and got very confused by your first post, but probably wouldn't have done so otherwise.

It's insane that you are expected to publish whilst teaching far more than lecturers, who are - in my dept. - expected to produce approx. 1 substantial article per year. With other commitments, you cannot do it without imploding. And then, you are made, by some, to feel a failure for not being 'dedicated' enough. It's not a badge of honour to work all the time: in fact, it's a quick route to mental health problems.

These demands for even fixed-term teaching fellows to publish on top of a full-time teaching load (for significantly less pay than others who are working less) are exploitative and plain wrong. I've seen a few ads in my discipline this year for temporary teaching posts that say things like: "essential criteria: must have an active research profile" - hello? Who do these people think they are? The pay isn't brilliant. You're doing more work than most. Just f*k off. That's the point I've reached with it all, I'm sorry to say.

I'm fortunate enough not to have to take up another such contract, and at the moment, the bad points of academia are outweighing the good ones.

Researching during the break didn't work for me this year as I had to prep for several modules. We're now on the summer break though, and a few papers should (finally!) be completed soon.

The people I know on temporary teaching contracts haven't published, for the reasons stated above. I know if I took up another one, I'd be in the same position.

This is NOT a complaint about teaching. I really enjoyed it, mostly. It's a complaint about the precarious nature of things for many coupled with unrealistic pressures (esp. for those, like me, who are disabled - we physically can't do it after a while, and are then told we're "not good enough.").

If none of my job applications come off this year, I'll be writing on my own schedule, and realise I'm very fortunate to be able to do that. :)

Thanks all for your thoughts. Interesting.

Godstopper sorry to hear your difficulties. I'm afraid your scenario is one I'm a bit more familiar with from people I know who are on T&S contracts.

One has not been able to publish for over 5 years. In our dept there is a lot of taught Masters teaching too which means no such luxury of a long summer break to publish - the T&S people are snowed under supervising the students' dissertations all summer.

I am really undecided about what to do .

I'm also another one who struggles to see that always working 50-60 hour weeks is a good way to live a life.

The thing is, presumably you don't want to go to another post-doc, another person's projects, at least this way you would get your own workstream of your own stuff. I agree it is very hard to publish from a T&S stream, just because of the large teaching load plus managerial teaching type stuff, designing new courses, programmes, but on the other hand, I think this is a better option than another post-doc and it doesn't preclude you from applying for lectureships with paid research. I have a friend who did one 3 or 4 days a week, so was essentially paying for herself to do research.

I don't think it's a perfect solution, but it also depends how many lectureships you are getting interviews for, if you would be able to move, likelihood of getting research lectureship in your area. Sometimes these are pragmatic decisions as much as about a 'right' pathway, even down to do you need the money!

I'm in Humanities, and we have recruited quite a lot of people on T and S contracts over the last 6 years, all at junior level.
The reason being we have expanded our student numbers (or been asked to by ambitious VC and senior managers) so just needed more instructors.
Most if not all of them have managed to continue a research profile, although mainly in the form of articles rather than monographs.
They work incredibly hard and are asked to take on a major amount of teaching and admin.
But all our T and S people are on relatively short-term contracts and I think this is because they can be let go if student numbers start to fall; if that is the case, the lack of a research portfolio could be a major issue for getting the next job.

I am applying for a Lecturer post (Teaching and Scholarship contract).
They ask for 2 page 3-5 year scholarship plan for T&S. I have no idea of what they expect in this plan? Please, any advice?