Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD
Professor Belinda Probert
October 2014
Discussion Paper 3
Office for Learning and Teaching Discussion Paper Series
This report has been commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Education and prepared by Professor Belinda Probert.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Education.
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This document must be attributed as Belinda Probert, Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD, Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, October 2014.
Contents
Introduction ...... 1
The PhD and disciplinary knowledge ...... 3
Is the PhD’s disciplinary knowledge too narrow? ...... 4
The PhD as apprenticeship ...... 7
The PhD as preparation for teaching ...... 10
Challenges in the new policy environment ...... 14
What might be done about the PhD – and who might do it...... 16
Recommendations ...... 19
Recommendation 1 ...... 19
Recommendation 2 ...... 20
Recommendation 3 ...... 21
Conclusion ...... 23
Acknowledgements ...... 24
References ...... 24
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD i
This paper is part of a series of interrelated discussion papers being prepared for the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) by Belinda Probert. The first discussion paper, Teaching Focused Academic Appointments in Australian Universities (2013), examined the causes behind the growth of teaching focused appointments and their impact on the quality of teaching and learning. The second discussion paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education (2014) asks how we should understand the requirement for all higher education teachers to demonstrate scholarship, whether in a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute, private college or university. It provides a critique of the way in which ‘scholarship’ has come to be interpreted in Australian higher education, arguing for a return to Boyer’s conception as a starting point. This discussion paper, Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD, focuses on the evolution of the Australian PhD and its role in preparing graduates for teaching in higher education. The last discussion paper will be a review of current approaches to quality assurance and quality improvement in higher education teaching and learning.
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Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD
Introduction
In the years immediately following the Second World War, Australian universities began to enrol their first graduate students into Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) programs. In 1950 eight PhDs were awarded; by 1960 this number had risen to 97. Since then growth has been fast, particularly after the formation of the unified national system of universities in the early 1990s. In 2010 the number of PhDs awarded was 6053, bringing the total number of Australian PhDs awarded at that point to more than 65,000.1
The original ‘push’ for doctoral education appears to have come from the science disciplines, with the aim of providing the kind of high-level training offered in Europe and the US and considered necessary for an academic career.2 However, by 2009 PhDs in arts were being awarded almost as often as those in science (26.7 and 27.3 per cent respectively), and large numbers were also being awarded in engineering, health and business/commerce (12.1, 13.8 and 7.7 per cent).3
The ages of PhD students enrolled in 2010 suggest they have become a very varied cohort in terms of career stage, with over 40 per cent being 35 or older, and almost 10 per cent being in their fifties.4
The PhD, with its requirement to produce ‘significant and original research outcomes’,5 has become the defining qualification for Australian academics, with all universities working to maximize the proportion of staff with a doctorate. An academic job is also the goal of the large majority of PhD students. In 2007 over half of all the PhDs who were between five and seven years after graduation from the Group of Eight universities were working in the field of Education and Training, mostly in higher education. 6 Around the same time 26 per cent of people in Australia with a PhD were working as university or TAFE teachers. 7 Despite this, the relationship between current forms of doctoral training and the demands of academic work, and particularly the work of university teaching, has been subject to remarkably little scrutiny.
As government policy moves to increase the role of non-university higher education providers there has been little debate about what the professional expectations for all
1 Group of Eight Discussion Paper, The Changing PhD, March 2013, p. 9. 2 Ian Dobson, ‘PhDs in Australia, from the beginning’, Australian Universities Review 54, 1, 2012 pp. 94–5. 3 ibid., p. 97. 4 Daniel Edwards, Emmaline Bexley and Sarah Richardson, Regenerating the Academic Workforce: The careers, intentions and motivations of higher degree research students in Australia, ACER, 2011, p. 17. 5 Australian Qualifications Framework, Specification for the Doctoral Degree, 2013, p. 63. 6 Paul Boreham, Mark Western, Alan Lawson, Barbara Evans, John Western and Warran Laffan, PhD Graduates 5 to 7 years out: Employment Outcomes, Job Attributes and the Quality of Research Training, University of Queensland Social Research Centre, 2007. 7 Group of Eight, op. cit., p. 25.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 1
higher education teachers should be.8 If ‘scholarship’ is a critical dimension of higher education teaching, how should this be demonstrated?9 Some TAFE higher education providers believe that their staff who teach in the last year of bachelor degree programs should work towards a doctoral qualification in order to develop the requisite scholarly capabilities. Others have suggested that new entrants to the higher educational market for whom disciplinary research is not part of the institutional mission would have no need of teaching staff with PhDs.
