Developing Effective Part-time Teachers in Higher Education

New Approaches to Professional Development

Fran Beaton, Amanda Gilbert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136194894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Part-time teachers have become an increasing part of the workforce in universities throughout the world. They work in a sector undergoing enormous change and debate about the purposes of the university for individuals, societies and economies. As part-time employees, however, they are not necessarily offered the same level of support or recognition as full-time lecturers. This book, drawing on the voices of part-time teachers and the expertise of those who support them, considers whole-institution strategies to promote individual and collective professional development.

Utilising real action research undertaken by expert practitioners from Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this book explains:

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• What motivates part-time teachers;
• Developing effective policy and practice to support part-time teachers;
• What part-time teachers' voices tell us about the content and delivery of induction programmes and ongoing support;
• The implications of change and future directions of Higher Education and part-time educators;
• How to build sustainable frameworks for the professional development of part-time staff.

Developing Effective Part-time Teachers in Higher Education explores the extent to which part-time staff are utilised, the effectiveness of their teaching, their integration into the broader teaching environment, and their training and development. This international text will prove an invaluable source for anyone involved in academic and educational staff development in Higher or Further Education, and is essential reading for Human Resources directors and managers, senior academics and all part-time teachers.

1
INTRODUCTION

THE EXPANSION OF PART-TIME TEACHING IN
HIGHER EDUCATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Amanda Gilbert

Introduction

Across the world the employment patterns in higher education (HE) are changing. Retiring academics will be leaving a profession very different from the one they joined 40 years ago. One of the main differences is the increased proportion of academic and teaching staff working on non-standard contracts in universities. It is now estimated that more than 40 per cent of university teaching staff are not in permanent full-time positions (Percy et al., 2008) and the percentage is increasing by the year.

The reasons for this change are many and varied as are its implications. One major implication, the challenge of preparing these teachers to assume the many and variously interpreted functions in changing academic communities, is the subject of this book. Each chapter will focus on a different aspect of this issue and provide insights and ideas to help ensure that students continue to receive the best quality learning experiences. To begin with we will discuss the teachers who are the subject of this book and try to answer the question …

How did we get here?

If you ask how universities have come to rely so greatly on teachers in non-standard contracts, the answer may well be different depending on whom you are asking. As we will consider later in this chapter and in this book, part of the answer lies in the changing curricula which universities have developed in response to changing employment expectations. One example of this is the development of nursing as a graduate profession, resulting in students being taught both by academics and experienced health-care practitioners. Broadly, however, the discussion is most likely to be a financial one. Part-time and temporary teachers are cheaper to employ than permanent or tenured staff. Although there has always been some truth in this statement, higher education in the twenty-first century has become more aware of it for a number of reasons.

More students, fewer teachers

Numbers of students worldwide have increased hugely in the past 40 years and are set to rise further as long as governments strive to send higher percentages of young people to university. Coates et al. (2009) report that between 1989 and 2007 there was a 107 per cent increase in student numbers in Australia. The same trend has also been observed in the UK. Between 1995 and 2011 UK higher education has seen a 60 per cent increase in student numbers (Higher Education Statistics Agency, www.hesa.ac.uk) though there is mounting evidence that increases in fees are beginning to halt this rise (Grove, 2012), even if this may not be uniformly even across subject areas. In New Zealand changes in legislation led in 2011 to the introduction of capped enrolments for universities (Tertiary Education Commission, 2010) which in turn has led to a levelling of numbers of students entering higher education. In the UK, too, the numbers of undergraduate UK students are controlled by broader policy and legislative frameworks and perceived imperatives.

The increase in student numbers has not, however, been matched by the number of full-time academics; Coates et al. found that during the same period (1989–2007) the increase in full-time equivalent staff was only 37 per cent as a whole. As a result, staff/student ratios in Australia which were around 1:14 in 1989 rose to 1:22 in 2007 and are still rising. The relative decrease in teaching staff in comparison with student numbers is not in itself a driver for casualisation of the academic workforce. The limited amount of resources allocated to teaching, however, does mean that part-time and temporary teaching staff may be perceived as a more cost-effective means of maintaining staffing ratios.

Flexibility

Institutions, particularly those which offer a more modularised programme of study, often need to vary their staffing depending on each intake of students. Although universities may provide, or be issued with, guidelines for the numbers of students they can accept on particular courses, in reality numbers can vary significantly. This is particularly the case in HE systems which feature large, first-year courses without prerequisites. Again, part-time and temporary teaching staff can facilitate the teaching of larger numbers — teaching more groups of students without increasing group sizes — with relatively little forward planning or long-term investment in staff.

Although flexibility of employment can be seen to be driven by the needs of the institution, there can also be advantages for the teaching staff. There are some who prefer a part-time working week because it allows them to focus on other aspects of life, for example childcare. It is for this reason that casualisation of university teaching has sometimes been discussed from the perspective of gender (Keogh and Garrick, 2005). We will return to this later in the chapter and Karen Starr provides more detailed insights in Chapter 10.

Changing needs, changing provision

With widening participation in university education comes changing educational needs. Students enter higher education today with vastly different experiences and levels of preparedness for tertiary study. It is unlikely that the different needs of students can all be met by the same individual. Over time, therefore, the teaching role has come to be the responsibility of more people than an individual lecturer on a particular course. So, as the teaching role changes, the breadth of skill required also changes and for many, teaching becomes a sub-section of a job rather than the defining characteristic. Students can increasingly expect to meet and be taught by librarians, IT specialists, subject tutors, study skills teachers and technicians in addition to the course lecturers. Each one of these can be said to be in a non-standard teaching role, often designated as a learning support role, whether they have dedicated teaching contracts or not.

