A Discourse Analysis Approach to Interview Data: The Guidance Tutor Role in Higher Education

This dataset focuses on the discourse analysis approach to interview transcripts. This data is provided by Jamie Harding, a Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University, and the example demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to consider the role of language to construct descriptions, stories and accounts of the guidance tutor role. The dataset file is accompanied by a teaching guide and a student guide.

You can view and download the data exemplar(s) in this tab.

Data Exemplar

Data collected by: Dr. Jamie Harding

Full Interview Transcript

Interview With Lewis

Interviewer: First we’ll look at motivation. How long have you been in your current job?

Lewis: A large number of years now.

Interviewer: That’s good, and have you had any previous roles or previous jobs?

Lewis: Previous jobs?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Lewis: I left school at sixteen so I had three jobs before I went to university.

Interviewer: Okay and did you have any jobs at other universities before this one?

Lewis: I worked as a researcher at another university.

Interviewer: Okay and why did you decide to enter higher education?

Lewis: For a career really. I’d left school at sixteen, I worked for five years; in the end it was going to go nowhere. The people who were above me had degrees and one of them came in during the summer to work on a temporary basis, he had a degree and I spent the summer talking to him and thought that the subject sounded great. ‘I’ll do it, you know, I’ll have a go.’ I wanted to do a degree because I could see no future other than that. This person really convinced me that the subject would be something I would be interested in. So that was my motivation really.

Interviewer: Okay, and when you first began this particular job what were your initial hopes and expectations of it?

Lewis: My motivation was to have a teaching job because I wanted to teach in higher education and I wanted to teach a particular topic that I was interested in, representing a cause that I was committed to. I was quite happy it was a polytechnic; I didn’t particularly want to go to a red brick university or anything like that.

Interviewer: Okay. And since then, over the time you’ve been in your job, have there been any changes to your initial hopes and expectations of the job?

Lewis: Yeah; the job has changed, obviously I have been promoted while I have been here. The nature of the job I started doing has changed quite a lot. I still feel committed to teaching and I still feel committed to my students and so on, but I’m not doing so much of the work which I enjoyed doing. We still do some of that but some of the things that I enjoyed doing are not here, and some of the things I have to do I don’t particularly enjoy doing.

Interviewer: How do you feel about recognition and appreciation?

Lewis: You can look at this in three ways. Recognition and appreciation from students I would like to think is pretty good; I think I know that I do a good job because the students come and participate in the courses I teach; they’ll do well. There’s also appreciation from individual students who come and say ‘thanks’ at the end of a course, or I just get the appreciation because I see students getting really good marks. I think I also get some appreciation from my peers, and respect because I’ve published things and I sometimes go to conferences and things like that. I’ve been teaching for a number of years as I say, and I know a lot of people in my field, and I know some of them very well, and I think they respect what I do. In terms of the university itself, I have to be a bit more negative: I’m not sure there’s appreciation for the amount of work that’s done by academic teaching staff. I don’t think the amount of work involved in doing good lectures and so on is appreciated. I think the university is much more about setting targets and developing policies and less about thinking about our students. So I don’t feel as appreciated as I should by the university.

Interviewer: Okay. And how do you feel about your current workload?

Lewis: It’s overwhelming.

Interviewer: Overwhelming?

Lewis: We look at our workloads on a basis of a number of hours and we have a set number of hours we should be allocated each year and I can’t remember when I’ve been below or at that number. Even on those calculations, I’m working over my hours and I’m having to do such a different variety of jobs: I teach, I do administration, I do research when I find time – the job is overwhelming.

Interviewer: You say that you were at this university before it was a university, so when it was a polytechnic. So have you noticed any changes to the job with the change from a polytechnic to a university?

Lewis: This will seem like an odd reply in a sense, but I think polytechnics were closely linked with their local communities as well. It was a polytechnic and it was funded in part by the city council, and I think actually that gave it a closer link to people in the region, I think we used to get more mature students and more working class background students. I think that there was a wider participation from different sorts of students when it was a polytechnic and I liked that. I understand the university has to compete on a competitive market for the students but I know why that’s changed but I do think that’s a change for the worse. I see very, very few mature students coming through the programme and when I started we ran almost whole programmes with just mature students on. So that’s a change but I think is disappointing – other changes are more exciting. There’s a lot of investment in us as a university and that’s exciting and that’s good, that’s positive. We can see the university is taking real steps forward as well to be a leading university. I think that we are a good new university, so I’m avoiding the word ‘proud’ but actually I am proud to be a part of a university that is doing good things as well.

Interviewer: Okay, when you were doing a module, would you say you were a teacher of the module or a manager of the module?

Lewis: A teacher.

Interviewer: A teacher…

Lewis: Yes absolutely, full stop. That’s what I am, a teacher of the module, I have to manage the module but that’s why.

Interviewer: Do you design the modules?

Lewis: Yes I design modules, sometimes we team teach and one module is taught by three of us so obviously we work together to design the module and so on.

Interviewer: Would you say that was a good thing or a bad thing?

Lewis: I don’t think you can give a straight answer because it maybe depends on the module. But I think it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing to team teach, it’s good for our students to get different points of view in the module. I think it’s less stressful for the teaching staff, you just think ‘I’m not teaching this week, that’s great’: it gives me more time to think and to prepare and so on. So on the whole I like team teaching. I think that’s a positive, yeah.

Interviewer: If you design a module which you are teaching do you think that is a good thing?

Lewis: Yeah, I mean they’re both good things. We have an input in designing the module obviously if we are team teaching it. But I teach one module completely on my own, which I enjoy: it’s special, it’s a final year module which is mine and I know what I want to do with that, and that’s very positive for me as well.

Interviewer: Are you involved in guidance tutoring at all?

Lewis: Yep.

Interviewer: How do you find that? Do you find it difficult?

Lewis: I like guidance tutoring, I think it’s an important part of the job that we do. I think it’s difficult in this faculty because we have around 45 students, each member of staff, and that’s too many. It’s too many for them to be able to make appointments and to see you, so some of the students do get to know you, but it’s hard to make contact, and it’s too many to get to know people really well. So I know a small proportion of those students pretty well, and another proportion okay and some frankly I won’t see from one year end to the next. So I think it’s an important role, I’m committed to being a guidance tutor – I’ve been promoted but I don’t want not to be a guidance tutor; I think I should still be a guidance tutor. I like doing that, I like helping people with their problems but I also think there’s a limit to what guidance tutors do and we can help and advise about academic issues and so on but we also have to be very clear that sometimes that’s not our job. If students have real emotional problems or something then we have to refer them on, and I’m not sure we always do because it’s much easier to be sympathetic and listen to a student but it might be bad advice and so on.

So I am very aware of that there are times when I have to say, ‘I can sort out your essays, I can sort out references, I can sort out other things that you need help on but I can’t help you with something else but I know who can.’ So, as I say, it’s an important part of what I do.

Interviewer: Do you find it rewarding?

Lewis: Yeah, overall definitely. I wouldn’t say any of that role is not rewarding. I would say to see a student saying, ‘Yeah okay I think I’m clearer now; I think I understand what I’ve got to do’ and I always when they go say, ‘Do you understand, are you okay now? Is there anything else you need to say to me?’ and they go, ‘No, I’m fine’ and then that’s really rewarding. Very satisfying.

Interviewer: And how do you find time to fit in guidance tutoring with your other time commitments?

Lewis: It’s very difficult; as I said earlier on, I think the workload is overwhelming. Not just for me but most of the academic staff in the faculty are overloaded. So I find it hard to fit that in, it’s hard full stop. I don’t know what else to say. It is hard to fit in to a very busy timetable which is not very good for the students. It’s much better to find time for students.