While there has been little critical analysis of the relationship between the PhD and careers in higher education, there has been much greater interest in the potential value of the PhD for careers outside academia. This has been stimulated by the fact that the number being awarded has now far outstripped the number of academic and research positions available, leading to debate about whether doctoral programs should be enriched with content designed to better prepare graduates for employment in industry, for example. Many would argue that the Australian PhD is too narrow and out of touch with the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. If we wish to motivate our best and brightest students to continue their studies to the highest level it needs to be transformed.
The purpose of this discussion paper is to provoke sector-wide reflection and debate about the role of the Australian PhD in preparing aspiring academics to become effective higher education teachers. While the number of research-only university positions has been increasing substantially over the last decade, most higher degree by research (HDR) students believe that ‘an ideal academic position would involve a balance of teaching and research responsibilities’.10
Despite the career objectives of most PhD students, there has been little study of the PhD’s effectiveness beyond a narrow research training.11 This contrasts with the US, where there was discussion about the shape and purpose of the PhD even before Ernest Boyer famously pointed to its failure to prepare graduates for teaching in the early 1990s.12 More recently a national US survey of doctoral students from 27 universities in 1999 concluded that the ‘training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take’.13
As well as developing particular intellectual skills, doctoral study also provides a powerful acculturation into academic life. In the US, professor of higher education Anne E. Austin
8 For an extended discussion of this topic see my earlier OLT discussion paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education, 2014. 9 The evolution of ‘teaching and learning standards’ for the sector can be viewed at http://www.hestandards.gov.au/ 10 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 21. It is possible that this preference reflects the realistic assumption that research only careers – as opposed to jobs - are rare and generally precarious. 11 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 24. 12 Ernest Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990. 13 Chris M. Golde and Timothy M. Dore, At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of today’s doctoral students reveal about doctoral education, Philadelphia, PA: A report prepared for The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2001, p. 3.
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undertook a longitudinal qualitative study of US graduate students and socialization into the academic career. She noted that:
[a]spiring faculty are keen observers and listeners. They listen carefully to formal as well as informal conversations with advisors and supervisors. They pay attention to casual, off-hand remarks by professors and by more advanced students. Aspiring faculty members observe departmental policies (such as the absence of statements about teaching philosophies) and faculty members’ behaviors, including how they allocate their time across responsibilities, their degree of willingness or reluctance to take on various tasks, and their interactions with students.14
Aspiring academics undertaking Australian PhDs are no doubt as observant as their US counterparts.
This paper begins by looking at how the Australian PhD has evolved. It then examines the kind of disciplinary training it now offers as well as any wider preparation for academic work. The paper concludes by making recommendations about how we might transform the PhD to better prepare would-be academics for the work they are likely to spend much of their time doing – namely teaching.
The PhD and disciplinary knowledge
There is no single shared view about the purpose of the PhD in Australia. This is not surprising since several different groups now have a major interest in the degree. From the government’s point of view, funding for doctoral training is primarily about ensuring a growing supply of well-trained researchers to help exploit the potential benefits of the new knowledge economy. This is spelled out in the 2011 Research Workforce Strategy, which is designed ‘to position Australia to meet a significant expansion of demand for research skills in future years and higher expectations of our research graduates and researchers.’15 Meanwhile, university departments that offer PhD programs are more concerned with sustaining and developing their own research interests, which may be purely theoretical, applied or translational. For senior academics, there is often a further intrinsic interest in the long-term health and development of their particular discipline, and for some the more utilitarian need for help in achieving key milestones of their grants, not to mention the extrinsic importance of the dollars that follow successful PhD completions. Doctoral students themselves are similarly motivated by both a deep intrinsic interest in scholarly research, and their own career ambitions.
