Teaching in Higher Education

[Suzette]

I think I read somewhere recently that everyone now teaching in higher education now requires a teaching certificate.

Does anyone have any more knowledge of this?

I thought I read it in The Stage but my back issues have been recycled and I can't find anything on their website.

 

I'm particularly interested in regards to those 'resting' actors and technicians/designers etc. who may teach at a drama school running a degree course for just a few hours a week. Maybe a Lighting Designer who comes in and gives a a couple of classes to technical students about their lighting experiences?

 

If anyone can point me in the right direction to find out any more I would be most grateful - I can't for the life of me remember where I read it (or maybe I am just dreaming it all !!)

 

thanks....

[Thom]

You are partly right. The article was on the front of The Stage, September 14th issue. However, it says that the DfES is planning to "insist upon academic qualifications for all tutors". "All staff at state-funded, post-16 education courses" must have a "passport to teaching".

"The Department for Education and Skills insists the new passport will equip tutors with introductory skills and knowledge to teach their subject. It includes some 30 hours of 'guided learning', including mentoring and observation and the keeping of a development log book."

 

I obviously still had that issue around, if you want me to relay more information from it just say.

 

Thom

[Suzette]

Thanks - glad I'm not dreaming it all - is there any date specified of when this might come into life, and what they mean exactly by a "passport to teaching".

Will there be yet another exam of some description that the government are planning to bring in, or a re-hash of a current exam?

[Thom]

Here is the article http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.p...acks-dfes-rules.

I'm sorry but that's all I know.

 

Thom

[Suzette]

Great thanks - I guess my googling was a bit c*** as I couldn't find it.

[Simon Lewis]

Suzette,

 

I presume you are talking about further education?

 

In the higher education field, although some lecturers may draw upon life and work skills instead of academic achievement, the vast majority are appointed on the basis of graduate and post graduate qualifications, together with active research.

 

New lecturers would be expected to study a post graduate certificate course that leads to membership of the Institute for Learning & Teaching.

 

 

Simon

 

Suzette,

 

a little post script.... (having read your post again!).

 

Full time lecturers teaching on a degree programme would typically have the type of qualifications I mentioned earlier. However, people with specialist skills or experience may well be asked to work part time as sessional or associate lecturers, to teach from their specific knowledge or experience.

 

Although sessional staff still have responsibilities in terms of complying with the quality and procedural issues surrounding the delivery of higher education, we would not necessarily expect them to have strong pedagogic knowledge.

 

Therefore we do not require teaching qualifications or ILT membership for sessional staff. We do, however, expect them to know their stuff and to be able to communicate coherently ;-)

 

Simon

[Suzette]

I was thinking of the (mainly) CDS drama schools, most of which now offer degree courses in various aspects of Technical Theatre. Quite a few of these courses are now state-funded in the same way as any other degree course - whether that be a degree in English, Nursing, or Astro-Physics. These courses are also all post-16.

All of which makes me think that everyone teaching on these courses needs this "passport to teaching" that the DfES appears to be wanting to implement.

 

At the end of the article the Principal of Rose Bruford does say if practitioners were coming in to do a one-off project, such as an end of year show with students, he did not think they should be required to take teaching qualifications. He added that those who worked over a longer period with students, particularly those at the beginning of their courses, should have some training.

I'm not sure from the article if that is his own opinion or he knows more about the DfES intentions than The Stage.

 

I do agree that anyone who makes their living from teaching students (on whatever course) should have teaching qualifications.

But, for example, there are some people who may be asked to teach acting students the basics of stage-management over a few weeks. This person may have plenty of experience and be able to communicate well with students but doesn't hold a "passport to teaching". This person wouldn't make their living from teaching, but they are still teaching?

There may also be a similar person who has the same amount of experience but is unable to communicate well with the students and maybe therefore should hold a "passport" - then during the "passport" training they may learn how to communicate their skills to others.

 

Going back to the quote from Rose Bruford : rehearsals for an end of year show could be as long as 5 or 6 weeks rehearsals of maybe 8 hours a day. That could be over 200 hours spent teaching - that's quite of lot of time spent teaching...... The stage manager teaching the acting students may only work with them for 2 or 3 hours a week over 4 or 5 weeks - that's about 15 hours teaching time.