Interviewer: Okay, what about your own research? How important is doing research to you personally?

Lewis: It is important for me to do research because it keeps me on top of my subject and it’s interesting and I enjoy it. I actually enjoy it, it’s very difficult to find time to fit research in. I’ve got some PhD students who are obviously doing research with me, which is great; they are doing bits of research, that are really good so I really enjoy being part of the research that they’re doing – I always have PhD students. I’m doing one piece of research that is funded which takes me overseas. Which is brilliant, but it’s very difficult to organise because I need to go backwards and forwards so that takes time out of my timetable and it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t want to give that up. So yeah, that’s important to me.

Interviewer: Do you feel under pressure to do research?

Lewis: I’m hesitating because it’s sort of yes and no. I think that there is pressure for all of us to be doing some research as a way of keeping on top of our subjects. But there is nobody knocking on my door saying, ‘You need to do this, you need to do that,’ so I feel under a personal pressure – okay, let’s put it like that. I mean an internal pressure not a pressure from somebody who is my line manager saying, ‘Why haven’t you done this, why haven’t you done that?’ Because I think there has to be a relationship of trust that you will get on and do research. I’m under pressure from myself.

Interviewer: Right, okay. I’m going to move on to student diversity now. What is your experience of teaching non-traditional students?

Lewis: Mature students?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Lewis: Long experience of teaching mature students. We don’t have many international students in the faculty but we have a Chinese student on one of our degrees which has been tough because of the different cultures, different backgrounds and so on. We’ve made extra efforts to try and put in extra tutorial time and mentoring for those students. I like it! In terms of my opinion and attitude, I just think it’s great to have different sorts of students in the classroom. It’s a real positive benefit for the university; I’m really strongly in favour of the university being diverse in the way it recruits its students.

Interviewer: Have you noticed any differences in the way that students respond to your teaching methods? For example, traditional students preferring one method more and mature students preferring a different method of teaching?

Lewis: Yes. There are differences; there clearly are. What I try to do is utilise those differences in the classroom. A lecture is a lecture, but in a seminar I try to get everybody participating using the different skills that people have: mature students can bring something in terms of experience, young students can bring somethings in terms of knowledge, reading – they’ve had more time and are fresher – and so on. And they have different experiences which they bring into the classroom as well. So yeah, I’m also thinking about how we are responding better to the needs of our international students. It requires some staff training as well, so that staff are more aware of different expectations that international students have. There’s a lot to be done in that area by the University.

Interviewer: Looking at language barriers, when a student’s first language isn’t English does that cause issues with the subject?

Lewis: Yes. It causes issues because international students often join us in the final year, or at postgraduate level. They will have perhaps good standard English, but they will not have the English of our subject area; they will not have the specialist language that they need, or the specialist knowledge that they need. So they can pass the university score, they can get ILTIS [measure of proficiency in English], they can get the university score to say they’re competent in English but that doesn’t say they’re competent in the English of our subject. So sometimes, what you would not have to explain to a British student, you have to take more time with an international student to deal with that. So that does create problems. I’m very aware of slowing down, speaking clearly, giving examples, doing all sorts of things to try and make something clearer to international students. It’s very important to me as well.

Interviewer: Okay, we’re going to go on to reflective practice now.

Lewis: Right…

Interviewer: What is your understanding of reflective practice?

Lewis: That it is what it says it is, I hope. We have to take time to look back at what we do, evaluate what we do, and change what we do on the basis of reflections. We tend to do that; I would see that as something we would do individually and something we should do collectively.

Interviewer: Do you find it important, to be reflective of your own practice?

Lewis: Yes, it is. But that doesn’t mean I do it as well as I should and it doesn’t mean I’ve got the time always, because you rush from one lecture to another sometimes and there’ll be times I’ll come in, just put down my lecture notes, PowerPoint presentation on the table, grab another set and go out and do it and I’m not reflecting. But I think the lecturers generally – me anyway, certainly – are probably their own worst critics. I think I can come out of a lecture and go, ‘That was rubbish!’ And the students might think that was fine, but I can think to myself, ‘That needs changing, I need to do that better next time’. So I think that with reflective practice you may not use that language all the time – ‘Oh I’m doing a bit of reflective practice’ – but you’re walking out going, ‘No, don’t do that again, change that! That seminar really didn’t work.’ So in an informal way I think lecturers should be doing that all the time.

Interviewer: So what would you say your motivation to be reflective of your practice was? Would you say internal?

Lewis: It’s driven internally by wanting to be good at what I do. And thinking that I should be good at what I do. But lecturing is communicating effectively with students. So what should also drive me is if I’ve failed to communicate something. That’s usually very clear from students’ puzzled looks or students coming up to me afterwards and saying, ‘I don’t understand that.’ And that’s not a student’s responsibility, it’s my responsibility. If I’m not communicating effectively, that’s not their problem, it’s my problem, so I need to change. So it’s really important.

Interviewer: We’re now going on to different types of teaching. What is your experience of lectures?

Lewis: In what way?

Interviewer: How do you find them?

Lewis: How do I find the lectures? How can I answer that? I don’t have any problem delivering lectures. Like everyone else when they start, if I can remember that far back, it’s a hard job to go in to a classroom and stand and speak in front of that number of people. So I don’t mind doing that – I’m quite happy with that – I see lectures as mine, okay. And seminars as belonging to the students, so I’m quite…authoritarian would be a nasty word to use but I do believe I am there to deliver the lecture, and so lectures tend to be me making the presentation. So I’m happy with it as a format although I’m not sure how much we’re achieving with lectures, particularly now that we’ve gone to two hour lectures. The policy is we should deliver 36 hours to the students of which two hours a week should be lectures and one hour a week should be seminars. A two hour lecture just seems not appropriate.

Interviewer: Okay. And what about your experience and opinions of seminars?

Lewis: When they work they’re great and when they don’t work it’s like trying to pull teeth, to coin a phrase. Staff try very hard with seminars. But it’s up to the students to participate in seminars as well. That means the students have to do the reading for the seminars and come to the seminars prepared to participate, so that’s the job that the students have got. The job the members of staff have got is not to just think it’s up to the students but actually to provide an environment in which the student is comfortable about saying something, voicing an opinion – not that they’re going to be demeaned or criticised or anything like that. An environment where a student can say, ‘I really don’t understand this but I think this is what the argument is’ and as a group we go ‘Yeah’ and help the students; seminars should be really supportive. Sometimes you can run great seminars and sometimes – I don’t think that anybody ever really knows. There are occasionally groups that just do not gel for one reason or another and staff can work really hard at trying to do that but that seminar group just won’t work. And two hours later you’ll be there in another seminar, exactly the same subject and the seminar group will work, part of that is personalities and so on. But I enjoy it, I think we should do more seminars and less lectures.

Interviewer: Okay, are you involved in any other sorts of teaching? Workshops, or…whatever?

Lewis: There’s one programme I teach on where all of it is interactive, group work all the time. There’s no lectures, no seminars, the whole thing is sort of workshop, group work, reporting back from groups, them making presentations and so on. So it’s a very interactive process all the way through; it’s the best teaching I do.

Interviewer: So you find that…

Lewis: Great. It’s great; I’m lucky; it’s a privilege to teach on that because they’re committed and they want to do something, so they’re very positive. Every time we get, at the end of it, really nice compliments from the students, it’s lovely.

Interviewer: Okay, if you personally need any advice or guidance on anything, where does it come from?

