Those who can’t teach

It was at the start of my eighth year employed as a university research fellow and the clock was ticking. My fellowship was running out in December and I only had funding for another year after that.

Just before the start of trimester one, a teaching staff member suddenly quit. An email went around asking who was able to help.

This was my first chance to be considered for a teaching position, so I put my hand up. I was given a unit ready to be delivered and familiarised myself with the content, thinking this would be the most important thing.

It wasn’t.

I didn’t know how to communicate well with the students to bring out the best in them, where to direct them in case of problems, how to provide feedback to improve their learning, how to recruit and train markers or how to use our online teaching platform.

For 11 weeks, I relied on colleagues who generously answered all my questions.

When my student evaluations came in, they were horrendous and I nearly resigned.

Only much later and with some external help, did I realise there were also systemic issues that left me under-prepared for a core academic role — teaching students!

Whether PhD graduates join the academic workforce in roles that involve teaching and research directly after graduating or after several years as full-time researchers, they do so with the implicit expectation that they can teach at the university level.

However, research skills are distinct from teaching skills and sadly research has shown my experience is by no means an outlier.

Teaching not taught

In Australia and other countries, teaching is not taught during a PhD given it is a research qualification.

About 40 percent of all Australian PhD graduates commence work at universities between three and nine months after graduating, a small percentage also work at universities as full-time researchers supported by research grants or fellowships.

But such research positions dwindle as people climb the ladder of academic seniority.

With fewer opportunities to sustain work as a fully-funded researcher as the years progress, most researchers end up transitioning to a more typical university academic role involving teaching and research.

The business of universities is the generation and dissemination of knowledge — research and education respectively — to improve society and peoples’ lives.

Ill-equipped to transition

A symbiotic relationship exists being research and education, whereby cutting-edge research informs and is embedded in education programs.

This allows for graduates to think and perform at higher levels once employed in society.

But we suspected that full-time researchers were not equipped to successfully transition to under- or postgraduate teaching and developed a research project to find out.

Sixty-seven academics working in health or biomedical faculties from more than 20 Australian universities told us how they felt about their preparedness to teach.

Some had worked as full-time researchers before, but some had not.

Those who had worked in full-time research before having to teach as well, enjoyed their job less and felt less confident at performing it.

The more time they had spent in full-time research, the less they enjoyed teaching.

We believe this is partly because they had forged their professional identity over many years as a researcher only, not as a teacher.

Participants who had a chance to work as a casual teacher during their PhD generally enjoyed teaching more than those who had not.

This higher enjoyment could have been because they had an inherent interest in teaching that pushed them to seek teaching experiences or simply because they had had more practice and time in the classroom.

However, there were also similarities between the two groups.

Unrealistic workloads

Whether they had worked as full-time researchers before or not, health and biomedical academics enjoyed the rewarding aspects of teaching and the sense of connection teaching created with students and other staff members.

In contrast, they did not enjoy the pressure put on them by unrealistic workload allocations and expectations, especially related to teaching and learning activities.

Our most surprising finding was that academic staff — regardless of their previous role — were not appropriately prepared for teaching at the university level.

Strikingly, 39 percent of academics had received no education training or teaching induction at all before starting to teach.

A lack of training or guidance in understanding university teaching systems and processes was also reported.

Two factors were identified as helpful.

A buddy helps

More than 40 percent of academics mentioned a teaching mentor or “buddy” as their sole and most useful resource to learn their new job.

For those who finally completed a teaching degree — 36 percent within the first five years of taking on teaching responsibilities — all found what they learnt useful.

We believe that a lack of guidance and support during the first few years of a research and teaching role may lead to staff dissatisfaction, lack of motivation, disengagement and ultimately to poor quality teaching and student learning.

To overcome this, some have already proposed that early university staff induction should emphasise teaching, learning, assessments and mentoring, taking into account the various backgrounds of new academics.

Others have suggested that teaching training should be embedded in the PhD process based on individual needs and interests.

Australian universities focus on developing translational, graduate employability skills in PhD students, but these training opportunities do not usually involve teaching.

Since most graduates will not exclusively focus on research in their career in or out of universities, some have questioned why the doctoral degree does not address the needs of those willing to research and teach by providing formal training and experience in each of the two key functions of academia.

This is already the case in some nursing doctoral programs in the United States and could be readily implemented as an option for Australian and other PhD students internationally.

There is a unique opportunity to mitigate these issues by implementing post PhD teaching-specific training programs catering for the pure research background of new health and biomedical academics.

Alternatively, as many universities offer optional coursework units during PhD candidature, the inclusion of units focused on teaching and learning theories, technologies and practices could also benefit graduates.

Either way, people who intend to work in academia may begin their teaching and research roles with greater skill and confidence to benefit themselves and their students.

This article was written by Séverine Lamon and Judy Currey, a Professor of Nursing and the Chair of the Academic Board at Deakin University where she oversees academic governance. The authors’ research referred to in this story was supported by the 2020 Australian Physiological Society Education Research Grant Scheme “New to an academic position – bridging the gap between researchers and teachers”. It was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.