Challenges and opportunities for early-career Teaching-Focussed academics in the biosciences

Twenty-seven percent of academics in UK Higher Education (HE) are in Teaching-Focussed positions, making major contributions to undergraduate programmes in an era of high student expectations when it comes to teaching quality. However, institutional support for Teaching-Focussed academics is often limited, both in terms of peer networking and opportunities for career development. As four early-career stage Teaching-Focussed academics working in a variety of institutions, we explore what motivated our choices to make teaching our primary academic activity, and the challenges that we have faced in doing so. In addition to highlighting the need for universities to fully recognise the achievements of teaching staff, we discuss the role that the various biosciences learned societies have in supporting Teaching-Focussed academics. We identify that there is a need for the learned societies to come together and pool their expertise in this area. The fragmented nature of the Teaching-Focussed academic community means that clear sources of national support are needed in order to best enable the next generation of bioscience educators to reach their full potential.

There are 1.8 million undergraduates studying in UK universities, with Biological Sciences students accounting for 10.3% of the undergraduate population (The Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, 2013). Students place a high value on teaching quality; scores for overall satisfaction in the National Student Survey are most strongly correlated with the scores for quality of learning and teaching (Buckley, 2012). Undergraduates expect that their experience of higher education represents value for money, and want to be taught in small-scale classes by experienced and qualified teaching staff (Kandiko & Mawer, 2013). Providing high quality teaching is a therefore a significant component of Biology departments, many of whom rely on Teaching-Focussed academics to deliver aspects of their undergraduate programmes. At the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) Education Meeting in December 2014, a major theme that emerged was the challenges facing those at the early stages of their teaching careers. Many of the difficulties faced by Teaching-Focussed academics have been well documented (Cashmore & Ramsden, 2009;Cashmore et al., 2013;Locke, 2014;Young, 2006). Here we reflect on our experiences as early-career teaching orientated academics in a range of UK Higher Education (HE) institutions. We also present case studies of our careers thus far, to illustrate both the challenges and opportunities of working in teaching roles.
Teaching-Focussed academics are employed on a range of different contracts; some are on Teaching-only contracts and are responsible just for covering a given number of hours of contact time, but an increasing number are on Teaching and Scholarship contracts, with an explicit part of their role being to advance understanding of teaching and learning. The HESA includes Teaching-Focussed academics in their surveys of academic staff (note that the HESA uses the term Teaching-Only), revealing that those on Teaching-Focussed contracts represent around 25% of all academic staff, rising to 50% of staff in pre-1992 universities that are not members of the Russell Group (HESA, 2013;Locke, 2014 Figure 1). While 12% of academic staff are on zero-hours contracts, this number rises to 47% of Teaching-Focussed staff (University and College Union, 2013). A large proportion of those with responsibility for delivering undergraduate programmes therefore have limited job security. This is perhaps symptomatic of a wider conflict within HE teaching; universities are relying on Teaching-Focussed contracts to fulfil their teaching requirements, yet at an institutional level there is often little support for those in Teaching-Focussed roles to become established members of the academic community.

Routes into Teaching-Focussed careers: Personal Perspectives
When preparing this article, all of us described experiencing a bias in careers advice we had received, with a heavy focus on the traditional research-dominated model of academia (see case study 1

Amendments from Version 1
We agreed with the reviewers' comments regarding the structure of the manuscript, so we have brought our case studies into the main body of the article, and provided more links between the case studies and the ideas discussed in the article.  After relying on this local support at a crucial time, I lost contact with my peers as our career paths diverged, and I now feel quite isolated both within my research group and the wider institution. This is especially true now that my focus has switched to online learning, which is less familiar to colleagues both within my research discipline and those who teach in other fields. While I have seen increasing support and training put in place for those who are new to teaching, I think that a gap still exists in support for early/midcareer teaching professionals. I'm keen to explore ways to connect people who are interested in student-centred teaching, and are figuring out how to navigate a Teaching-Focussed career path.' I loved teaching, so that's what I mostly did. This risk paid off, since my institution has begun, like many UK universities to value teaching more, and my department has been supportive of my move to a more Teaching-Focussed contract, whilst keeping a job contract that is now permanent rather than fixed-term. I am not sure my career route would have been for everyone (the constant moving was stressful), but I would say that you can't simply copy the career routes of older staff -higher education is in constant flux, so the strength to calculate your own trajectory is important, although this is not without risk.'