Lewis: My partner! [Laughs] I know it’s a funny answer! But in a way it does. I’m a bit introverted and find it sometimes a bit difficult to ask other lecturers about techniques and ideas and so on. I talk to other colleagues I know very well, about something that was not working or whatever, to see if they have ideas. New lecturers are great, talking to new lecturers is really good – I’ve done seminars differently because we’ve had new members of staff who have come and said, ‘I’m trying this’ and I think ‘oh I’ve never tried that before, okay I’ll give it a go’ so actually the less experienced members of staff are often the best ones to talk to because they just try new things.

Interviewer: Okay, how about student attendance and motivation, for you as a lecturer?

Lewis: It’s our job to get students motivated, as I keep saying this throughout. I think that’s what we’re supposed to do, we’re supposed to communicate effectively with our students and I try to do that. Some courses are compulsory, you know, core courses on a module, and I think 10% of students are thinking, ‘I hate this module, I wish I wasn’t here, I wish I was somewhere else,’ and I’m thinking how do I motivate that group, it’s next door to impossible. I want to take the middle group with me all the time, so that they’re going ‘Right, I understand what I’m doing, I’m okay with this’ and then there’ll be a group, another group who goes ‘Wow, this is the best module I do’ and really enjoy the module. And that may be nothing to do with me, it may be due to the subject and what they want to study and so on – the way they are. So we have a role to play and the students have a role to play: the more work they do, the better they’ll be. It’s obvious, it’s a cliché, but you know you need to read, you’re a student [indicates interviewer], you need to read, you need to do the work, if you do the work then you’ll enjoy the seminar because you’ll come to a seminar and you’re prepared and you can participate and you know so. I can’t make the students work, they will hopefully because they want to! That’s it.

Interviewer: Okay, and then finally do you have any other comments about lecturing?

Lewis: Any other comments about lecturing? Yeah, we really, really need to take a radical look at how we teach and what we teach. I think what we’re often not doing now is encouraging students to think and to take risks. I think we’re probably just saying, ‘here’s the lecture, here’s the seminar, here’s the subject, here’s the 36 hours of teaching, here’s the learning outcomes’ – it’s become much more formal really. This is because of university policies and the pressures of the national student survey and getting all these things right and in place. And I think we’re losing some of that creativity that actually says, ‘Okay I just want you to go away and think about this, think critically about this and take a risk, and put your own ideas forward,’ and so on. I think we’re losing some of the excitement of teaching, really. And I would like to see that, particularly for first year students – a social science student should be a questioning student, social science students should get angry, social science students should say ‘Why?’, and they should say, ‘No that’s not the right way, that’s the wrong way to do things,’ and so on. I think that often that’s not happening because it’s a different generation, different society. But also I think that there are restraints on the university on the way we teach now; it’s less flexible than it used to be, I would like to see that change.

Interviewer: Well thank you for that.

Lewis: Okay.

Full Interview Transcript

Interview With Fern

Interviewer: First I’m going to ask about your background. How long have you been in this particular job?

Fern: A large number of years now.

Interviewer: Right, okay. Have you had any other previous roles within this university?

Fern: I have progressed from a basic lecturer to a senior position.

Interviewer: Have you taught at any other universities?

Fern: Yes I’ve taught at one other.

Interviewer: Okay, why did you decide to enter into higher education?

Fern: Never wanted to do anything else.

Interviewer: But what were your reasons for doing that, was it for your own satisfaction, financial reasons, flexible working?

Fern: Because I wanted to research and teach. I wanted to do the job and I didn’t think about the money. It wasn’t very well paid to start with. It never crossed my mind to do any other job to be perfectly honest.

Interviewer: In the beginning, what were your initial hopes and fears for the job?

Fern: I just wanted to be a good academic and I wanted never to have to leave. I didn’t think about getting promoted, I just wanted to be a researcher and a teacher. My worry was perhaps I would have to leave because, like I say, I could never imagine doing anything else.

Interviewer: Since you began the job, how have your expectations and hopes changed?

Fern: Not a bit. I’ve always enjoyed doing the job; I suppose there is more bureaucracy and we have more students. So it is a different job than it was when I started, just because of mass higher education, it’s changed. So I suppose from that point of view it’s a bit less satisfying; there’s a difference between marking 40 essays and marking 150. Marking 40, you can just about maintain your enthusiasm for it, but I think with fairly high numbers it can be quite difficult.

Interviewer: Okay, you say that you’ve been here for quite a few years, so were you here when it was a polytechnic?

Fern: Yes.

Interviewer: Have you noticed any changes since it became a university?

Fern: Oddly, because the expansion of higher education went with becoming a university, it was more like a university in some ways when it was a polytechnic because we weren’t as pressured. In the traditional universities you have time for research; you have time to teach small numbers. So when I came here it was small numbers and I had time to do research but, because it was a polytechnic rather than an old university, there was no expectation to do research. I did it because that was my choice, so I always behaved as if I was in an old university even though I was in a new university. So for me it didn’t make much difference because the workload wasn’t light but it seemed realistic. But I did notice that there were people around me who didn’t do research, they just were teachers, which is what they were employed to be. That’s no criticism of them but, as we’ve become a university, the emphasis has been slightly more on research. But to be fair, not a huge emphasis and I was always the same – I always personally chose to do research. So I suppose it’s not changed a lot really. And the numbers don’t help us. It makes it all seem more mundane when you have 70 students. So, I’m not sure, not a very clear answer.

Interviewer: How do you feel about recognition and appreciation?

Fern: Well I have that, personally. I think I have been recognised and appreciated so I feel fine about that.

Interviewer: Okay. And how do you feel about your workload?

Fern: It’s always seemed heavy; I’ve always been at the top end of the scale for workload. But because I enjoy the job I suppose it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels heavy but I don’t feel angry about it or anything. It is what it is, which is on the high end, but always has been.

Interviewer: That’s fine. Now some questions about different parts of your job. Do you design the units which you teach?

Fern: Oh yes.

Interviewer: And do you think that is a good thing? Being involved in designing the units which you teach?

Fern: I would hate to teach a unit I hadn’t designed. Oh I would loathe that. That would take away all the integrity and independence, if you were given units to teach. I suppose that is a big thing that has changed over the years – having to specify what you’re going to teach. You never used to; you just used to teach what you felt like teaching, broadly. You had titles for your units but, for the content, you could do what you felt you should do. So I suppose, in that sense, academic integrity has been lost as we had to decide a year in advance what we’re going to teach. That’s bad enough, but if I had to teach a unit I hadn’t written I would be pretty fed up.

Interviewer: What is your experience of teaching lecturers?

Fern: I enjoy lecturing, I’ve always enjoyed it. I’m starting to find them more tiring, physically being on my feet, particularly when they are three hour sessions. Every unit, every lecture, even if it’s not a new lecture, it is a new lecture to me in a sense that I always start them fresh again every time, so I don’t have a set, I’ve never in my life had a set of lecture notes. So every time I’ve gone to give a lecture I start from scratch. I mean obviously I’ve been thinking ahead and have the PowerPoints from last year, but I do go over it and think about it and read new texts and things just to refresh. I enjoy lecturing.

Interviewer: How about seminars?

Fern: Sometimes I like those less in a way because I’m not so much in control because obviously it’s up to students to speak and if they don’t speak then that’s difficult. But over the years I think I have developed quite reasonable seminar skills; I do lots of exercises with students and do all different things. So I usually have enough materials and enough ways of stimulating students in a seminar to get a reasonable response from them. So I think I’ve got to like them over the years. I’ve always preferred lecturing to seminars, but I think the techniques have got better over the years. I still prefer the lectures to seminars but it’s not so bad.

