Pete Boyd

Becoming a university lecturer in teacher education: expert school teachers reconstructing their pedagogy and identity

This article contributes to understanding of the professional learning of expert school teachers when they are appointed as university‐based teacher educators. In this case study of a single department a qualitative analysis is used to interpret the transcripts of 16 semi‐structured interviews with lecturers in teacher education within four years of their appointment to higher education roles. They experience tensions within the educational partnership and professional field about the value of abstract knowledge compared with work‐based practice and about what a lecturer in teacher education should be. The situated learning of the new lecturers within their particular departmental context encourages them to hold on to their existing identities as school teachers, rather than embrace new identities as academics.

Mark my words: the role of assessment criteria in UK higher education grading practices

This article seeks to illuminate the gap between UK policy and practice in relation to the use of criteria for allocating grades. It critiques criterion-referenced grading from three perspectives. Twelve lecturers from two universities were asked to ‘think aloud’ as they graded two written assignments. The study found that assessors made holistic rather than analytical judgements. A high proportion of the tutors did not make use of written criteria in their marking and, where they were used, it was largely a post hoc process in refining, checking or justifying a holistic decision. Norm referencing was also found to be an important part of the grading process despite published criteria. The authors develop the notion of tutors’ standards frameworks, influenced by students’ work, and providing the interpretive lens used to decide grades. The implications for standards, and for students, of presenting the grading process as analytical and objective are discussed.

Becoming an academic: the reconstruction of identity by recently appointed lecturers in nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions

This study investigates the workplace learning experiences of recently appointed lecturers in UK higher education in nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions. Health care practitioners, appointed to academic posts in Universities, are experts in their respective clinical fields and hold strong practitioner identities developed through professional socialisation. This study focuses on the first five years of experience after appointment to higher education and aims to inform strategies for academic induction. The new lecturers generally find their mid -career transition challenging but they feel well supported. They are strongly motivated by their contribution to the development of student practitioners. They tend to hold on strongly to their identity as a clinical practitioner rather than quickly embracing new identities of scholar and researcher. The implications include the need for university departments in health professional fields to provide clearer role models and more realistic expectations for new lecturers.

Accountability in grading student work: securing academic standards in a twenty-first century quality assurance context

This article, using a student outcomes definition of academic standards, reports on academics’ sense of standards as enacted through marking practices. Twelve lecturers from two UK universities were asked to ‘think aloud’ as they graded written assignments followed by a semi-structured interview. The interview data were used to investigate the source of tutors’ standards, their sense of accountability for their grading judgements, their use of artefacts and their attitude to internal and external moderation. The findings suggest that tutors believe there are established and shared academic standards in existence for their discipline and they endeavour to maintain them. There was no evidence of significant pressure or practice related to lowering of standards, although differences in tutors’ tacit ‘standards’ frameworks’ have the potential for bias. Whilst moderation has some power to secure standards within teams, the article discusses the implications of the research for assuring standards across universities and disciplines.

The contemporary academic: orientation towards research work and researcher identity of higher education lecturers in the health professions

Internationally, the increasing emphasis in universities on the quality of teaching, on student employability and on a corporate approach to entrepreneurial income generation has created a tension around the primacy afforded to published research outputs as a focus for academic work and status. In this study, a framework for academic socialisation is developed and used to understand how lecturers in health professional fields attempt to ‘juggle’ four areas of work – teaching, leadership, knowledge exchange and research activity. Studying academics in professional fields, with a well-developed focus on employability and strong partnerships with employers, provides useful insight into contemporary academic work and identity. A significant proportion of lecturers in health professional fields, even of those working in research-intensive universities, appear to ‘subvert’ the paradigmatic primacy afforded across the higher education sector to research outputs and identity as a researcher.

Research: an insight on how it is valued by Portuguese and English teacher educators

ABSTRACT The quality of how teachers are being prepared is seen as a priority in the twenty-first century and engagement with research is often considered a crucial element of initial teacher education programmes. Institutional and national contexts have an impact in the way research is valued. This paper investigates the perspectives of Portuguese and English teacher educators towards the value given to research in initial teacher education. Interviews were completed with teacher educators working within different kinds of higher education institutions—university, polytechnic and teaching-led university. Results suggest that research has a significant presence and relevance in all cases but is valued differently

Evaluating academic workplaces: the hyper-expansive environment experienced by university lecturers in professional fields

Academic developers need to understand the situated workplaces of the academic tribes they are supporting. This study proposes the use of the expansive–restrictive workplace learning environment continuum as a tool for evaluation of academic workplaces. The tool is critically appraised through its application to the analysis of workplace experience questionnaire responses from higher education lecturers in nursing and midwifery in the UK. The analysis identified excessive professional learning expectations and opportunities for these lecturers that we describe as a hyper-expansive workplace environment. We conclude that these academics need support to identify priorities and to develop synergy between areas of their work by focusing on the links between research, teaching, and knowledge exchange activity. Used within an ethical research framework, the expansive–restrictive continuum provides a useful tool for academic developers to understand academic workplaces and offer tailored support to lecturers within specific subject disciplines.