While Boyer was strongly critical of the narrow nature of doctoral training in the US, he nonetheless saw the dissertation as the vehicle through which all academics could ‘establish their credentials as researchers’ in a particular discipline or field – something that was integral to the profession as whole, whatever aspect of academic work they later chose to
14 Anne E. Austin, ‘Preparing the next generation of faculty: graduate school as socialization to the academic career’, The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), Jan–Feb 2002, p. 11. 15 Australian Government, Research Skills for an Innovative Future, 2011, p. xiii.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 3
pursue, including teaching.16 This thinking is widely shared in the Australian academic community, and underpins the acceptance of the PhD as the current base-level qualification across all disciplines, even professional and practice based fields such as law, architecture, accounting and fine art.17
Following Boyer’s criticisms of doctoral training in the US and the way it contributed to a narrow definition of scholarship, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, of which he was president, launched a five-year project called the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. This was designed as ‘an action and research project focused on aligning the purpose and practices of doctoral education in six disciplines’.18 Rather than enquiring into the purpose of the PhD, the project began by offering its own answer to this question:
We propose that the purpose of doctoral education, taken broadly, is to educate and prepare those to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field. This person is a scholar first and foremost, in the fullest sense of the term – someone who will creatively generate new knowledge, critically conserve valuable and useful ideas, and responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching, and application. We call such a person a “steward of the discipline”.19
This definition is a far cry from the utilitarian purposes behind government funding for PhD enrolments. However, while the language is perhaps a little alien for Australian pragmatism, the sentiments probably capture the highest ideals of academic leaders with respect to the training of the future academic workforce. They are also applicable to the new cohort of experienced, older professionals undertaking PhDs in order to develop a framework for reflective professional practice in their field, rather than focusing on the field itself.20
Is the PhD’s disciplinary knowledge too narrow?
The argument that the PhD prepares graduates to become ‘stewards of the discipline’ needs to be reviewed within the context of both the massive growth of PhD enrolments and university research activity, and what some have called the growing dominance in higher education of abstract theory and criticism over other forms of knowledge and understanding.21
16 For a discussion of Boyer’s framework for thinking about scholarship and good teaching, see Belinda Probert, Why scholarship matters in higher education, Office for Learning and Teaching, 2014. 17 For example, for positions advertised in June 2014, a PhD (or equivalent) is required for appointment to a Lectureship at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales, and to a Lectureship in Accounting at RMIT University. 18 Chris M. Golde and George E. Walker (eds), Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline (Carnegie Essays on the Doctorate), Jossey-Bass, 2006, p. 6 19 ibid. p. 5. 20 I am indebted to Sharon Bell (DVC Charles Darwin University) for constantly reminding me about the diversity of the contemporary HDR population. 21 William. M. Sullivan and Matthew S. Rosin, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice, Jossey-Bass, 2008.
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The growth in research activity and its highly competitive nature have led to increasing fragmentation and specialisation. British sociologist Gerard Delanty, in his analysis of the university in the knowledge society, sees the institutionalisation of knowledge in specialised sub-disciplines as central to the divorce of teaching from research.
Research has become over-specialised and often irrelevant to the needs of students. Indeed research has become so specialized that academics frequently have lost a sense of the overall significance of their research within their disciplines – knowledge is no longer unitary and coherent and as a result has become diffuse, fragmentary and opaque.22
According to Delanty, there is little opportunity or incentive to contextualise the work.
Such a generalisation is open to question, especially given the varied ways different disciplines have adapted to the challenge. Nonetheless, in the absence of empirical studies of Australian PhD topics, there is widespread concern here about over-specialisation.