Interviewer: Okay. Are you involved in any other forms of teaching? Such as workshops or…

Fern: Yes I do workshops; I do workshops with staff and PhD students. Some people are very good at workshops and very good at techniques of keeping people interested. And I know these techniques, and I think I’ve picked up on these techniques and therefore I don’t mind doing them. But if you said to me ‘a three hour lecture or a three hour workshop?’ then I’d probably go for the three hour lecture. Because workshops are hard.

Interviewer: Have you been involved in guidance tutoring at all?

Fern: Oh yes.

Interviewer: Yes?

Fern: Gallons of it.

Interviewer: And how do you find that?

Fern: I don’t mind doing it, we have a huge number of them now and the only reason we can cope with it is sometimes students don’t turn up. They’re supposed to come see us at least once a semester. But students don’t tend to come to see you unless they’ve got problems. I think we’ve tried to solve that now by having group tutorials so at least we get to see them. But I suppose if they came individually a lot it would take up quite a lot of time. It’s frustrating, though, because obviously if students are okay they don’t bother to come and tell you and when they’re miserable they can’t come and tell you. It’s no criticism of anybody but students in trouble who need support just don’t ask for it; they run away and hide. So I suppose it is quite hard.

Interviewer: Do you find guidance tutoring rewarding?

Fern: Yes, the bit I like best is writing references for students who I know well. I don’t like writing references for students I don’t know. I don’t know who they are or what they’re doing, it’s very frustrating. But when I’ve got to know a student and I know their interests and what they’re hoping for I quite like supporting them to get what they want. To get their ambitions, I quite like that. But obviously I’m always happy to help students if they’re in trouble so it’s quite nice if you have a student who’s really having a difficult time and you can support them through that.

Interviewer: Okay, we’re going to move on to a little bit about research. You already mentioned it, is it very important to you personally that you…

Fern: Absolutely! 100 per cent. Yes, most important.

Interviewer: Do you feel under pressure to do research from the university?

Fern: No more than I put myself under pressure.

Interviewer: So it’s more from yourself?

Fern: Well I suppose, as a senior member of staff if I didn’t do research the university would look at me a bit oddly and think I was being paid money under false pretences. So if I wasn’t doing research I would expect the university to demand that I did. But since I do it anyway, I demand that I do it. I would be annoyed if I wasn’t put under pressure to do research. That would mean they weren’t taking me seriously, so no, I don’t feel under pressure but I do it.

Interviewer: If you personally need advice and guidance then where does that come from?

Fern: Not necessarily from people senior to me. I have a senior mentor-type person, but I ask different people at different times – it just depends on expertise.

Interviewer: And how do you manage to fit everything in that you have to do in a day? Time management?

Fern: In terms of time management I just do what I have to do. Some days I find I’m incredibly efficient and I’ll just clear everything off my desk and I’ll do about 1,000 things I need to do, but other days nothing seems to get done. And I just have the confidence that I have a sufficient balance of highly efficient days with less efficient days that I will get everything done, and it has worked out at the end of the day. And I’m not the kind of person who waits until the last minute to do things; in fact I prefer to do things ahead of schedule. So I manage my time in the sense of if I’m feeling really bright and breezy, very fresh and optimistic then I’ll do a really long day and I’ll rattle everything out. But if I find I’m just getting nowhere then I’ll just pack in and think it’s just a waste of time and I’ll come back when I’m fresh. So it’s managing my energy levels more than my time, just doing time would be no good. I can use my time brilliantly sometimes and not so good at other times.

Interviewer: Okay, we are now going to focus on students. A question about the attendance and motivation of students.

Fern: I think that’s difficult, I think now we’re treating the preliminary degree as a career grade it’s becoming a bit like school. In a sense you’ve got some kids who love to be there and other kids who can’t be bothered because they’re just going through the motions. And there used to be about 5–10% of people went to university so I imagine you were effectively teaching that minority who really want to be there. But now you have some who are not too bothered; they’re here to get a qualification and get on with their lives, and they’re quite instrumental with that. But people don’t attend because they’re working, they don’t come in because as soon as they know what the assessment is they go to do it and don’t want to learn. They’re not particularly interested in learning, they just want to get the assessment and that’s it. So I think to a certain extent that I understand that’s instrumental to students doing reasonably well. They don’t have a breadth of education but they can technically get though the assignment. So I just let them get on with it and concentrate on those who really want to do it, you know. So really it’s like the old university group inside the mass really, so you know I just focus – that’s not true, I don’t just focus on those who are interested. But if a minority, like lectures aren’t compulsory, we don’t take down registers so there might be people not there. But we do take registers in seminars so we have more people there. If I find some people haven’t turned up to class I don’t worry about it because I teach those that are there and those who are there by definition are the most interested. So attendance is a problem, that cynicism of ‘Oh let’s get through this’, ‘Oh we’ve got to do this degree let’s get through it.’ There’s still loads of interested students but, if they’re not there, then they’re either working or not interested.

Interviewer: Okay, what is your experience of teaching mature students?

Fern: Oh it used to be fabulous, in the good old days when there were grants we had loads and loads of mature students and sometimes up to a third of a course were made up of mature students. And there would be all sorts of people, we had vicars, we had retired miners – all sorts of people coming in. And lots of women who had returned to work after having children. And several of them struggled with it but some of them were really fabulous. In fact we had a couple of mature students just recently on the course; I wouldn’t say more so than other students, but they were here because they wanted to be here. And they were desperate to learn and desperate to know, some of the brightest students we had were the mature students. And I thought it was marvellous taking somebody who had no chance of education and suddenly had the confidence to realise that they could come to learn, and I think it’s fabulous. I really, really enjoyed that, you don’t have that now because of course they can’t afford to take the loans out, mature students, they have to work. You know, no government grants, there’s no support for them so they’ve all gone, nearly all gone.

Interviewer: Have you noticed this change since it became a university or just the whole…

Fern: It’s the loss of the grant. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with turning into a university; I suppose there’s also the whole strict admissions and this kind of thing. But I don’t think that’s got to do with being a university because I think traditional universities used to take in more mature students all the time, so I don’t think it’s got anything to do with being a university. I think that it’s just to do with increased bureaucracy and the loss of grants.

Interviewer: Have you noticed any differences between the way that students like to be taught? Like more traditional students liking it one way and mature students a different way or?

Fern: I don’t know…

Interviewer: A difference in methods of teaching?

Fern: I don’t think there’s a difference in methods of teaching. I think all students now need the information, they want to know what the assessment is; they want to know what they need to do because they want to know how to get the marks. They really are quite instrumental, whereas the mature students never were here just to get the qualification – that was the icing on the cake. They were here to learn and to enjoy the process. I’m not sure that students enjoy the process any more; I don’t know if students get a kick out of learning any more, they do it because they have to do it otherwise they won’t get the jobs they want. So whether it’s to do with style of teaching, it’s got to do with the content and the seminars, the attitude is just very, very different – take the information.

Interviewer: What is your experience of overseas students?

Fern: Loads of it through the years. Again it’s about the same; there was a stage where the international students were quite exceptional: they had quite a struggle to get here and wanted to learn as much as possible. Whereas now we get loads of international students being sent by their government to get trained up, to get qualifications, and therefore they haven’t got a hunger to learn. Well, that’s not true, some of them do. But their priority is to get that qualification in the time scale because otherwise they’ll have to pay the money back or lose their job, so people are under that very instrumental pressure, so not doing it for the love of it. I think it’s much the same; I don’t think it’s to do with being an international student, but I think it’s to do with being put through the grinder to get the qualifications. And I think that makes it difficult, but many of them are a delight to teach, very interesting, obviously they bring new experiences and different perspectives.

Interviewer: And what about language barriers?

