Finding your 'voice' as postgraduate tutor: some thoughts and provocations^[1]

Postgraduates who teach have to negotiate a complex, threefold identify as students, researchers, and teachers. While some may be happy to put on a 'teaching hat' which confers on them the authority and conviction in the classroom that they might not otherwise possess, other postgraduates struggle with the idea of leaping from learner to teacher without any sense of natural progression; the thought of 'performing' authority, though valid and effective for some, can make others feel dishonest and condescending towards their students.

Teaching as a research student can be an exciting and empowering opportunity, and it is generally a sought-after experience. In personal terms, it gives a sense and taste of agency (some would say power…) and it creates new challenges and responsibilities for a group of people who have previously stood at the receiving end of education and examination.  For some, it also pays enough to cover the rent or the groceries.  Professionally, teaching is an essential requirement if one intends to pursue a career in higher education. It can also be a source of transferable skills which one may employ in many other contexts.

Departments, too, benefit from employing postgraduate tutors, who provide flexible and cheap additions to full-time members of staff.  Indeed, with the increasingly stretched workloads of full-time staff, it sometimes seems as though everyday teaching schedules would crumble without the commitment of postgraduate students who teach. 

And yet our experiences, and those of colleagues at other institutions, suggest that postgraduate teaching staff do not always feel sure that they are receiving the guidance needed to find their own teaching 'voice' and transform into confident and competent teachers.^[2]  Nor are they always fairly paid for their efforts.  While we are expected to fulfil essentially the same responsibilities as part-time colleagues in our institution, in terms of preparing for and teaching seminars, this is seldom reflected in equal remuneration.  Money is not our key focus here, but the disparity in rates of pay feeds into wider uncertainty about our teaching status within higher education.  It also relates to a range of insecurities around questions of qualification, authority and autonomy in the classroom.

For instance, we have in the past encountered students who demanded to be taught by non-postgraduate teachers, even before any teaching sessions took place.  They wanted to learn from those who appeared most qualified, knowledgeable and authoritative within the field of study, and they doubted our credentials.  Some of our colleagues prefer not to tell their students that they are still students themselves, so as to avoid any a priori judgements about their authority or competence.  It can take time for undergraduate students to realise that the university context requires them to move beyond personal scrutiny of the teacher and towards the development of individual agency in learning.  If students do not realise their own responsibilities in a shared learning and teaching environment, postgraduate tutors are bound to struggle to attain credibility.

Of course there are a number of distinct advantages to being taught by postgraduate students.  We are, on the whole, more approachable and perhaps less intimidating than our senior colleagues.  Our own recent student experience should allow us to relate more easily to undergraduates' positions, perhaps enabling us to see things from their perspective (although, admittedly, this is not always the case).  Because we have less teaching experience, we may often have to find ways of making sense of new material as and when our students do.  As such, our 'eureka' moments in relation to theories, issues, and interrelations are relatively fresh in our minds, and we are able to break complex topics and concepts down into digestible chunks accordingly.

But it would be wrong to assume that the way in which we arrive at our 'eureka' moments is also the way in which others learn best.  This is where we stumble across questions of how best to 'teach'.  Looking back at our own undergraduate experiences sometimes provides us with examples of teaching practices we want to avoid, but it is more difficult to identify and apply practices that were more successful. 

Uncertainty over classroom strategies and the structuring of lesson material can add to pre-existing insecurities around feeling 'unqualified' to teach.  While some module co-ordinators provide tutors with seminar plans and useful tips for small-group teaching, others leave us to plan the style and content of sessions on our own.  This can be liberating and empowering: it enables us to experiment with whatever approach best suits us and meets the needs of our students. But it can also be daunting as we are left to 'reinvent the wheel' unaided. Much of what seems straightforward in hindsight might not be obvious as we prepare for our first-ever seminar. 

Of course we do receive some form of training, as part of centralised schemes or departmental inductions. But, like many training initiatives, teaching inductions can appear to constitute a necessary evil that institutions are forced to provide. In some institutions, they are only offered to 'fully-fledged' members of staff, not to postgraduate tutors (again problematising our status as teachers). In any case, they can feel too abstract to be of practical use, or only scrape the surface of what it means to lead seminars. Thereafter, you either have it, or you don't. There is no platform for discussion of difficulties after training sessions are over, nor any formal incentive or opportunity to try and improve one's teaching style.

It sometimes feels as though asking staff for help and guidance with regards to teaching, marking or administrative duties is frowned upon, and may meet with responses which suggest that 'others had to muddle through, so you should, too'. The contrived notion that good researchers are automatically good teachers still seems common, even though research and teaching require markedly different skills. Often members of staff are struggling to cope with their own workloads, and so their reluctance to help is less a result of unwillingness than of their own levels of stress, as well as pressures to produce research. (That departmental funding is dependent on research rather than teaching quality in part explains why teaching is demoted to 'second place'.) While we understand these pressures, we do not understand why we should endure a 'baptism of fire' simply because generations of postgraduates and junior academics before us have had to.

We have noticed ourselves and our postgraduate colleagues falling into an unhealthy habit of talking about classroom experiences in a way which focuses on the negative without necessarily aiming to find solutions to specific problems.  This creates a 'slacker student discourse' that paints an unfair picture of undergraduates as lazy, reticent, or generally useless class members, and also ignores the fact that we were once students ourselves.  It is an interesting reversal of the dynamic we may have experienced as undergraduates: then, we might have blamed our tutors for bad classes; now, we tend to blame the students.  Blame and responsibility seem to be shifted depending on the side of the learning and teaching environment we currently inhabit.

Rather than searching for an authoritative teaching voice, then, perhaps we should be promoting the notion of shared agency and shared responsibilities, which see good learning experiences as a two-way interaction between teachers and students.  As postgraduate students, we are well equipped to encourage and create a path for students' independent learning.  Just as we would like to be taken seriously as teaching members of staff, undergraduate students also deserve our respect.  Students are quick to identify weaknesses or facades; they will appreciate teaching approaches that are genuine and transparent.

We propose that postgraduates continue to address teaching issues with their colleagues and other staff members; further, we hope they will exchange views across institutional boundaries. Ongoing discussion about postgraduate teaching is needed and should, importantly, avoid the 'slacker student' discourse outlined above. Some institutions have already begun such conversations. Exchanges about good teaching practice enable postgraduate tutors to 'find their voice' in the classroom and enable us to consider whether or not developing a career that involves significant amounts of time leading seminars, delivering lectures and teaching students is one that will prove satisfying and fulfilling in the longer term. Is this teaching experience something that we want to build on and improve, or has the experience taught us to focus on other strengths and seek employment elsewhere?

Coming to the end of our own postgraduate studies, we strongly feel that teaching-excellence will derive from, amongst other (aforementioned) factors, collegial and supportive exchanges about good practice.  As well as constructively discussing problems and concerns with peers and more experienced academics, it is important to recount positive experiences for others to build on.  With more effort on both sides, postgraduate research students should feel better prepared to teach, and to transfer confidently into lecturing roles or other future careers within or outside the academic context. 

Lauren Anderson and Kerstin Leder

Aberystwyth University

July 2008

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