Case study 3: Katharine Hubbard, University of Cambridge
The four of us therefore represent academics who are passionate about developing an academic teaching career, and find engaging in teaching and learning to be both challenging and rewarding at a personal level. However, it is worth considering the broader question of how having Teaching-Focussed academics benefits the wider educational and research community, beyond offering people like ourselves the satisfaction of doing what we love.

Why have Teaching-Focussed academics?
At the level of institutions and departments, budgets are under considerable pressure. Recent rounds of Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) allocations have resulted in reduced funding for university teaching. In the face of institutional financial pressures, it is critically important to highlight the value that Teaching-Focussed academics can bring to departments, in addition to delivering direct teaching contact sessions.
In having teaching and learning as a primary focus we have opportunity to consider which teaching methods are most likely to cultivate curiosity, motivation and independence in learners. There is considerable variation in the extent to which academics reflect on their teaching, with most academics deliberating on personal experiences more than research-based or published knowledge of teaching and learning (Kreber, 2005). In our experience, staff employed on Teaching-Focussed contracts are more likely to explore the pedagogical literature and adopt evidence-based best practice compared to staff for whom teaching is only a small part of their role. Teaching-Focussed academics are also well placed to contribute to this literature through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), thereby communicating ideas between institutions and providing publication opportunities for those in teaching positions (Roxå et al., 2007). Engaging in SoTL also gives the potential to influence local institutional policy (Roxå et al., 2007), meaning Teaching-Focussed academics represent a potentially powerful force to embed student-centred learning across the whole range of academic institutions. Our enthusiasm for understanding learning and teaching makes us an intellectual and practical asset for colleagues whose research dominates their time. We can help them to develop their understanding of pedagogical philosophies and theories, suggest different learning activities, observe their work and act as critical friends or mentors, providing a springboard for their own transformation into self-reflective educators.

Challenges in establishing a Teaching-Focussed academic career
While all early-career academics face significant challenges, there are unique challenges to early-career Teaching-Focussed academics that are easily overlooked. Teaching is influenced by differing drivers from research, which may result in early-career teachers having reduced choice in setting the scope of their activities compared to their research equivalents. The teaching agenda is often set by more senior staff, leaving less flexibility for early-career individuals to teach the subjects that they find the most intellectually stimulating. Funding for teaching is more restricted and less transparently advertised than research fellowships and grants, leaving those on Teaching-Focussed contracts at a disadvantage when external funding success is a promotion criterion. Teaching outputs may also not be transferrable between institutions due to copyright ownership issues, therefore making sharing good practice and demonstrating impact more difficult than for equivalent research outputs.
The barriers faced by early-career teachers are often in acquiring and maintaining a job in the first place (as indicated by the significant number of teaching staff on part-time and/or fixed-term contracts; Figure 1). Unlike research which has a well-defined (though not necessarily flawless) path to lectureship, currently there appears to be no clear route to a teaching dominant academic role in the sciences within most UK academic institutions (see case studies). Some universities have created Teaching-Focussed career paths (e.g. University of Bristol) but the lack of clear routes makes embarking on a teaching career a potentially risky choice; we have all personally experienced this uncertainty in our careers (see case studies). Most advertised teaching fellow positions require a PhD and teaching experience, but the opportunities to gain teaching experience and/or training during a PhD or post-doctoral position are mixed and often limited, with supervisors prioritising the publication of papers over the development of non-research skills (see Case study 1). For those combining teaching and research at early career stages, teaching commitments mean that it may not be possible to achieve the same quantity or impact of research publications, creating a barrier to progressing to the more prevalent researchteaching posts or returning to research-only positions. In contrast, research staff retain the opportunity to move sideways to teaching at any stage in their career because the importance of demonstrating high-impact teaching, and recruiting on that basis, is not yet universally recognised (High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education, 2013).
Teaching is typically organised according to research departments, leaving Teaching-Focussed positions a relative rarity within a research-dominated environment. While cross-disciplinary teaching support networks do exist within many institutions, their form and membership can be nebulous and lack prominence. This means that we have to look further afield to find a group of peers with whom we can discuss pedagogical concepts and their applications, compared to our research-focussed colleagues. The vocabulary and style of pedagogical literature can be quite different than that of science (Roxå et al., 2007), and the lack of immediate peers can make engaging with the literature more challenging. Not only does this make current research harder to interpret and implement, but it acts as a hurdle to preparing manuscripts when authors are less clear about the expectations of journal editors and their audience; something which we experienced ourselves when writing this paper. These factors can lead to a feeling of isolation amongst Teaching-Focussed academics, which several of us have experienced during our careers (see Case study 2 and Case study 3) and which can be frustrating and demoralising.  et al., 2014). Only 57% of respondents reported that their institution has a clear strategy for evaluating staff teaching contributions. Furthermore, 55% of respondents indicated scepticism that teaching is considered equally to research in professorial promotions, with an additional 24% stating that professorial promotions based on teaching achievement were not possible at their institution.