Fern: That’s very difficult because, if people just aren’t experienced, they may not understand what you’re saying. I have quite a fast delivery so I don’t probably teach in a style that students would find useful. I work with PowerPoint but then I explain things and I think that I do that quite quickly, and therefore, if the language isn’t there, I think that to pick up the meaning of what I am saying may be quite difficult. So I do try to repeat things rather than say it slowly, I try to say things two or three times. But yes, I think people seem to learn quite quickly when they get here and have to learn another language. But I know students who can barely speak and still manage to get through it somehow. I think a combination of low motivation, not really being very on top of a subject and not being able to speak – when you’ve got that combination it’s pretty difficult, but I haven’t often seen those combinations all together. For instance I have very able, very polite international students who barely speak English but, as I say, they can still get over it. It’s a mixture really.

Interviewer: Okay we’re going to move on to reflective practice now. What’s your understanding of that?

Fern: It’s about reflecting on how I do my teaching, how I practice my trade. Reflection is something that is required in every area of work these days.

Interviewer: And how important to you is reflecting on your own practice?

Fern: Oh I’ve always been interested in student feedback. I always want to know how it’s gone and I don’t like if I feel I haven’t been on top form or I haven’t explained things right: that really annoys me. So I do think, I do feel it over in my mind what I’ve done and how I’ve done; how I’ve answered questions and that kind of thing. I think I do it almost all the time, I don’t think, ‘Another lecture over, on with the next’, I always want to feel it’s gone well and if it hasn’t gone well then why hasn’t it gone well? And so if I’m understanding what reflective practice actually does, then it’s my natural condition.

Interviewer: And what is your motivation to be reflective of your practice?

Fern: Pride.

Interviewer: Pride?

Fern: Yes, I want to do a good job, I would not wish to produce poor research or produce poor teaching.

Interviewer: Have you got any final comments on being a lecturer?

Fern: I suppose it’s going to get harder to have that creative atmosphere that I’m perhaps used to having. I think that there’s more bureaucracy, more like teaching, more like school teaching. But I teach mostly postgraduates anyway, so I don’t teach many of the large classes, but if I was teaching lots of huge classes I can imagine it would be pretty frustrating.

Interviewer: Okay, thank you.

Full Interview Transcript

Interview With Susan

Interviewer: Have you worked in other universities?

Susan: Yes, I was at two other universities before I came here.

Interviewer: Okay and why did you decide to enter your job? Particularly higher education?

Susan: By accident to tell you the truth! I was going to do it part time for six months while I finished my Masters and years later realised I was still at the same university and it had carried on, so it wasn’t an actual career choice, it was more by accident than choice I think really.

Interviewer: Okay, and would you say that you went into it for financial reasons?

Susan: Definitely not, no.

Interviewer: What about flexible working?

Susan: I did work on the belief that it was going to be flexible and good when I had a family but in reality I think it’s exactly the opposite. For someone with a family it’s probably the least flexible. You think it’s going to be and there are all these misconceptions that you’re going to be off for three weeks at Easter and all the way through the summer and that kind of thing. People aren’t often aware about weekend teaching and you’ve got to be here at weekends. If you have a family, it’s obviously much more difficult. So the stereotypical image is of a lecturer who does five or six hours a week and sits in the bar the rest of the time and it’s all very flexible, but the reality is very different.

Interviewer: Okay, and did you have any hopes and expectation of the job?

Susan: I hoped that I was going to excite people as much as I was about what I’d studied and what I’d learned and I feel very passionate about what I teach and what I do. My expectation was that other people would be excited, but the reality is just because you’re excited doesn’t mean other people will be, but you can make it exciting and try to engage them. So I think that’s probably why I stayed in education for so long, wanting to find someone like me who gets excited about the same types of things really.

Interviewer: Would you say that’s changed over time?

Susan: Yeah it’s changed a lot I think, and I think I’m much more aware about what I’m teaching and how I’m teaching it. It’s how you deliver the message rather than the message itself, and you’ve got to get the students excited; it’s how you get that information over and not necessarily the information itself. So it’s about making things more relevant and more exciting; it is rewarding when you see something back from them rather than a sea of blank faces in a lecture of 250. So it’s made me think more about my teaching styles rather than the content if that makes sense?

Interviewer: Yeah. And how do you feel about recognition and appreciation?

Susan: I’d much rather be recognised by the students than my peers; it’s probably the other way round for others. I’d much rather get a good evaluation from the students at the end of a module saying they enjoyed it rather than getting recognition externally or even within the faculty; to know that the students enjoyed your module should be what you enjoy more, and that they enjoyed the process of getting that knowledge. I think if you came into this job for recognition and the rewards then it’s the wrong job to be in, in that sense. It’s quite a hard job in that, whether it’s teaching or your own research, it goes out to be peer reviewed so you can often get criticisms from many different avenues and you feel that you’re often overly reviewed, if that makes sense? Or it’s going through quality assurance procedures we go through and you’re looked at by students, by staff, by your line managers, by a whole range of people, and you’ve got to be able to deal with that on a day to day basis as well as the whole review cycle. But I think I’d rather be reviewed by the students; I’m a bit more bothered about that.

Interviewer: Do you feel like you get enough appreciation and recognition?

Susan: From the students?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Susan: Yeah I think I do, that probably sounds really self-satisfied or may come across as arrogant but students wouldn’t choose my options as modules otherwise. I work on the basis that, if they like my teaching style and they do say ‘Oh I enjoyed that Susan’, then that’s positive. It’s easier with your options – with the smaller modules – than the larger modules where it’s very difficult to work out how they’re going. So I ask students in seminars, ‘How did you find the lecture today?’ and ‘What do you want to do?’ to try to get that two-way dialogue going so they’re not scared to say ‘I found that hard’. I’ll respond, ‘It had to be hard, it needs to be, they are difficult concepts, but you can understand if it you think about it this way.’

Interviewer: What about recognition from your peers and the university?

Susan: I don’t think that’s as forthcoming as it could be; I think that there’s an expectation of what your role is and you should do it so I think occasionally things aren’t recognised. But that’s what you’re hired to do, so you should do it, but I think that the recognition isn’t as forthcoming as it might be.

Interviewer: And how do you feel about your workload?

Susan: I find it hard, same as everyone else. I think it’s a job that has no boundaries and has no work-life balance. I find that very difficult, especially when a lot of it is unseen work. If you teach at the weekend, no one else is there, so they don’t see that you’re there. So it’s unseen and also the time that you spend with students is unquantifiable; it’s very easy for people to say ‘Don’t spend as much time with students’, but I’ve had a student in just now who was exceptionally stressed about her dissertation. Even though I am not her supervisor, it would be inappropriate for me to say ‘Go away’ – I can’t do that, but all of that is unquantifiable on top of your 18 hours or whatever of lecturing and contact time. I don’t think it’s just about the teaching, it’s about the emotional support students need – ‘if you’re happy you learn’ – is my motto. Sometimes what seems to me like something really minute has become a big deal to a student, so it’s important that you get a hold of it and you say ‘No it’s not’ and explain why so they can continue learning. So I think workload is probably my bugbear.

Interviewer: What about administration?

Susan: Administration here is less than at the university I was at previously but it is still a fairly phenomenal amount of work, and again unquantifiable. So in workload terms it’s very difficult to say, but I think it is difficult because if you teach a little bit on a lot of modules you have more administration to do, even though you don’t have the same number of hours on your workload. So one person might teach nine hours on one module but only have the administration for one module to do, but if you teach across more modules then you have several lots of administration to do. But it might be the same amount of contact hours so that doesn’t necessarily compare in workloads.

Interviewer: That must be difficult.

