What makes a good Teaching Fellow?

[neverendinglauaundry]

Asking because I've been doing the job for four years. I really like it, I'm a very good experienced teacher (previously taught in schools), I have a broad and quite thorough knowledge of my main subject and really make an effort to get my head around other subjects that I occasionally teach. I create, teach, set assignments, mark and administrate 6 modules and keep current in my reading as well as diving backwards to older works that are relevant.
But... it sort of feels like that's not what is wanted, although that was the job advertised. I'm not ambitious to progress within academia, happy to stay in this job if I'm wanted. I do the occasional unpaid gig in a (non academic) area related to my main subject and have done things like book reviews.
My confidence is beginning to erode, but I'm not sure whether I just need to get out of my own head about it. I think the atmosphere of academia is so research focused that even though our department is not REFfable and my role has no research strand, I'm feeling like I'm coming up short. But, also I have no real experience of doing research (aside from on my masters), and I don't think there's any support to do any. I have no idea how you go about getting a grant and my time is already pretty full with teaching, side gigs and family commitments.
If you were managing me would you be disappointed? What would you want from me?

I sympathize - academic careers nowadays seem to operate on the assumption that everyone is hyper ambitious and there's less scope for moving in a more lateral way!
At my place (a RG uni, Humanities) we don't have many permanent academics on learning and teaching contracts. However we do have a few including a couple in my team.
Perhaps I have been doing this wrong, but of learning and teaching staff I would perhaps expect that they take the lead a bit in teaching matters. WIthout it necessarily being a hierarchical relationship, I would expect that I could go to them and say, hey, my teaching is feeling as if it's struggling a bit this semester, can I ask you for any tips. To be clear there are colleagues on research and teaching contracts who are fantastic teachers with great ideas, and everyone should constantly reflect on and update their teaching practice - but if you spend more time teaching than everyone else I would expect that perhaps you will have more time and propensity to be up to date on new technologies and developments.

@aridapricot thanks! That's helpful, I do do a bit of this sort of thing, presentations in meetings or quick explainers (e.g. in the move to online learning during the pandemic) so that's good..I should maybe look for more opportunities there.

Sounds like you’re doing a very good job. I always find it difficult to think how someone not engaged in their own research can teach at the cutting edge, but I’m in a field where this is an expectation. It sounds like you’re in an area where this is not necessary and you’re doing an excellent job in keeping up with the literature.

If you had the magic power to make your job whatever you wanted, what would your current job look like? What do you really want to go?

Thinking about those questions might help.

Then again, the current state of universities - demands made by increasingly I’ll-prepared students and the surveillance / monitoring from on high - can make universities quite unpleasant places to work at the moment.

Do - not “go”

It sounds like you’re doing a good job. But if you want to step it up I would think about things like how you communicate about your teaching practice - do you lead a teaching hour, or similar, do you write blogs or papers about your practice, etc? In my field there are lots of practice centred conferences where the focus is not on research but on sharing and discussing good practice. Do you engage with curriculum-level discussions, work on how to improve teaching across your school or university, etc?

I worked in a large university in a central role and we held an annual Learning and Teaching Conference where people shared good practice. We also had outside speakers . I used to find these at other conferences such as Improving Student Learning and SEDA. Unless anyone has actually said anything to you about your role, I would suggest you are doing all that is required of you but perhaps organising a conference, like the one above, would raise your profile.

There are a couple of ways to look at this question. The first is - why do you think you are failing? Do you have an annual performance review and a chance to discuss how to expand your role or profile? Does the Teaching Fellow have a pedagogy focused promotion track where you are? How are you defining success/is success being defined where you are?

The second way to answer it is to offer some reflections of my colleagues who are Teaching Fellow equivalent (RG Uni, social sciences). They tend to fall into two camps - those who wish to switch to a research and teaching role, and those who wish to develop on the pedagogy side. So where I am, there is a Learning and Teaching conference and funding available for pedagogy research. These can be projects to improve student experience, creating new learning resources, or develop cross-disciplinary initiatives, these are just a couple of examples I know. They can also lead to publications. There is not an expectation to publish at the teaching fellow level, but there would be for promotion.

if you are not aiming for promotion, then there are many other things which teaching fellows have done where I am, which have really improved the teaching culture in my area. Things like regular group sessions for graduate teaching assistants to discuss pedagogy and issues arising in the classroom, making additional teaching resources in dialogue with the lecturer, offering support and ideas for the virtual learning environment, being innovative with technology and then sharing their practice, so many things which lecturers might not get to because they are so busy. But that said, these staff have since been promoted to the next level because they are looking for development.

This brings me back to the context of universities being quite hierarchical and the culture that you will be working towards promotion. If that is not what you want, then I do think it is important to spend some time thinking about what you do want, and how you want to place yourself in your institution and then own that. You say ‘if they will have me’. Are you on a rolling contract? Is it possible for that to be open-ended? I think you need a bit more of a sense of your own worth here. Four years of experience is not a trifle. You will have experience and insights to offer to graduate teaching assistants and new teaching fellows, whilst also being able to provide ‘coal face’ experience to lecturing staff of how to improve their teaching materials for delivery.

I suppose if I were your line manager, I would be trying to understand what you do want out of your job and development, and how to support you to achieve that.

I'm also a teaching fellow (RG, fewer years in job than you) and it does sometimes seem as though we are neither fish nor fowl. Pretty much all the teaching fellows in my dept are actually biding their time to get back into a more research-oriented role (all previously PhDs/postdocs) and we are encouraged to do some research alongside teaching - although in practice there really isn't much time for that and it can be quite stressful trying to fit that into a job that is not at all designed to make that space or provide resources. The role is quite poorly defined overall and I have never had a meeting to discuss it - that just never happened. I'm not looking to switch roles myself - but do feel quite isolated in this role as there are no others in my subdept. Do you have others in this role to chat to and compare notes? We do have an annual learning and teaching conference which is good and I recommend something like that. If your place doesn't have one - go to one held elsewhere.

It's curious though - when people refer to 'research-led teaching' as it's clear that most lecturers have to teach topics peripheral at best to their actual research and only a small part of the content actually reflects their actual research. And let's face it - some researchers just don't teach well. Like everyone, I certainly have pet areas I steer towards.

How often do you talk to your manager - what kind of discussion is that? Maybe you just need a bit of recognition and overt appreciation (there's not much of that going around but it does help). I'm not really looking for promotion because to be honest I'm not prepared to switch my writing/research energy budget from my specialism to education/pedagogy and I definitely don't want more admin <<shudder>>. Would you like to move up the food chain though?