Image: Kevin Dooley [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr
Higher education researcher Paul Ashwin’s tips on lockdown teaching
At a time when so many academics are struggling to deliver lectures, teach and support student learning online, the research of Paul Ashwin, professor of higher education at the University of Lancaster, has become particularly topical. Ashwin has spent most of his academic career probing how students in higher education learn, and what policies and interventions might support or endanger that learning.
Ashwin has a few pointers for academics faced with the new normal of online learning, who might be feeling out of their depth. Here, he discusses his personal philosophy on research funding.
Has the move to online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic made it harder to teach well?
If you’re someone for whom teaching is just about giving lectures and organising seminars, switching to online teaching can be difficult. But if you’re focused on creating an environment that enables students to develop an understanding of their subject, then you’ll already be thinking about how you can use the online environment to support their understanding. The challenges should be more surmountable.
Clearly, a lot depends on your work environment, the level of autonomy you enjoy, and the demands on your time. There’s also the matter of whether the people you’re teaching are used to engaging with online learning.
What can academics do to improve their own teaching if they’re not getting support?
You have to start off being kind to yourself and understanding that teaching is always difficult. You need to accept what’s possible rather than aim for an unattainable ideal. So much in education focuses on best practices, and that doesn’t help teachers at all because the practices that will be effective are always shaped by who the students are and what the knowledge is.
What is it that will help your students understand the particular ideas, concepts and practices you’re trying to explain? Often, what people think teaching ‘should be’ gets in the way of answering such questions. There is no secret golden method that will change everything.
What advice do you have for those who find less motivation in teaching than in research?
The way I think about it is, academics have a responsibility to look after knowledge. How do you make the knowledge you’re incredibly excited about as a researcher accessible to your students? The more you understand that it’s about giving your particular take on a subject, the more it becomes something that’s about your personal relationship to knowledge, rather than trying to introduce students to a depersonalised block of knowledge that would be uninspiring and boring to anyone.
What do you find most difficult in your teaching practice?
On our structured doctoral programmes, I have found it much easier to teach 30 to 50 people than a small group. I see my role as a teacher to provide students with ideas and resources, and then to help them think about how that’s going to play out in their own work. I find that much more difficult in a smaller group, where there is much more attention on me. I’m not sure I succeeded in that setup. That’s the thing about teaching—there are some things that are difficult; you just do your best.
Has the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) affected teaching in universities?
There’s not a lot of evidence that it has directly affected teaching. Unsurprisingly, the main impact is on how universities monitor the metrics covered by the TEF. A lot of the unfortunate things that have come through the TEF, like those through the Research Excellence Framework and the Research Assessment Exercise before it, are in fact down to how institutions have interpreted it and introduced performance management systems, rather than anything in the policy itself.
How do you approach your funding bids?
My strategy has always been to follow the thing I’m interested in. If your main focus is the money, then you’ve completely wasted your time if you don’t get the funding. And if you do get the money, it will never be as much as the work you’re going to do. Unless it’s research that you definitely want to do, there’s no point in putting in the application.
Do you plan beyond your next project?
I do. If you focus on individual projects, and you move from project to project, every specific application becomes important. But if you take a broader view and think about how your projects connect and form an overall contribution to your discipline, that can make life easier.
I try to work on five- to 10-year timescales and think about where my research is going in this period. Just spending that time standing back and thinking about the overall trajectory helps.
How do you deal with funding setbacks?
Whenever I’m putting in a bid, I assume it will be rejected, as most bids are. If you think, ‘Oh well, I thought that might happen’, and you know what your next move is, things feel less unstable. Clearly, your institutional position and your job security play a huge role in whether you can do this.
This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com