Support structures for those in teaching positions
What support structures exist for bioscientists who embark on Teaching-Focussed careers in Higher Education? An increasing number of Universities now offer accredited Postgraduate Certificates in Teaching in Higher Education courses or equivalents.
However, these courses can be difficult to access for the large numbers of teaching dominant staff on part-time and/or fixed term contracts, those who do not have time allocated for continuing professional development (CPD) in their positions, or are in institutions who do not offer this support. Therefore there is a need for professional development at a national level; in the past this has been provided by the Higher Education Academy who made available a wealth of resources, primarily through the Centre for Bioscience. Withdrawal of government funding in recent years has unfortunately resulted in the loss of the Subject Centre in 2011 and the Biosciences discipline lead in 2014. The HEA does maintain however a role in providing professional recognition for teaching through the UK Professional Standards Framework (Turner et al., 2013), and also provides accreditation for courses and training schemes.

Opportunities and future prospects -a supportive network with learned societies?
In the absence of the HEA as a national body to support biosciences teaching, we feel there is a need for learned societies to come together and organise interdisciplinary events on the theme of education and outreach. Learned societies combining their efforts in terms of education would allow expertise of different organisations to be shared more easily, and provide a clearer sense of identity for Teaching-Focussed academics. At the SEB meeting (December 2014), we discussed whether educational meetings should be integrated within society-wide meetings or whether meetings should be specialised on education, perhaps across several learned societies. The advantage for removing the segregation between "research" and "teaching" academics, may be to improve the status of teaching and spread good practice further than simply "preaching to the choir". The advantage of more specialist education meetings is that common themes often arise in learning and teaching across a wide variety of disciplines, as seen by the attendance of physicists at the SEB meeting. Subject-specific meetings may therefore lose the chance to learn from pedagogical advances in other disciplines.
Societies also have a potential role in supporting the development of junior academics through mentoring, which is one intervention that has been shown to improve career prospects (Eby et al., 2008). Currently there is no formal mentoring process in the wider HE bioscience community; an informal community of practise exists via the HEA's Bioscience PedR JISC email list and conferences. The education committees of the learned societies could potentially take an active role in supporting the next generation of bioscience educators by coordinating mentoring relationships, which would be invaluable to those in institutions without an existing community of Teaching-Focussed academics. The British Ecological Society already has a successful mentoring scheme for female ecologists; an equivalent scheme hosted by the combined learned societies could result in real gains in supporting Teaching-Focussed academics.
The role of education committees on learned societies are also expanding. As one of us noted, "In my 5 years on the British Ecological Society Education, Training and Careers Committee, the emphasis of the committee changed from one that predominantly focussed on increasing the impact of teaching ecology in schools by working with teachers and policy makers to an ever expanding portfolio that now includes internships for undergraduates, outreach work at music festivals and supporting lecturers in delivering innovative field teaching". If learned societies can continue to expand their reach beyond the traditional research domain, they will play an important part in fostering a collaborative approach to teaching in higher education, and concurrently support the teaching careers of early career academics.

