The educational competence of lecturers remains a crucial factor in enhancing the quality of higher education globally, in Europe, and in Lithuania. Currently, according to the Law on Science and Studies of the Republic of Lithuania (2009), the improvement of university lecturers' educational competence is mandatory; however, universities manage this process independently. At present, the Lithuanian Ministry of Education, Science, and Sport is developing new guidelines that will define more precisely and specifically how universities should enhance educational competence in teaching.  

The main topic of my doctoral dissertation is “The improvement of university lecturers’ educational competence: reality and improvement opportunities”. One of the purposes of my research is to identify the very personal (let’s say “professionally intimate”) stories, how and what the newcomers into university teaching feel when they are becoming more and more experienced. This also improves the method chosen for those aspects of the fresher university teachers experience. I have chosen the narrative research (via narrative, or, in/or in-depth interview) to identify the stories of the research participants. The main point of this research part and this conference presentation is to choose, how deep should and could be the narrative interview.

In this place my researcher interest is to investigate, how the university regulations on lecturers’ educational competence are able to improve the real situation, how the various university measures of their lecturer’ educational competence improvement (lectures, seminars, workshops, exchange programs for teaching personnel) have real impact on the teaching quality. Moreover, as a university lecturer, I had to pass all the issues of being totally newcomer and gain experience by myself, having a special time becoming an experienced university lecturer.     

So, as a teacher and a PhD candidate I want to research the stories (i. e. “timelines”) of university teaching personnel newcomers, how did they experience the way from being new to teaching to gain experience in teaching university students. I am highly interested in the emotional conditions of research participants caused by experiences, lived during the journey of getting more experienced and confident university lecturers.   

The main topic of my doctoral dissertation is “The improvement of university lecturers’ educational competence: reality and improvement opportunities”. One of the purposes of my research is to identify the very personal (let’s say “professionally intimate”) stories, how and what the newcomers into university teaching feel when they are becoming more and more experienced. This also improves the method chosen for those aspects of the fresher university teachers experience. I have chosen the narrative research (via narrative, or, in/or in-depth interview) to gather the stories of the research participants. The main research question of this conference presentation “how to choose, how deep should and could be the narrative interview in my university lecturers’ educational competence research”.The narrative approach (collecting data via narrative interview) is suitable to this kind of research because of this method’s flexibility. Also, because of being interested into research participants’ emotions, deep lived emotional experiences during exchanging information with students and emotional states during the new experiences in various university teaching situations during communication with very intercultural student audience (lecturers, who also teach international students are preferred for the research).      

The terms "story" or "narrative", is widely used across various fields of study, including literary studies, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, history, fine arts, social and legal research, criminology, philosophy, management, computer game studies, and film theory (Fulton, 2022; Jossefson et Lieblich, 1997; Knot et al., 2022; Squire et al, 2014). One of the most commonly used methods in narrative research is semi-structured or unstructured interviews, during which the researcher allows the respondent to freely share their story, experiences, or opinions about a particular phenomenon. The goal of the interview is to create a safe and trust-inducing atmosphere so that participants feel comfortable sharing their personal experiences. Among in-depth interviews, the narrative interview stands out, as it is essentially an in-depth interview where the timeline, encompassing the research participant’s lived experiences, plays a more significant role. (Jossefson et Lieblich, 1997; Squire et al., 2014). As I have mentioned before, as the main method for my research, narrative inquiry will be used. The narrative interview, in-depth interview, or in-depth narrative interview could be discussed as the research instrument. My purpose of interviewing research participants (university lecturers, working their first decade) is to concentrate on their emotional experiences when having to manage the teaching and lecturing issues. Because a huge variety of emotional experiences exists, I need to choose the most flexible aspects of all possible types of narrative interviews (Adhikari, 2021; McCormack, 2004). Therefore, it should be eclectically flexible. So, the main methodological questions (and this presentation question) are how deep the narrative interview could be and how narrative can be the in-depth interview. Solving this question provides combining “traditional” narrative research theory (Clandinin, 2006, 2018, 2019; Connely et Clandinin, 1990; Goodson et al., 2013; Josselson et Lieblich, 1997;) with all possible approaches, which could help deeper concentrate into research question making my interview into an in-depth interview at the same time (Adhikari, 2021; Della Porta, 2014; Johnson et al, 2012; Mears, 2012).

The most expected outcome of my research and this presentation is to have a clearer vision of how should be the “ideal” type of the interview for mapping the emotional experiences of research participants. Another expected outcome is to map the main points, on which points of interviewing as a researcher I should concentrate on the timeline (narrative, story), and where I should to pay more researcher’s attention on the deepness of the participant’s emotional experiences. The expected outcomes of my PhD dissertation are to map the emotional pattern of the newcoming university lecturers, who are experiencing their first 5 (or 10) years of the university lecturing/teaching experience. This will make me not just have more or less objective (as much as it is possible using qualitative research methods) emotional experiences of the participants. This will make me as a researcher, understand, how the formal criteria of a lecturer’s educational competence (provided by Lithuanian laws and university regulations) improve real emotional experiences of emerging university lecturers.

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