A recent piece in Chemistry World after the Research Excellence Framework (REF) struck a chord with a lot of HE education-focused staff. The central point was that the contributions of teaching staff indirectly contribute to REF results, and deserve more recognition for this.

I am sympathetic to the conclusion about how teaching is under-recognised, but I worry deeply about the underlying argumentation. I want to use this blog to reflect on the language and logic used to discuss research and teaching - even in sympathetic articles like this one - and what this says about how the idea of academic work is constructed.

Overall, I worry that the presentation of this argument in Chemistry World perpetuates an unhelpful view of teaching-focused staff to an important audience.

The Language: Research is the Real Work, Teaching is a Chore

The article’s language reflects common ways of speaking about research and teaching in academic conversation. The ‘kudos’ of ‘stellar’ research claims the ‘limelight’, whereas the ‘heavy lifting’ of introductory teaching is associated with ‘long shifts’ and administrative ‘burdens’. Research is glamorous work, and teaching is an onerous obligation. Academics need to do teaching, but they get to do research.

I acknowledge that much of this language is hard to separate from the artefact of a piece written to mark the occasion of the REF results, and I don’t think this representation is the necessarily same thing as the author’s view. Yet this same language suffuses so much of my experience of academia that I consider this article a particular case of a general theme beyond this article: researchers are valued on an excellence basis, and teachers on a sufficiency basis.

Excellence is about being the best, and sufficiency is about being enough. You can stable the horses together, but a racehorse and a workhorse are valued in very different ways.

The Logic: Teaching enables Research

The conclusion of the piece is “it might be nice if our contribution to facilitating our colleagues’ research workloads was publicly acknowledged”. I feel this is a dangerous destination because it acknowledges the primacy of research.

If an educator’s value is about how much they relieve real academics of their burdensome obligations, then the conversation becomes about teaching quantity rather than quality. What makes a good teaching fellow? Not someone who teaches brilliantly, but someone who teaches lots. This is the logic of the workhorse: the workhorse’s function is to spare the racehorse from the plough. The excellence agenda is owned by research, and teaching is therefore a distraction from being the best.

I don’t want to be valued like this! I want to be doing excellent teaching, and to be resourced accordingly with time and money and esteem and networks! I want educational innovation to be an urgent aim of the organisations I work in! I want to see educators on University homepages being celebrated for workshops they gave last week! I want ambitious managers trying to poach great teachers from rival institutions! I want generous start-up packages for early-career teachers! I want people to have permanent contracts and education sabbaticals! I want the RSC to support niche education awards to the same extent as niche research awards!

This isn’t going to happen by meekly asking to be acknowledged for relieving researchers of teaching. It will only happen with structural change to the way teaching is talked about: teaching needs to become valued on an excellence basis. It is clear that the article sees real value in the human dimensions of education, but protecting and advancing the humanity of teaching requires structural changes rather than ad hoc acknowledgment of workhorse work. 

The article’s dismissal of the TEF is more assertion than argument, perhaps because of limited wordcount, but this seems to be the only mention of valuing teachers for (some conception of) excellence. The ‘part of the same jigsaw’ line - a traditional plea for aligning the teaching and research agendas - seems unlikely to reframe teaching as a prestigious academic activity, but rather to legitimate the status quo: poorer material conditions for education-focussed staff are an integral part of any jigsaw with overwhelming incentives for research excellence. A well-calibrated TEF could improve the standing of educators in the academy; surely - for all its current imperfections - it demands a more serious consideration?

Conclusion

Newman observed that “if the object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students”. It is interesting to think about how modern academic careers and identities may have miniaturised this: Newman might quip today that “if the academic’s (or department’s) object were scientific discovery, I do not see why they should teach students”. This argument holds real sway when the REF remains unchallenged by any meaningful excellence agenda for teaching.

We need to make the case for teaching as a prestigious activity in its own right. In that light, perhaps it is better to leave the REF praise for researchers. If teaching-focused lecturers truly deserve recognition in the REF, then maybe this is actually a sign that something has gone terribly wrong with how teaching-focused staff are being managed: it suggests that they are being used to advance research rather than teaching.

Teaching-focused staff do deserve more recognition, yes. Much more. But they deserve it for educating, and they deserve systematic expressions of recognition which directly parallel the ways Universities value research. The real barrier here isn’t staff being under-recognised in the REF outcomes, it’s the act of teaching being under-recognised in the academy.