Over time, how do post-PhD academics locate teaching within their academic practice?

Author(s):

Lynn McAlpine(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 12 C, Academic Work and Professional Development

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-05

09:00-10:30

Room:

B022 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Jani Petri Ursin

Contribution

This paper draws from a longitudinal qualitative research program, begun in 2006 in the social sciences and in 2010 in the sciences. It has explored how doctoral students, post-PhD researchers, and pre-tenure faculty navigate the complexities of academic work within their broader lives to create a career in the post-PhD years. The program can be placed within a growing literature on early career academic experience (e.g., Barnes & Austin, 2009; UK Council for Science & Technology 2007). Much of this literature sheds light on experiences within a particular role, e.g., doctoral student, so little is known of how early career academics construct their identities as they transition across work roles and navigate career journeys over time.

Longitudinal research of the kind we do is a powerful way to document identity as a dynamic journey of “continuous self-definition of potential, achievement and expectation” (Reybold & Alamia, 2008, 114). From our research has emerged a distinct view of identity, identity-trajectory (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2011), in which our examination of early career academic experience highlights:

Agency: efforts to be intentional, plan, construct a way forward given constraints (expected or unexpected) – though not always successfully.
The past to present to future: influence of past and present experiences including relationships on present and future intentions.
The personal: embedding of academic practice experience within broader lives.

Academic work is viewed as encompassing research in all its guises, teaching including supervision, and service. While a key objective for those seeking tenured positions is building a strong research profile, teaching is central to a traditional academic role (Nir & Zilberstein-Levy, 2006) though its role in tenure[1] decisions is often debated.

Further, regardless of role, the institutional spaces in which individuals engage in academic work influence learning (Tynjala, 2008) since these spaces offer affordances or constraints. Different institutions will vary in how they support learning since they differ in how work is organized (e.g., teaching responsibilities) and resourced (e.g., teaching spaces, availability of teaching assistants). Further, traditions within disciplinary fields may influence institutional responsibilities and resources related to academic activities (Colbeck, 1998; Jones, 2008).

Research question: The overarching question was: Over time, how do post-PhD academics locate teaching within their academic practice? Given the conceptual framework underpinning the research, the study asked specifically:

How do early career academic locate the place of teaching a) within their broader academic practice, and b) developing careers as post-PhD researchers and as pre-tenure faculty?
What differences, if any, are there in the experiences of academic practice of social scientists and scientists, particularly teaching?

[1] Tenure is usually obtained after two three-year appointments, the first requiring the candidate to demonstrate the potential to meet the expectations for tenure within the next two-three years, and the second requiring the submission of a tenure dossier demonstrating research, teaching and service contributions.

Method

Narrative methodology is used in the social sciences to study identity (Elliott 2005) with participants’ accounts of experience understood to constitute representations of their identities (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Narratives demonstrate the intentions of individuals, make connections between events, and show the influence of time in carrying action forward (Coulter & Smith 2009). Our research, using a longitudinal qualitative narrative approach (McAlpine et al. 2013) captures successive narratives incorporating the constancy of biographical identity combined with a sense of ongoing change (Elliott, 2005). Participants: For this analysis, those who met the following criterion were drawn from participants in the research program: during a two-year period of data collection, they moved from post-PhD researcher positions into pre-tenure positions or remained post-PhD researchers while seeking pre-tenure positions. This group constituted 13, seven science and six social science post-PhD researchers of whom four scientists and three social scientists moved into pre-tenure positions. Eight were international, four with English as another language. All were in relationships, about half with academics, and nine had children; these relationships influenced their decisions related to academic work (this is not explored here but has been elsewhere: McAlpine & Amundsen (2013)). The only demographic distinguishing the groups was the tendency for the scientists to be somewhat younger (late 20s to mid-30s) than the social scientists (early 30s to early 40s). Data collection: On an annual cycle over two years, participants provided four kinds of narrative. Three were electronic: a) biographic questionnaire (e.g., role, work experience, imagined future); b) logs of weekly activities completed 4-5 times each year (e.g., activities, interactions, significant experiences, difficulties) capturing current accounts of experience; c) pre-interview questionnaire as a retrospective on the year. The fourth account, a semi-structured interview, drew in part on the earlier narratives to explore in-depth the interpretations of past and present experiences as well as the imagined future. Analysis: An iterative thematic analysis common in narrative inquiry was used, “theorizing from the case rather than from component themes across cases” (Riessman 2008 p. 53). The author examined all the data in chronological order for each participant noting where teaching arose and how it was positioned in relation to other aspects of academic work and broader life issues. Next, the narratives were re-read bracketing pertinent text while preserving the integrity of individual experience. The guiding principle was analysis-in-context, retaining the larger setting in which each narrative was constructed (Juzwik 2006).