 

Just my thoughts .....

[Ken Coker]

For what it's worth:

 

There is no exam in this type of course - they are assessed, in my experience, on "reflective practice" type journals and the odd essay. This is a good thing, as one is forced to consider how one passes on information.

 

They also consider something that has gone unmentioned - how students learn. This is useful to think about given that there are now any number of students in HE with very diverse learning backgrounds.(Although, obviously, I tend to find that physical/mental intimidation seems to work across all students.)

 

There can be issues in the way that these courses are delivered, that is they tend to come from the soft and furry end of cultural studies, but I do think they are of value.

 

KC

[Suzette]

OK - the reason for the first posting was because of rumours I had heard circulating at my place of work and I thought I would just ask the advice of fellow Blue Roomers first....

 

.... but I have now been officially asked to a meeting to discuss the possibility of me taking over the stage management module for the acting students. This would only be about 3 hours of teaching a week, for 10 weeks and also needs to include backstage visits to a couple of venues - so it will be very basic knowledge for them.

This is only an initial discussion and no decisions have yet been made (and I can still say no) but I don't want to take on a new role if I am not allowed due to a lack of teaching qualification!

 

I do have a wide range of experience and unofficially I have "taught" many students, and others willing to learn, in various venues and on various technical matters but that is a bit different in the world of a degree course. I know that if I do decide to do this then I will have full backing & assistance from my teaching colleagues but should I be worried about a lack of a "teaching passport"?

[Ken Coker]

My guess will be that institutional inertia will take over....that is, your current employers won't care and probably consider you to have enough "experience" of both teaching and the industry to be competent.

It may be that if you apply for another job your future employer might be more concerned - however, they may also offer such training as part of your employment.

Might be worth asking your colleagues about their training and their training needs; I imagine that if your institution values you, which it seems to, they'd be happy to organize training for you and your fellows - you won't be the only one in this position.

 

KC

[paulears]

I can only speak for my old college, plus the others I visit during the year. There does seem to be an undercurrent of all staff having to have at least a bsic level teaching qualification, even to teach a couple of hours a week. I think, as Ken said, that although gaining a teaching qualification is probably the most boring, dull, time consuming (for what was involved) activity I've ever done - some of the skills are damn useful. In most cases, the course is taught alongside you actually doing the job, and much content is derived from things you develop for the real classes, then reflecting on how well they went, analysing the 'issues' and modifying your technique before doing it again. There's plenty of sharing good and bad practice, and you really do need some of the stuff. One small warning. many colleges who run the teacher qualifications extend them to get additional funding. When I did mine, quite a while ago now, but the same basic course still exisists (PGCE), I had a feeling that a lot of what we were doing wasn't in the spec, but my attempts to get the document failed. In the end, the university provided me with the info direct, and I found out that what we had to really do, was being padded out to last longer. Educational management systems, which we'd been doing for 3 months actually wasn't even required. I was a total pain - I did everything the uni document specified, submitted it and refused to do the padding. I was told it had to go to the university panel which it did, and they sided with me - so I got the flat hat! The college (my old employer) were not happy!

 

As far as I'm aware, there are now two City & Guilds teachers certificates for those working a few to mid-ish hours, then a Full Cert Ed/PGCE (same content) for those who teach up to full time. All colleges are gradually introducing these qualifications for their teaching staff. So a technician who has a class a couple of hours a week should already be enrolled on at least the basic level C&G course. It is pretty usual for there to be a salary implication too - a technician with a teaching qualification is a candidate for teacher level pay. For somebody already teaching a bit, then the qualification may also allow an increment or two on the pay scale. At Higher level at universities, they will do whatever they want. Some have formal qualifciation rules, while others are more interested in what people can do. In general, full-time salaried posts at university probably have highly qualified staff teaching them - the actual qualification varies. Plenty of scope for ordinary or masters degrees here, but a 30 year history of excellence in chosen profession would also be quite highly valued - as would being a well know author.

[w/robe]

This topic is mixing HE and FE and there are fundamental differences in the conventions of staff appointments.

