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调查:英国1/5教授因教学获升职

问卷调查显示,曾经“不存在的”通往学术界顶层的道路,如今已变得“普遍”

二月 24, 2023
Artist Charlie Brouwer adds another ladder to his creation as a project grows past 200 ladders to illustrate One in five UK professors promoted for their teaching – survey
Source: Alamy

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一项新调查显示,英国1/5的教授因其教学成就而晋升到目前的职位,这表明提高课堂教学活动地位的努力正在取得成效。

虽然大部分教授依然凭借其研究成果获得晋升,但英全国大学教授委员会(National Council of University Professors,NCUP)的一项民意调查发现,学者们也经常因为教学活动而获得教授职位。在1018 名调查受访者中,有18.4%的学者表示通过教学路线获得晋升。

NCUP主席罗杰·沃森(Roger Watson)解释称,虽然这项调查仅简要介绍了英国23000名教授如何获得当前职位,但以教学为主导的晋升现象非常普遍,这表明学术系统中的奖励和认可实践发生了重大转变。在去年秋天前,他一直是英国赫尔大学(University of Hull)的护理学教授。

沃森教授目前是位于四川泸州的西南医科大学(Southwest Medical University)护理学院的学术院长。他说:“当我于1998年在爱丁堡大学开始学者生涯时,我不记得有任何人通过这条途径获得晋升,而且可能一直到约十年前才遇到这种情况。”

沃森教授对这种转变表示欢迎,他表示,以教学为主导的晋升路径已经从“不存在的”变成了“如今更加普遍的既定途径”。

NCUP profs
Source:?
NCUP

这一观点在狈颁鲍笔名为的研究中得到呼应。该研究指出,1991年的一项甚至没有提到通过教学晋升为教授的可能性,而英国皇家工程院2015年的一项研究则敦促高等教育界“紧急……制定以教学为基础的晋升措施”,旨在推动通过教学活动获得教授职位

狈颁鲍笔的这份研究将这一现象的兴起描述为“积极的发展”,但补充说,这些“除了通过传统研究途径获得教授职位的其他途径应该得到更广泛的宣传和实施”。

教学教授的兴起源于高等教育学院(现名为Advance HE)所领导的、以专业标准框架的形式阐明以教学为中心的员工晋升政策,以及2017年英国引入卓越教学框架的措施。

沃森教授说,越来越多以教学为主的教授可能反映出某些学科的兴起,这些领域中与教学相关的晋升更容易被接受。沃森教授说:“我所在的护理学科中,我想这更常见,因为许多人具有教育而非研究背景,而要为护理研究争取大笔研究经费并不像医学或其他学科那样容易。 ”

狈颁鲍笔的调查还询问了教授所担任的角色,发现女性(占受访者的37%)和非白人英国教授比男性教授更有可能担任许多部门角色,而男性教授则更有可能将自己描述为导师。该研究指出:“面对这两个群体的代表性不足问题,有必要增加他们对学生指导的参与。”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (7)

The increasing equity between Education and Scholarship, or Teaching Focussed, paths alongside the more traditional Research focus or balanced paths is certainly to be welcomed. The next challenge for HEIs, who often have very and archaic structures, is to have similar transparent paths for 'non academic status' teaching and learning professionals. It is not unusual in my experience for there to be no promotion pathway at all for professional staff, let alone a transparent or accessible one.
How many of these teaching Professor are in fact managers who have done no teaching but just want to get a cheap Professor title? How many of the teaching professors are in second rate Universities and how many in the Russell group? Can we not give them another title like ProfessoT since they do not do any decent research?
Wow. Such sniping.
The pathway into the professoriate remains largely through achievement of research outcomes, but it is clear that facilitating the learning of others is increasingly recognised. Look a little deeper at the survey to see that role expectations have increased as well- this may be more significant as the average number of substantive roles is five: take your pick from: teaching, management, clinical work, doctoral supervision, administration and governance- as well as research. The ivory tower for research-only chairs is not only multicoloured, it may also be leaning!
Well, here we have another trend moving the values of the HE sector towards the corporate. I know quite a few deserving colleagues who did reasonably good research and great teaching gaining a chair. I can perhaps see the case for these being given a chair. I do note the part of the pie chart indicates 'other routes' at about 20%. This, I assume, is managey/administrator related promotions. This, like a knotweed metaphor, is a growth that strangles the genuine academic promotion route. No doubt, many readers have their own list of the utter duffers with little actual talent in the domains outlined above. In one institution I know of, someone with an abysmal teaching record, a very thin research output and no PI grants, rose to becoming a PVC. Once this dizzying promotion has been awarded, a professor ship followed in short order in their oruginal 'field'. This individual had had little genuine high level management experience and simply spouts whatever the UUK line is on any given topic. On balance I do not believe this trend serves the public and institutional good. It means duffers can be mistaken for someone who has made sustained and important contributions of real worth.
At the rate this is going, uni will basically be just another stage of secondary school. What all these people praising the new teaching-focused, corporate structure of British universities are failing to grasp, is that students benefit from taking classes from talented researchers. And conversely, talented academics agree to teach because they have freedom to pursue research. The system has worked well for centuries, as a way of advancing knowledge, and disseminating it to non academics through teaching. As we put more and more emphasis on teaching and pastoral care, piling on admin tasks and taking away time and resources for teaching, the implicit arrangement falls apart. Talented researchers will leave academia. Teachers who have no meaningful connection to research in their field will focus more on presentation than content. Already I can see students increasingly care about formats and marking criteria etc... than the actual content of the coursework. And increasingly, as their professors are just teachers rather than respected intellectuals, they're right to think this way.
What I've never understood about this is: presumably someone who gets a teaching-led promotion to professor does, like other professors, less actual teaching than a lecturer/senior lecturer? In which case how does this raise the status of teaching?
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