Going Teaching-Only?

[Livinginayurtinthewoods]

I'm an assistant professor at an RG university in the social sciences.

Ahead of the REF, everyone is being heavily scrutinized.
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I am not performing as well on research as I should be.

I have two papers which are squarely in the UoA that the department is submitting to. One has been rated as a 3 and the other a 2 by internal reviews. I have another six papers but they are all very interdisciplinary, I'm not first author, and they most likely won't be submittable to our department's UoA.

I have applied for several grants and got none of them. I've had about £20,000 of funding in five years.

Today I had a meeting with our Research Director and Head of Department to discuss my performance.

I was told to get something of at least 3* quality out in the next year as if I haven't been fucking trying. I'm not sure how likely this is to happen without new data and with my clear lack of research ability.

I was threatened (I use this term lightly) with being put on a teaching-only track if I fail to get another paper.

At the time, I was really angry about this but I've come home and cooled down and actually it feels as though it might be a relief to go teaching-only.

With TEF and NSS, there are still metrics and pressures on teaching-only staff but I feel like I have a handle on these metrics whereas I feel pretty clueless about research. It's like swimming underwater through treacle.

Anyway, I plan to wait until I'm pushed rather than just jumping from my current track. I know that many of my colleagues will see this as a some kind of demotion.

I just wondered about other people's reflections on this, please? I'm sorry I don't have a specific question, I guess I just wanted to get everything out and strike up a dialogue.

Thanks so much

Sorry, that was a really long post

You could be me, but I’m jumping before I’m pushed. Also, I’m a good teacher, and have a genuine interest in how we teach what we teach, so I can see a new niche for myself. I also saw it as a demotion, and I know others will. But I’m beyond caring. Research sucks at the moment unless you are part of a big, preferably cross institution team. And I’m not. Five years of bedding in with the job (first lecturing contract), trying to get a toehold and crucially balance my family life as well and I’m done. I’m looking forward to being solidly based in the department and my home institution and have a plan to leverage the whole thing for promotion.

So... do you like teaching? Are there any wider opportunities in your department? I wouldn’t commit to any of it until I had a plan. And it’s my first ever plan! Generally things just happen to me, but that hasn’t worked out so well recently, so now I’ve come over all thoughtful about things!

Thanks mismatchedclaws

Oh yes, I absolutely love teaching and much prefer it to research. Well, I don't necessarily prefer it to the actual act of doing research but publishing and finding funding I just find completely overwhelming.

I don't know about wider opportunities in the Department. I mean the opportunity for moving to teaching-only hasn't really been put formally on the table. It's more a threat for what might happen after REF2021.

Do you mind me asking- did you ask to move over to teaching-only? How did that conversation come about?

What do you mean "a plan"- a plan of what you want to teach etc?

I really appreciate having your perspective

I think it depends on your aspirations and how your institution has designed the teaching-only track.

At my institution, it is vastly more difficult to get promoted up the teaching-only track, partly because you are still required to do research and publish in academic journals, but you lose your access to the kind of things that might help you do this, like research leave.

If you are confident that your teaching will provide you with the kind of pedagogic insights that will lead to publications and have a plan for how this would work, it could be OK. Otherwise, moving on to the teaching-only track is basically a career dead-end, and I would think very carefully about doing it (at my own institution, it may be different elsewhere).

I don't think we have a teaching only track, perhaps we do but it isn't used as an option to shunt off people who aren't quite performing. Performance management is hitting us by the back door, it's been done in one school and I'm sure it's just a matter of time til it comes our way. I do have problems with REF scores as well due to being very interdisciplinary and then going in front of a very narrow panel, I'd do better elsewhere but the rest of the stuff stacks up for me so I'm not worried it'll be just down to that. I hope you find a good solution, sounds like teaching only may not be the worst thing ever.

I have been in a few departments with teaching only staff. The amount of work involved is really much lower - as they typically don't get given that much more teaching than other staff. That could be a real positive in terms of work life balance.

With TEF and the increasing importance of NSS, more senior teaching roles are opening up, although in practice I suspect these will be taken by academics on mixed contracts. For example, I think it is quite unusual to get an Associate Dean/PVC role in education without a strong background in research and without being a professor - particularly in higher ranked universities who would want to say the research shapes education. But there are probably still options for progression to departmental educational management roles for teaching only staff.

Given the pressure to reduce academic staff numbers across the sector, I would feel more vulnerable to voluntary severance or redundancy on a teaching only contract. At least in my area the teaching only staff would be the most dispensable and the first to be targeted.