 

In FE (16+, usually Btecs etc.) it is unusual for lecturers not to have a formal teaching qualification.

 

In HE (generally 18+, undergraduate and graduate courses) it is unusual to have teaching qualifications.

 

This may be changing but this is the situation at the moment.

 

In CDS schools offering degree courses, which Suzette particularly enquired about, most lecturers will have trained at a time when there were not even BA courses available for the subjects that they are now lecturing in. When I first started lecturing I was teaching students on a BA course without having a degree myself. Although I have subsequently received a degree it is in no way required that lecturers have any formal qualifications. As far as I know none of my current colleagues has a teaching qualification of any kind.

 

 

The Stage article is almost entirely peoples opinions of the new rules with out ever telling us what the rules actually say. If all FE and HE lecturers are going to be required to hold some form of teaching qualification then thousands of lecturers across the country will have to be trained. In those circumstances I would think it would be very hard for Alistair Pearce (or anyone else) to argue that someone working with students for 5 weeks should not be qualified. A student, particularly on a performance courses, may well have a significant number of individual modules where staff are brought in for a few weeks to teach a particular style or technique or to Direct a show. If students have to be taught by qualified staff you can not be in a situation where a course is over 50% delivered by non-qualified staff just because no individual is in contact with the students for an extended period of time.

 

Suzette, having said all of that if you can convince your employer to send you on a teaching course I'm sure it would help in the delivery of your classes and would not harm your chances if you ever wanted to change employer and work for a different educational establishment in either FE or HE. If they will not (though I got my BA subsidised so it is worth a try, staff development being one of the current buzz words) I sat in on a number of classes given by other members of staff who had taught for a number of years to get a feel for how they ran the classes. I also wrote myself notes as soon as each of my classes finished, while it was still fresh in my mind, on what things had worked and what was not as successful so that I could alter them next time.

[Suzette]

Thanks for all the replies and good advice. It is HE (18+) students that am talking about, and I don't have a problem about going on a teaching course - in fact I think I would quite enjoy as I'm always up for learning something new/another challenge.

I'm currently working through ideas for the module, with what I think they ought to know and balancing that with what can be practically taught in just a few hours.... I guess I just need to remember that as actors their first job could well be an Acting ASM (or working in McDonalds!)

 

I'll let you know if I manage to get on a teaching course - and whether or not I do end up doing any teaching. I may not take on the module if I don't think I have the time to deliver it properly.

[Just Some Bloke]

If I may be so bold as to offer a little advice to anyone strtaing out in teaching: one thing any course will teach you is how to do a 'scheme of work'. This is something that all teachers are supposed to do, but in practice is only done by those who have no choice (e.g. the inspectors are coming or you're a student and have to hand them in)! [Not altogether true, but I'm sure you know what I mean]

 

However, having said that, it's a really useful thing to do whenever you start teaching on a new course. It requires you to analyse what needs to be taught over the year and fit that into the lessons available. You end up knowing that everything has been covered and what the students should be able to do at any given point.

 

Now, obviously, things never go to plan. A session might be cancelled because too many people are ill that week, or becasue the theatre isn't available that day or whatever. You may also find you need to spend longer than you thought on a particular topic which puts you out. But whatever happens you'll always have a list of what needs to be taught, so you can cactch up from time to time and know you haven't missed anything out.

 

It really is very useful for that first year of teaching a new course and I'd advise doing a scheme of work even if you haven't had any training in how to do one! (I'm sure if you Google the term you'll find advice).

 

HTH

[Suzette]

Just Some Bloke - thanks for the advice. I've already started doing a scheme of work - mainly so that I can see what I can or cannot fit into the time allowed. Luckily, a few years ago, my flatmate was doing her C&G 7302 (I think it was - anyway a teaching exam aimed at those teaching FE & HE) and I ended up being the guinea pig for the micro lessons and reading through schemes of work and lesson plans - so I have a very basic idea of some of the admin side of things that need to be done.

Thanks for all the help - now to get in touch with my old flatmate and see if she still has all her paperwork on the course....at least that will be a start until I get sent on a proper course!