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, many disciplines also benefit from teaching by individuals who are employed in other professions but who bring their professional expertise to the classroom or who supervise students in the workplace. Many lecturers in medicine, architecture, law and other professions take on teaching in a part-time capacity. This arguably provides students with a more current and professionally oriented learning experience as their lecturers provide examples of day-to-day practice and relevant cases which can illustrate theory and increase relevance. This freshness of approach for the student can be equally professionally satisfying for the practitioner provided that systematic and thoughtful support is provided at the right time. Louise Wilson (Chapter 8) considers the nature of the ‘just-in-time’ approach for such staff.

Choice

The question of whether or not working in non-standard academic contracts is a matter of choice or requirement becomes important as we begin to consider the needs of these teachers. As we will see in Chapter 2, different teachers have differing motivations as well as a variety of needs and the degree to which support or regulation can be administered may well be dependent on these. Some teachers on non-standard contracts see themselves as being exploited by the institutions for which they work and are resentful of any further expectations placed on them. Others may be keen for support and development but simply be unable to take advantage of it. Finally, the observation that some teachers work in more than one (and sometimes as many as five) part-time teaching positions does not support the idea of choice (Gottschalk and McEachern, 2010). By working on numerous different contracts, teachers are forced to abandon the notion of flexibility in order to earn sufficient money on which to live (Burgess et al., 2008).

In a survey of academic staff in Australia, Junor (2004) asked whether staff were content with the contract under which they currently worked and what preferences they might have. Her findings indicated that it was not the part-time nature of work to which staff responded negatively, but the lack of security associated with it. Only 28 per cent of casual staff preferred this type of work while 56% would have opted for a continuing contract of some type. Other authors have commented on the degree to which academics on non-standard contracts aspire to traditional academic careers. The findings of Junor (2004) and Edwards et al. (2011) suggest that many would prefer this but others, such as Coates et al. (2009), comment that an academic career is becoming less attractive in comparison with more lucrative and stable options. It seems, then, that the desirability of an academic career is relative and may well depend on the type of non-standard contract as well as on motivation.

Is gender an issue?

When one of the editors discussed this book with some colleagues at a women's writing retreat, the first question that they asked was about the prevalence of women within the casual academic workforce. They felt that part-time work was necessarily gendered in western society and believed that women would outnumber men in this context. A quick look at recent data does support this perception. HESA (2012) report that in the UK during 2010/11, 39 per cent of full-time academic staff were female compared with 55 per cent of part-time staff.

Some authors have argued that there is a trend away from the traditional gendered idea of part-time work where women with other responsibilities (e.g. family) undertake some work around these (e.g. Gottschalk and McEachern, 2010). Indeed, there are some areas in which women are not in the majority and the example of individuals taking between two and five part-time positions suggests that motivations for such work have moved away from working around other responsibilities towards financial necessity. Others feel that there are still gender issues to discuss. Donovan et al. (2005) reported that the Open University in the UK has been able to appoint a larger proportion of women to associate lecturer (AL — part-time distance teaching) posts because of the flexibility that these appointments offer. Women see the role as being a way to take a career break or as a means to re-enter conventional academic careers. However, many of the women interviewed in their study felt that they were over-qualified for the role of AL but were prohibited from working in full-time continuing posts because of their need for flexibility.

Given that women are generally in the majority (though this may vary for different types of part-time position), there is definitely a need to discuss the needs of women in non-standard academic posts. The under representation of women in senior academic positions (Armstrong, 2011) supports the contention that non-standard posts (particularly those that include large teaching loads) may be disadvantageous (Keogh and Garrick, 2005). Karen Starr (Chapter 10) provides rich insights in relation to women's experiences and needs.

Definitional difficulties

As this chapter continues, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there are many different types of people who might be classified as having a non-standard academic post. It has now become important to consider the ways in which we might identify this elusive group. Researching this chapter has revealed that, though the literature is broad and interesting, every study refers to a different group of people and every definition is different. This book will refer to a variety of people who occupy non-standard academic positions. Different authors have elected to use different terminology for the teachers they are writing about and their definitions will be made clear in each case. In general, however, the ideas and advice presented here will have applications for other groups and different types of part-time staff; readers should aim to utilise what they find most useful in their particular context and to adapt ideas to suit their specific needs.

What is standard?

The issues discussed in this book may have relevance to anyone who is engaged in teaching in higher education and who is not employed in a full-time (or mostly full-time) continuing academic position. In this case, ‘continuing’ refers to tenured, permanent or extended fixed-term positions. Rather than set out criteria for non-standard contracts, Box 1.1 below describes some of the people whose experiences might inform our writing and who might benefit from the ideas discussed in this book.

What's in a name?

The RED report (Percy et al., 2008), produced by the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development in 2008, discussed the (R)ecognition,

Box 1.1 Who are our part-time teachers?

The professional

Anne is a consultant in a large teaching hospital and part-time senior lecturer in Paediatrics. She is employed on a 0.4 contract to lecture to medical students and to supervise students on paediatric rotational placements. She has been employed by the university which oversees the medical school for the past six years but has very little involvement with the university and its ‘administrivia’ as she is based mostly in the hospital a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List Of Figures
• List Of Tables
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword By Tony Brand
• Acknowledgements
• Series editor's preface
• 1 INTRODUCTION: THE EXPANSION OF PART-TIME TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
• SECTION I CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW OF THE NATURE AND MOTIVATION OF PART-TIME TEACHERS
• SECTION II POLICY AND PRACTICE
• SECTION III IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• Index