Conclusion
Early career Teaching-Focussed academics make valuable contributions to bioscience departments, and institutions should be enabling these academics to achieve their full potential, both in terms of their immediate teaching responsibilities to their students and their long term career progression. There is wide variation in the support universities provide, with some institutions nurturing a high quality environment for teaching staff, while others lag behind. However, even with the best possible local institutional support, the fragmented nature of the Teaching-Focussed community means that national organisations are essential to bring otherwise isolated individuals together. As the HEA is unlikely to fund subject-specific initiatives again without a major increase in funding, it falls to the learned societies to provide cross-institutional support for Teaching-Focussed academics, particularly through bioscience education conferences. Presenting at education-focussed sessions enables sharing of good practice, external validation of teaching activities, and ultimately, as this article demonstrates, opportunity for new collaborations. As one of us noted, "I never planned my route through academia or imagined myself as an educator; it is through my involvement in learned societies that I have met the key people that allowed me to see that there is no "one-size-fits-all" concept of an academic". The authors have made a coherent story which includes their case studies as an integral part of the narrative. They have also gone beyond my suggestions and strengthened their argument regarding the challenges facing teaching-focused academics. This paper is a welcome contribution to the debate around the role and status of teaching-focused academics, and I am delighted to approve it.
Thank you, once again, for sharing your experiences.

I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.
No competing interests were disclosed. The Opinion Article presents the views of four individuals who have reflected upon their own experiences in the context of a shift in the make up of the UK Higher Education Biosciences teaching community. The article makes a contribution to an on going discussion in the UK (and further afield) but brings to that discussion a fresh perspective (in my opinion observations on the experience of new teachers are too often made by those not new to teaching themselves).
Although I like the inclusion of the useful case studies (they provide a clear picture of the context of the authors and the lens through which they have constructed their argument) the structure of this paper is unusual. I feel that the reader progresses naturally through the main text and into the case studies and then reaches the end of the paper rather than coming to its conclusion. The authors might consider a subtitle to more clearly signpost the main concluding paragraph.
I am happy to recommend the indexation of this paper. I think that it makes a useful contribution to a current discussion in bioscience education and I feel that it should give all members of the bioscience teaching faculty cause for reflection.
I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.
I am the guest editor of the Channel to which the paper belongs. Anne Tierney Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK Carolin Kreber's work surrounds the importance of reflective practice. This paper concentrates on science instructors, and so is particularly relevant for this paper, although Carolin's other work is also relevant. Again, reflective practice was discussed by the authors, and the inclusion of this paper strengthens the argument.
The final suggestion I have is the case studies. I like them very much and feel that they bring the paper to life, but at the moment they feel like an appendix. I would advise that you move them forward into the body of the paper, as they highlight some of the challenges and issues that you have talked about in general, but as you experience them as individuals. Moving them forward in the paper also allows you to then discuss them in the conclusion section. I enjoyed reading this paper very much, and your experiences as early-career academics resonated with my own, and colleagues' experiences. Thank you very much for writing this paper, and I hope my suggestions will strengthen your argument.
I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.
No competing interests were disclosed. Competing Interests:

Version 1
Reader Comment 25 Apr 2015 , UCL, UK Abel Nyamapfene This is a timely article that spells out current issues faced by teaching-only academics in the UK, and elsewhere. As the article points out, the teaching-only academic community is fragmented -fragmented by discipline, and within individual disciplines, consigned to the fringes of disciplinary interests and activities.
The phenomena of teaching-only academics brings to the fore the age-old research-teaching nexus within higher education. Whilst subject-based research is highly esteemed, scholarship and teaching is viewed mainly as a necessary chore, and not as an activity that should be pursued for its own sake. The consequences of this disparity in esteem are all too obvious, namely, individual esteem and career progression for research oriented academics, and insecurity and lack of recognition for teaching-focussed academics. At institutional level, this leads to an arbitrary hierarchy based solely on perceived research excellence, and a consequential denigration of teaching and learning within higher education.
As the article suggests, the role of education within the disciplines viz a viz research needs to be seriously discussed, and the right place should be the individual academic departments in universities, as well as the learned societies that underpin the disciplines. After all, it is the knowledge and skills gained through education that determines entry into communities of learning and practice, including the discipline-based societies and professional institutions, and as others suggest, research is but one form of learning.

I do not have any competing interests
Competing Interests: