For questions about academia specific to the United Kingdom. /r/AskAcademia is a helpful resource for finding out more about academic life, pathways into and within academia, and other general questions, it is very often centred around US based academia and therefore not always relevant outside of the US. This subreddit will therefore function as a counterpart to /r/AskAcademia, one that is specific to UK based professional academic life. WE SUPPORT THE USE OF OLD REDDIT - Please see sidebar.
Hi all,
I've read a few similar posts but thought I'd also ask for advice on my specific situation.
I'm entirely new to lecturing and just completed my first academic year at a university in the UK as a full time lecturer. I'm loving teaching and interactions with the students and generally have no issues with that side. However, I find it a bit difficult to position myself in team dynamics.
I come from a highly practical field with tight deadlines and high pressure where everyone was simply trying to complete projects on time without losing too much money in the process (lol). Most things were done with little supervision and generally I'd get to oversee many projects myself.
I feel like student's feedback has been great and generally I'd like to continue in my role even though I know I'd ideally like to do it in a different university as the structure of the programme I teach on leaves a lot to be desired and there's a lot of much better programmes for my subject. But I was put on a 12-month probationary review and it's getting difficult to see whether it's purely a formality or whether my suitability is being closely monitored.
My main issue is that my line manager is extremely hands off and all he does is talk to me during probationary reviews which seem quite formal and follow the same template for every new lecturer. But I have a few colleagues who seem very manipulative and have already drawn me into a few unnecessary arguments. They also have a tendency to be very reductive/dismissive of my efforts and go on weird power trips even though I'm not their subordinate in any way.
Overall, there is not much for my line manager to find out about my performance other than those colleague's feedback and I'm a bit worried they'll try to do something that will make it look as my probation isn't going that well.
I'm just basically unsure what to do in my next meeting with the line manager. Should I ask something along the lines of 'is there any areas I could improve in while I'm still on probation?' I just want to teach and have as few interactions with the colleagues as possible, unless it's absolutely necessary but I also worry I'll suffer due to not being able to play these silly games.
Sort by:
New
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
The suggestions from Ill-Faithlessness are great (worth keeping and reading periodically!).
Changing programmes is a slow and often frustrating process. I've worked in curriculum development roles for 8 years (with a few breaks!) and I've had many frustrating moments. It's not just the bureaucratic process but also dealing with vested interests, laziness, incompetence and indifference. The best people to work with are colleagues who are busy and successful because they're often pragmatic about change or they're willing to push ideas.
In reality, even when you're in charge of curriculum development, it's very hard to make meaningful changes. In other words, the best thing to do is to focus on doing your own work well.
When I joined my institution I was full of ideas to refresh what I felt was a fairly dull programme that I was asked to teach on. I had a lot of ideas about new pedagogical methods and was confused about the pretty moribund research culture at my institution. I am now in my 7th year here and a course convenor, I am not rude to people nor do I get territorial about my teaching/programme but I have have learned a few hard lessons along the way.
Things change but very, very slowly. This can be frustrating but if you're going to survive then it's best to accept the pace of change and learn to spot opportunities where you can exert influence. In your first couple of years this will be about your teaching on your modules. Later, you may have responsibility for a course or portfolio and can make more signifcant changes.
For various reasons, members of academic staff can be quite resistant to change but the reasons vary. Some are lazy, some are incompetent and some are extremely busy or aware of the practicalities of making what seem like minor changes to a programme. I am a researcher with a good track record of publication and funding application, because I work in a teaching-intensive institution I am fiercely jealous of my limited research time. Even minor changes to courses and modules take ages to get through quality assurance and usually require my assistance to submit the paperwork. If it can be done another way I will suggest it, if not it's a discussion for the next re-approval when we have to do that paperwork anyway (and get allocated time for it).
Pick your battles carefully. Some stuff just isn't worth it. When I was new and thought something was dumb or a poor decision was being made I would say something. These days, I have learnt that there are specific areas which are important and those are where I focus my attention. For instance, changes to marking and feedback practices and the delivery of research methods teaching which have a disproportionate effect on student satisfaction. If people want to fuck about and make work for themselves with silly initiatives about student engagement, that's their business, I'm not going to get involved.
I'd left Reddit but honestly, this is fantastic. Exactly the information I needed as I was hesitating whether I even made the right choice going into teaching full time and was beginning to worry my passion and love for teaching will be destroyed by the passive environment. Thanks so much!