Susan: Yeah!

Interviewer: Okay we’re going to look at different sorts of roles. When you first started your job what did you expect to do?

Susan: Here or when I very first started teaching?

Interviewer: In this university.

Susan: I expected to be coming in and start teaching undergraduates and some postgraduates and some administration. I didn’t expect to be involved in substantial administrative roles so early. I’ve taken on quite a lot of roles but there are some that particularly suit me because I’ve always been involved in developmental work, and working with practitioners. So I’ve quite a range of different roles but they reflect my interests, so although I’ve got a lot I’ve probably made them for myself. It’s probably my own fault I have so many roles really in that sense.

Interviewer: Would you say you’re a teacher or a manager of modules?

Susan: A teacher. Although I do manage them as well, but if people ask me what I do, then I say I’m a teacher. I never say I’m a lecturer because I think that has quite negative connotations because the word ‘teaching’ makes you think someone is going to teach you and engage with you, whereas a lecturer is someone who’s going to talk at you.

Interviewer: The word?

Susan: Yeah, so for me it’s got quite negative connotations.

Interviewer: Do you design programmes?

Susan: Yes I write programmes and modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Interviewer: And how do you find that? Is it good or is it bad?

Susan: I like that side of the job but most people hate it. While I’ve been here I’ve been involved in writing quite a few programmes, which I think is an important part of the job because you need to keep your degrees contemporary. If we don’t keep doing that then we will quickly become outdated and stale and you get stale teaching.

Interviewer: And do you enjoy doing that?

Susan: Yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. Are you involved in guidance tutoring at all?

Susan: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you find it difficult?

Susan: I don’t find it difficult; I find it concerning that I’m often put into situations where students have got significant problems and, although you can redirect them to other agencies within the university to support them, your contact with them is still crucial. So while you’re trying to encourage them to get help and support somewhere else for example, what you say in that short, brief time can have quite significant connotations for them, so that can get difficult. The most difficult part of it is having nearly 50 guidance tutees – that’s phenomenal, managing that many is too many. So I don’t feel like I have enough time for all of my guidance tutees.

Interviewer: Do you find it rewarding?

Susan: Yeah I do, because you get to know your students and how they’re learning and why they’re learning and why they’re here. And they get to see you as a person – not just the lecturer at the front of a room. Not that you want them to know all of your personal details of life, but they need to understand you as a person; that often helps them feel more related to the degrees and their programmes.

Interviewer: How do you find it fits in with your other time commitments?

Susan: It doesn’t! It takes up a lot of time and again it can’t be measured on the workload. I think we get 200 hours for it and whenever you’re not teaching you’re doing that, it takes up a lot of time. If I had to guess, I spend about eight to ten hours a week with guidance tutees or other students with issues.

Interviewer: So do you find it difficult to fit it in with your other commitments?

Susan: I find that I move my other commitments to do outside of work so my work-life balance goes because you can’t tell your student ‘Oh I’ll see you at eight o’clock tonight’. So you see your student during the day, so the writing of lectures will get moved. I’ll do that at night to make sure that I can accommodate students during the day.

Interviewer: Okay, and what about research? Do you do research? And how important is that to you?

Susan: It is important but it always comes second to your teaching and you’ve never got enough time to get your research done. But because I see myself as a teacher I want whatever I’m doing to feed in to my teaching. So it often takes the back burner but it should be more of a priority.

Interviewer: Are you under pressure to do research from anywhere?

Susan: Yeah I think there is a pressure from yourself and from the university, to keep your work contemporary and up to date and also for the external reputation of the university – to be perceived as a research university. Your workload is based around whether you’re researching or not so your academic workload and your teaching capacity are based around how much research you’re doing.

Interviewer: Ah right okay. We’re going to look at student diversity now. What is your experience of teaching mature students?

Susan: Quite a lot, I work with people who are return to learners and people who are practising at the same time as working.

Interviewer: How do you find teaching mature students?

Susan: I really enjoy it because they bring different life experience to the classroom. It’s not just a one-way situation, it’s two-way – you can impart academic knowledge and they can bring practice knowledge and life experience with them.

Interviewer: Have you noticed any difference in the preferred teaching methods of traditional and mature students?

Susan: Yes, I find the mature students much prefer non-lecture based environments and prefer more discussion so it’s two-way. I think that traditional students do like that as well but because of the numbers there isn’t always the capacity to be able to do it, so they get stuck in a rut of the lecture-seminar structure. It’s not necessarily their desire but it’s the structure of the university, the way we deliver and it’s normally bigger numbers so it’s less easy to offer other methods.

Interviewer: Do you have any experience of teaching overseas students?

Susan: Yeah I’ve got overseas students on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the moment so I’ve got quite a bit of experience.

Interviewer: Do you find any language difficulties?

Susan: I have at the moment, I’ve got one particular student who has language difficulties but the biggest problem with teaching in this area is often the cultural differences as well and how we define concepts. It’s often a bigger issue than the language, because what some people take as ‘normal’ for want of a better word – what the UK students see as normal, international students will say, ‘That’s so way out from what we would do.’ That’s great in the sense that it makes you look at different examples, but I can think of one example at the moment of a student who is finding it difficult to relate to the theory because the ideology it’s based on is so different from that of his home country.

Interviewer: How about the English used in your subject area, is that a different sort of language from everyday English?

Susan: Yes, they find the terminology quite difficult and so you’ve often got to explain the terminology and I make sure I do that. But I think that UK students struggle with academic terminology a lot as well so I’m always wary of academic snobbery – of using specialised terminology too much. It actually puts some people off the subject – they don’t engage with the content because they’re too busy trying to work out what the words mean. So I think that falls across both groups.

Interviewer: Moving on, what’s your understanding of reflective practice?

Susan: It’s about looking back at what you’ve done, how you do it, what experiences you’ve gained from that. You’ve got to constantly be a reflective practitioner and look at not just what we’re teaching but how we teach it, how we impart that knowledge and the students’ experience. You can reflect but it needs to be two ways with the people who you’ve been working with – how they’ve engaged that process and how they have seen it. I think it’s critical; it’s a two-way engagement.

Interviewer: So you think it’s important?

Susan: Oh yes, there are people who don’t do that in this line of work; I’m thinking beyond the faculty to other academics who I’ve worked with who don’t do it and churn out the same lecture year on year. They teach this because it’s week eight, never mind if things have changed. It’s dry and they don’t excite or engage the students, they don’t want to learn in that environment.

Interviewer: And what would you say was your motivation to be reflective of your practice?

Susan: For students to enjoy my teaching, and it comes back to wanting to be seen as a teacher.

Interviewer: So would you say that was internal?

Susan: In the sense of me?

Interviewer: Yes.

Susan: Yes, very much. There is pressure, in the fact we have to write personal teaching reviews and we do practice within the faculty to look at how you teach and the experience and the student expectations. But it’s very much for me, that it’s enjoyable for me and it’s not enjoyable to teach if you look at a room full of students who look blank, don’t ask questions and don’t respond back. If you’re sat in a seminar and thinking ‘Ugh I’ve got two hours to wade through this,’ why would you ever want to keep doing that? It’s about being enjoyable for me but also so that I can see students have been excited by what we’ve done and what we’ve covered.

Interviewer: Okay. We’re just going to look at types of teaching now, so what’s your experience of lectures? Have you done lots?

Susan: Yeah, I do a lot of lectures from six in one group to over 200 in another, so the full spectrum of sizes. It’s very difficult for larger lecturers not to be a mass information-giving session and I try not to do it like that but sometimes there’s no other way round it but I try to think of ways of making the lecture interactive. It’s important as well not to just talk at them for the hour or two hours but stop and ask questions and engage; otherwise we know about 25 minutes is people’s cut-off before they’re bored rigid. It’s about keeping the excitement and interest going.