Expected Outcomes

Little difference existed in the experiences of post-PhD researchers whether scientists or social scientists. They shared a lack of access to resources, often associated with lack of status. For instance, teaching offered institutional status, but in many cases those who sought to teach were excluded from these opportunities. Still, their core work was research and making their research profile more competitive. For those moving into pre-tenure positions, there was a marked change in the perception of teaching by both scientists and social scientists. They felt challenged in undertaking teaching alongside the other work expected of them, particularly as regards research which would play a strong role in their re-appointments. It became evident that teaching was intertwined with a range of academic activities and interactions, e.g., departmental relationships, advancing research trajectories, and could not be examined independently of these. Nevertheless, there were differences in the perceptions of teaching between the scientists and social scientists based on their previous learning about how to advance their research. The scientists viewed undergraduate teaching as a means to recruit students to their research projects, and graduate students as key to advancing their research. So they were articulate about the supervision pedagogies they used to ensure students could help them progress their research. In contrast the social scientists did not appear to connect their teaching or supervision to their research and were less articulate about supervision pedagogies. Teaching and research appeared somewhat independent activities competing for limited time. The goal of this analysis was to illuminate the evolving place of teaching over time in relation to other aspects of academic practice. Whilst each narrative of experience was unique, the cross-individual and cross-group comparisons highlighted the ways in which individuals negotiated the place of teaching as an institutionally organized and resourced responsibility.

References

Barnes, B., & Austin, A. (2009). The role of doctoral advising: A look at advising from the advisor's perspective. Innovative Higher Education, 33, 297–315. Colbeck, C. (1998). Merging in a seamless blend: How faculty integrate teaching and research. The Journal of Higher Education, 69(6), 647-671. Coulter, C., & Smith, M. (2009). The construction zone: Literary elements in narrative research. Educational Researcher, 38(8), 577-590. Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research. London: Sage Juzwik, M. (2006). Situating narrative-minded research: A commentary on Anna Sfard and Anna Prusak’s “Telling identities”. Educational Researcher, 35(9), 13-21. McAlpine, L., & Amundsen, C. (2013). Looking across time: Enhancing insight into academic challenges through varied data collection tools. Paper presented at the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction Conference, Munich, Germany. McAlpine, L., Amundsen, C., & Turner, G. (2013). Tracking experience over time: Epistemological issues and methodological challenges. In J. Huisman & M. Tight (Eds.), Theory and method in higher education research. London, UK: Routledge, 97-121. McAlpine, L., & Amundsen, C. (2011). Making meaning of diverse experiences: Constructing an identity through time. In L. McAlpine & C. Amundsen (eds.). Doctoral education: Research-based strategies for doctoral students, supervisors and administrators (pp. 173–184). Amsterdam: Springer. Nir, A., & Zilberstein-Levy, R. (2006). Planning for academic excellence: Tenure and professional considerations. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (5), 537-554. Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Los Angeles, US: Sage. Reybold, E., & Alamia, J. (2008). Academic transitions in Education: A developmental perspective of women faculty experiences. Journal of Career Development, 35(2), 107–128. Sfard, A., & Prusak, A. (2005). Telling identities: In search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. Educational Researcher, 34(4), 14–22. Tynjala, P. (2008). Perspectives into learning at the workplace. Educational Research Review, 3, 130-154. UK Council for Science & Technology. (2007). Pathways to the future: The early careers of researchers in the UK. London: Council for Science & Technology.

Author Information

Lynn McAlpine (presenting / submitting)

University of Oxford

Oxford Learning Institute

Oxford

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.