Picking your battles is a hard lesson to learn and what you choose can often depend on the kind of support you have in the department's leadership team. It takes time to navigate and be aware that for every one of us working our asses off there is another colleague out there with time on their hands to cause problems. In my first post as a lecturer I let various things slide and after 18 months I knew I just needed to selfishly get what I could for myself out of the institution and plan to leave in the long term as they'd never repay my efforts (either within the department or in the wider institution - too many bad apples). Shortly after, department management did/said something totally out of order I chose the hill I'd die on. I was fortunate to be in a strong position to get a role somewhere else, if it came to it, which of course helped me decide that I was going to fight that battle to the end. It's all risk analysis... And as you make friends you'll find trusted sounding boards to help make those choices.
Thank you for sharing this! I feel like I can't really make friends in my team as the programme leader has created a 'we're a family' type of manipulative environment where he got a few people very close to him and now when he's not pulling his weight, they kind of don't call him out on that as they see him as a 'friend'.
I also feel like the University is really getting their money's worth of me as I didn't ask for any help and kind of self taught all new processes with hardly any support; and the feedback has been very good. So I'd also prefer taking my efforts elsewhere where they're more appreciated.
I think taking what you can out of the university and moving on is a good strategy. I currently see it as an experience builder/CV filler that will hopefully enable me to move on to a programme that aligns with my vision a bit more and that has more likeminded people passionate about what we teach. I guess it's common to just say that after a long time in the job, your enthusiasm goes but I've seen enough switched on and passionate programme leaders (who've been in their jobs for 15+ years) to be able to say that they set the tone for the whole team and the whole programme.
Welcome to academia. I'm at the end of my second year and have had a similar experience to you.
My probation was also 12 months and it was purely a formality. I see my line manager in passing about once or twice a semester and we properly meet about once a year, so also very hands off. He says he's happy with my work but I have no idea how he would even know what the quality of my work is. As long as students mostly pass and there's no complaints, no one will bother you.
I also managed to step on some land mines in my first year and it's just something I've had to learn to put up with. For some reason in academia people get very personally invested in their own ideas, so if you're coming in and suggesting improvements it could be read as trashing on Dr. So-and-so's pet initiative, rather than an attempt to improve or streamline things (I also came from a practical, creative field where having your ideas critiqued or rejected was common, so I found this very confusing at first). It's also seems to be very easy to inflame historical interpersonal tensions. Academics have a lot of autonomy, so if they can get away with not doing something or doing something badly simply because they don't want to, they will.
u/aspiring_himbo I have another question for you, did your line manager look at the Student Voice questionnaire feedback during your probationary review? I wonder if this will be commented on as I ran a couple modules and just been sent a summary of student feedback.
thank you, that's a super insightful take! I hard relate re: being used to bounce ideas back and forth; here it seems like they take it as a personal offence if I point out an area for improvement and I was literally told to just 'focus on teaching' when I wanted to discuss potential changes to the programme. It seems like a pretty stagnant environment but I suppose as you say, maybe it's for the best to just focus on the students.
Glad it was helpful. I've generally found it useful to consider before I open my mouth that any suggestions can be seen to be 1. Directly trashing the idea of someone more senior than me, 2. Exposing them as being incompetent, 3. Resurfacing some historical beef. If I feel I can express the suggestion without touching any of those nerves (e.g. by framing it positively) then I'll go ahead. Being armed with student feedback or other evidence helps a lot too.
Making changes at a programme level is incredibly bureaucratic and lengthy so there may be some resistance there too - you have to be really sure you want to make that change. Where I work the programme leader role is periodically rotated around, so everyone has an opinion.
'Exposing them as being incompetent' - the temptation to do this is real , as I can already see there's quite a few people who just managed to vegetate at the University for years doing fuck all to refresh their professional skillset or knowledge :D Better keep my mouth shut haha although that's generally difficult when I see so many areas for improvement. I generally never accept status quo as the best possible option and like to question it but clearly the University isn't the place for this.
The programme leader on my programme is kind of like a 'leader' on paper, they don't really do anything to make the programme more prominent and interesting/to help it stand out amongst many other programmes of this kind in the UK, which I think is important as my programme is highly practical. I'm still unsure whether this is the case across most programmes as I know a few programme leaders in other universities who've really set the tone for their programmes and made them as exciting and innovative as possible. But I think this is due to the fact that so much of the job is pure admin.