Interviewer: How about seminars?

Susan: Again, a lot of seminars, but I tend to do them differently depending on the year of study. So in third year I tend to provide a lot of pdf files for them to read so that they come prepared and I give them different tasks to do. I don’t think it’s about going away and looking at your teaching guide and turning up, but it’s about having direction week on week to keep people motivated and coming prepared to have discussion and to be actively informed.

Interviewer: And are you involved in any other forms of teaching?

Susan: I do workshops for practitioners; they’re very much two-way and again we set things up in advance.

Interviewer: Any other forms of teaching?

Susan: No, can’t think of any.

Interviewer: Okay. And if you personally need advice or guidance, where do you go for that?

Susan: Probably to colleagues within other parts of the university; I think it’s quite crucial to go to other faculties and say, ‘How would you do it, what’s your practice, what’s your policy?’ Because there is a range of different experiences and you may find that you are dealing with issues that other parts of the university have already dealt with, so look at how their experiences have been and how they work with things.

Interviewer: And what is your preferred method of teaching?

Susan: Seminars. You mean lectures or seminars?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Susan: Seminars, I love seminars. I’d much prefer it be discussion-based and to be two-way than me talking at people.

Interviewer: What do you think of attendance and motivation of students?

Susan: I think attendance is pretty good, and I think that students vote with their feet, if it’s boring they don’t turn up. So I think they’re not just motivated by assessments but also what they’re going to cover, and if they think it’s an interesting subject that they’re going to cover and it’s going to be taught in an interesting way then they’ll turn up. So it says a lot about that but also about timing of classes; we’ve got one lecture from five o’clock to six o’clock but a lot of students work and have children so that’s quite difficult. So I think we’ve got to be careful about looking at how we monitor attendance and whether it’s appropriate at times to monitor the students because the motivation might be there to attend but it might be that there are barriers to them attending at certain times.

Interviewer: And how about motivation to prepare for seminars?

Susan: I think if students are directed what to do then they do it. It’s when it’s in the module documents but it’s a bit woolly, or you haven’t directly said to them ‘do this for next week’, then they tend not to do it. But if you say to them, ‘We’re doing this next week, I want you all to bring an example of it,’ then they’ll do it. And I think if it’s directed in that sense, then you get quite a good response rate; you always get some that won’t, but on the whole you find that they do.

Interviewer: Okay, and have you got any final comments on lecturing?

Susan: It’s a hard job to do; I don’t recommend it to anyone, not if you want any work-life balance!

Interviewer: Okay, thank you.

Full Interview Transcript

Interview With Rachel

Interviewer: Okay, first some questions about your background. Have you worked in other universities before?

Rachel: Yeah, I worked for a number of years in another university.

Interviewer: And why did you choose to enter higher education?

Rachel: I was a researcher and I’ve worked in a number of voluntary sector organisations. And I did a Masters while I was a researcher, then became a contract researcher, then a degree in a subject that I was really interested in started at a local university and I applied for a job as a lecturer, just as a way of moving from a contract researcher to something more permanent.

Interviewer: And was that the reason why you decided to become a lecturer?

Rachel: Yeah, I suppose I didn’t really decide to do it; the opportunity arose and I thought that sounded quite interesting, it would use all the skills I’d gathered by that point really. Because I had been a researcher and worked in all these other places, it sounded like this would be a place where I could use everything that I’d done prior to going to higher education. I never really thought about what higher education would be like. Because I was a researcher in a university setting already I suppose you’ve got some understanding of what it’s like because you’re working in that environment already.

Interviewer: So did you have any initial hopes and expectations?

Rachel: It was a permanent job after being a contract researcher for quite a long time. I suppose because I felt strongly and was passionate about the subject area that, although I wasn’t working directly with people in severe need any more, I could still be influential by being a lecturer and imparting that kind of knowledge to students. It might make them feel like they want to work in those areas and give that kind of enthusiasm and the feelings that wear off after two or three years in those voluntary sectors – it’s really hard to feel energetic about it any more, so I hoped I could influence other people to think about those issues.

Interviewer: And how do you feel about appreciation and recognition?

Rachel: Now?

Interviewer: Yeah, in this job?

Rachel: There isn’t any.

Interviewer: Is that from your peers or from somewhere higher in the university?

Rachel: There’s very little recognition from higher above; the only recognition I feel I’m getting is from the students that I teach. You might get a little bit from some of your colleagues; there’s a sort of mutual support network between colleagues, people who actually work on the ground with the students. But above and beyond that there isn’t any recognition of what we do at all.

Interviewer: Okay. And how do you feel about your workload?

Rachel: It’s horrendous! It’s really high, it’s unrelenting and every year it becomes harder and harder. It’s so hard to do the thing that you want to do in lectures and do things for the students because your time is so pressured. And also the numbers of students you’re teaching is so huge that the ideals that you have about what you can do with your time are just totally compromised all the time.

Interviewer: What were your expectations of this particular job?

Rachel: I guess to do something similar that I’d done for a long period of time in the previous job. I expected to do a lot of teaching but I was also hoping to try and move towards doing a bit more research. And my expectations have been met in terms of the quality of the students – they’re good – and I enjoy teaching students and my expectations have been met and surpassed. So in a sense there’s been a marriage there but I’m not really sure what my other expectations were. Although they’re two universities they’re very, very different so I’m not sure what my expectations were.

Interviewer: That’s okay, it’s fine. Did you work in this university before 1992?

Rachel: Yes.

Interviewer: Did you notice any differences?

Rachel: No, and when I came back it was the same!

Interviewer: Would you say you were a teacher or a manager of a module?

Rachel: Both, I think, because you teach and you’re also managing the numbers on that module and the module itself.

Interviewer: Do you design the programmes that you teach?

Rachel: Yes, the modules.

Interviewer: And how do you find that?

Rachel: I like that; I think it’s nice to have some sort of flexibility. But what you can’t design is the numbers on those modules – if you design a module for small numbers and you want to do lots of things outside the classroom, then suddenly you find the numbers are much bigger than you expected, the whole thing has to be re-thought. So I like the idea of design but it’s very hard to see the design through to the end because of the numbers.

Interviewer: Okay, are you involved with guidance tutoring?

Rachel: Yes.

Interviewer: And how do you find that?

Rachel: Fine, I think – it is part of the job that is quite time-consuming and you can see some students hundreds of times, while you can see some of them never, but I do quite enjoy that part of the job. I think I know where now to draw the line and when you need to say to them ‘You actually need to go and use some of the other facilities in the university’….

Interviewer: How do you find it fits in with your other time commitments?

Rachel: I think it’s hard because you’ve got all your teaching and then you’re many other things because you’re a lecturer. Then suddenly you’re almost – you’re not a social worker but to a certain extent you’re supporting students – and then you’ve got other commitments as well. So I think it’s often quite hard in your day because you’re constantly jumping from wearing one hat to put another hat on to do something else, I think that is sometimes quite difficult.

Interviewer: Do you find guidance tutoring difficult in itself?

Rachel: No. I quite enjoy it.

Interviewer: Do you find it rewarding?

Rachel: Yeah, to a certain extent I do, yeah.

Interviewer: Okay, earlier you mentioned research, how important is doing research to you?

Rachel: I don’t know. Having working in higher education for so long, I think increasingly I’m getting more and more teaching so it’s hard for me to see it as important because I just feel at the moment I’m just writing lectures and teaching: it’s hard. I’d like to have the time and space for research. For me it would be research that was practical and useable rather than research for the sake of research, so probably more policy-related research than for the sake of academic papers. And I think it’s difficult because in a sense you don’t get on unless you do research – get on in terms of getting a promotion and things like that, so it’s probably not the most important thing to me about my job.

