Learning to teach

Oxford centre looks at whether improving teaching skills enhances research.

The role of teaching in the development of academic careers is often undervalued. Pre-eminence is afforded to research, and administration places growing demands on academic staff. Yet good teaching is part of a university's purpose, and fundamental to the fully rounded development of any academic practitioner.

At the University of Oxford, with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, we are developing a Centre for Excellence in Preparing for Academic Practice. This will support postgraduate research students and contract research staff who intend to pursue academic careers and want to develop teaching skills.

Such support includes introductory teaching development courses and the opportunity to acquire a qualification. Students will have access to mentors and will participate in different modes of teaching. They will also be provided with the technological means to record and analyse their own pedagogical conceptions and techniques.

These programmes will be available to Oxford postgraduate students in all disciplines by 2010. Some departments, such as biochemistry, will bring their versions on-stream this year.

The centre's approach is grounded in the view that the development of teaching ability is itself a scholarly and research-based activity, from which best practices can be informed and developed. During its five years of funding, the centre will aim to assist research postgraduates at Oxford, and to disseminate its research findings for use by wider audiences.

One critical research area concerns the ways in which strengthened teaching capabilities may enhance research skills and productivity. If it can be shown that, by professionalizing teaching as well as research competencies in the early stages of academics' careers, their abilities in both areas are improved, then there will be significant implications for young researchers, as well as for university managers seeking to promote research output within their institutions.

But even if the relationship between teaching and research turns out to be ambiguous or unproven, strong teaching standards will still be essential for the recruitment and retention of students. Sharper analysis of the teaching/research dialectic should prove valuable in shaping both career development and overall policy direction within universities.