Interviewer: Do you feel under pressure?

Rachel: Yeah.

Interviewer: Is that from yourself or somewhere else?

Rachel: Both probably! Both because I probably feel it from the university and then you put pressure on yourself, don’t you?

Interviewer: Okay, we’re going to move on now to student diversity. What is your experience of teaching mature students?

Rachel: I taught a lot of mature students in my previous job, but in this post at the moment I’m teaching predominately undergraduates.

Interviewer: And have you noticed any differences between traditional and mature students?

Rachel: No, nothing huge.

Interviewer: What about in terms of preferred teaching methods?

Rachel: With mature students you can probably be a bit more flexible with your teaching methods and you can also expect them to read. They’ll probably take it quite seriously so, for instance, when I was teaching some mature students in my last job, if you asked them to read something, they would come back having made notes. So I think they tend to take studying more seriously while traditional undergraduates are less likely to read. So you have to rely on different teaching methods so in that respect, yes there is a difference. Mature students are also more likely to bring their work to you for guidance. This may be just a lack of confidence because they haven’t been in higher education before or for a long time or just because they feel more committed to the course they’re doing.

Interviewer: And do you get more satisfaction from teaching mature students as opposed to traditional students or vice versa?

Rachel: I like to teach them all: it’s different and there’s great satisfaction if you have a good traditional student sitting there and they’ve read something because they’re interested in it after you’ve given the lecture about it. If they hadn’t thought about something before, but now they are reading about it, then the satisfaction is immense. On the other hand, it’s quite demoralising when you feel that you’ve give your heart and soul to a lecture and then the students come along to a seminar and are just not interested – it’s quite demoralising. It’s also frustrating because you can’t actually make people do work for seminars.

Interviewer: Okay, have you got any experience of teaching overseas students?

Rachel: No, not really, no.

Interviewer: What is your understanding of reflective practice?

Rachel: Looking at what you do, looking back at what you do, and looking at how you can improve.

Interviewer: Do you find it important?

Rachel: Yes, because I think you can slip into a certain way of doing lectures, a certain way of doing seminars and a certain way of dealing with students and you forget that time’s moved on and actually you should be. You should move with the times and I think changing jobs has given me a new lease of life. I’ve done things I haven’t done ever before and just thinking about what you’re doing and what you’re teaching and what you want to get across is something we should do all the time.

Interviewer: Do you feel under pressure from anywhere to reflect?

Rachel: From myself.

Interviewer: Just yourself?

Rachel: Yes, it is surprising that there is no external pressure. I want to write good lectures and to always have great images and things like that. So a lot of pressure from myself but I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, because if I didn’t give myself that pressure then I probably wouldn’t bother any more.

Interviewer: We’re going to look at teaching now. What’s your experience of teaching using lectures?

Rachel: In the terms of the response you get or how you feel about it?

Interviewer: Both.

Rachel: I don’t mind big lectures now; I used to be terrified and used to find it really hard to stand up in front of lots of people. But now I think I feel a bit more confident about that. I think it’s frustrating when you write a lecture and you know people are talking and I think it happens more these days; it’s hard to keep good order in your lecture theatres because there are lots of students. I think some of the two hour lectures are too long but I still think it’s a really good way of imparting knowledge – providing a structure to a subject area.

Interviewer: Do you like to give lectures?

Rachel: Yes, I don’t mind now. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but I don’t mind!

Interviewer: And how about seminars?

Rachel: I don’t mind seminars either. I think the old-fashioned way of expecting students to work for seminars has gone and that’s the hardest thing, you can’t go to a seminar and expect all the students to have prepared. So seminars can actually be really hard work, perhaps harder than lectures.

Interviewer: And are you involved in any other sorts of teaching?

Rachel: I do try and do different things; I have a module where I do try and take the students out on field trips, which I really enjoy and I think that’s really, really useful. And I’d like to see more of that, I’d like to see more students getting out and about – they’re studying the world, they should get out and be more interactive with the community that’s around us.

Interviewer: How about workshops?

Rachel: To be honest I can’t see the difference between a workshop and a seminar. I do try to do things differently and use film and try to get them to act out things as well. We try to get student to imagine they are in a particular situation and how that would feel, so I don’t know if some people would call that a workshop rather than a seminar.

Interviewer: Okay, if you personally need advice or guidance, where does that come from?

Rachel: I don’t know. Probably colleagues – it would probably be informal amongst my colleagues.

Interviewer: So what would you say your preferred method of teaching would be?

Rachel: I think a combination really. I think lectures are good, but it’s quite good to break lectures up, if you can, into activities. But if you have a large number of students then you’re limited. I just think that a combination of different things – film, lecture, activities or sometimes you get students to think about things. We’ve got a debate in one of our seminars so we get them to split up into two camps, and one’s got to argue for and one against. I think a whole host of things because if you use the same thing over and over again it’s boring for you and it’s boring for them so it’s as much of a varied approach as possible.

Interviewer: And how do you find fitting everything in, with your time management and juggling everything?

Rachel: Stressful and hard at the moment but you do. I think some people probably do it by not being available to students and that’s hard because then the students know that you are available and you’re the sort of person that they want to go and talk to – they’ll come and see you and not see anyone else. So in a sense if students see you as being student-centred and student-friendly then all your appointments will be filled up and you’ll have a constantly full diary. But people who aren’t like that have a lot more time and I think that is really hard for you to gauge in higher education. A lot of the people who students don’t go and see are perhaps the ones who are seen as the leaders within the subject areas; students go to see the workers, the teachers, and obviously they have more contact with students and so students go and see them, so I think it’s quite difficult.

Interviewer: And what do you think about student motivation and participation?

Rachel: It varies; you’ve got some students who are fantastic and they’ll attend everything and, if they’re not going to attend, they’ll let you know. Then you’ve got some who you don’t even know, and you couldn’t even put a name to a face if they turned up. I think higher education as a whole needs to think about what we want to do in terms of attendance of students, because it’s something which is going to get worse. You’re now in a position where students could be sitting exams having attended no lectures or seminars and they might pass but they might not pass so I do think there needs to be a central approach to the whole faculty.

Interviewer: Do you think that’s got anything to do with students working?

Rachel: Yeah I think it’s a lot to do with students working, but I think it’s also because some don’t take it that seriously, and also because they see it as something they’re paying for, so if they don’t go it’s up to them. And I think that there is a real shift from the time when I was at university when you went to everything – you attended. But if you hadn’t read you didn’t attend because you didn’t dare go to a seminar – you hadn’t read and you’d be picked on to say something so you’d rather not go to the seminar. I think there’s a real change that has occurred in the last ten years.

Interviewer: Okay, and have you anything else you’d like to add about lecturing?

Rachel: No, I think you’ve probably covered everything really.

Interviewer: Okay, well thanks for doing that.

In this tab you will find guides on using this dataset. The Teaching Guide is designed for faculty who are teaching research methods and statistics, with suggestions on how to use the dataset in lab exercises, in homework assignments and as exam questions. The Student Guide introduces the method for students, and can be used in teaching to provide students with an introductory overview of the method or test.

About This Dataset

Data Source Citation

Jamie Harding (2013). Qualitative Data Analysis from Start to Finish. London: SAGE

Data author(s) and affiliations

Dr Jamie Harding, Department of Social Sciences and Languages, Northumbria University

First publication date

2013

Data collection dates

2008

Unit of analysis

Individual

Location covered by data

UK

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