The professionalisation of the academy that took place during the second half of the 20th century, with its deep fragmentation of fields and specialisms, created huge growth in the number of subjects offered, and the broad survey subject began to disappear. Challenges to ‘what matters’ grew, leading inevitably to a kind of eclecticism in many fields, particularly the humanities.23 Harvard College, famously, found itself unable to agree on what should make up its traditional core curriculum, with general education requirements giving up entirely on the idea of ‘shared knowledge, shared values, even shared aspirations’.24
This fragmentation of knowledge is something that has come to characterise the fundamental training of Australian academics:
Working for a PhD entails doing research that makes a significant new contribution to knowledge. Almost inevitably, this will result in a narrow focus. One reason for this is the large number of researchers addressing any broad topic, such that a high degree of specialisation may become necessary to ensure the work does not duplicate research conducted elsewhere; another is that an ability to provide new knowledge significant at a broader, strategic level will usually require a breadth of experience that a typical research student is unlikely to possess.25
The assumed relationship between contemporary doctoral research programs and broader disciplinary knowledge is increasingly being questioned, not least by those interested in the quality of university teaching. US education academic Ken Bain’s valuable study What the Best College Teachers Do, found that one characteristic shared by good teachers is their
22 Gerard Delanty, Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society, Open University Press, 2001, p.110. 23 It should be noted that in many science disciplines, such as mathematics and physics, there is still wide agreement on the core curriculum. 24 Harry R. Lewis, Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education, PublicAffairs, 2006, p. 62. 25 Group of Eight, op. cit., p. 19.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 5
interest in the broader issues of their discipline, including its history. Bain describes meeting teachers who remember what it was that originally got them interested.
They do not simply call out from their position deep within the ground and ask students to join them on their subterranean mining expeditions. They help students to understand the connection between current topics and some larger and more fundamental enquiry, and in so doing find common good in those “big questions” that first motivated their own efforts to learn.26
Bain agrees with other commentators that the increasingly specialised nature of the PhD can exacerbate the dichotomy between research and teaching. He argues that ‘to create a new kind of professor who understands both the discipline and how it might be learned, we must change the way we develop young scholars and support existing ones.’27 In a similar vein US higher education policy commentator Stanley Katz claims that in that country, ‘doctoral education is disrespectful both of the larger intellectual contours of the disciplines and the needs of future teacher-scholars’.28
Paul Ramsden has drawn attention to the same problem in the UK. After interviewing successful researchers about their teaching, he argued that those who are good at teaching (focused on students and their learning) ‘were not those who necessarily produced the most research. They were the ones who focused on the underlying structure of their investigations, on the broad conceptual framework of their subject, rather than isolated individual problems within it – the ones who were scholars in their discipline’. He concluded that higher education needs people who are ‘scholars in their disciplines rather than narrow specialists.’29
Recent writing on the Australian PhD has paid little attention to this issue, being generally more interested in the way the PhD might or might not prepare students for non-academic careers. However, there are good reasons to think that the problem identified by Bain in the US is as serious here, particularly given the even narrower nature of our study program and an examination system that focuses only on the written thesis, without requiring the candidate to present a verbal defence.30 The Australian PhD has generally taken the form of a focused research apprenticeship, in which assessment is confined to the thesis rather than the student.
It is highly likely that progressive shifts in government funding for doctoral students, away from the number of enrolments to the number of completions, has exacerbated the trend to narrowness. On the one hand this shift in funding model has provoked serious thought
26 Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do, Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 37. 27 ibid., p. 177. 28 Stanley Katz ‘What has happened to the professoriate?’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 6 2006. 29 Paul Ramsden ‘No thinkable alternative’, Times Higher Education, 5 August 2010. 30 Doctoral programs in the US and Canada include the comprehensives exams - coursework requirements designed to develop wider subject knowledge - but the existence of significant coursework has not prevented the sustained critique from writers such as Boyer. Similarly, the distinctive Honours year in Australia might be seen as a wider disciplinary preparation for the dissertation. It is unlikely, nonetheless, that many Honours year programs provide anything like what is being suggested by Boyer and Bain.
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about ways in which the path of doctoral study can be smoothed, but it has also inevitably encouraged a more utilitarian culture and discouraged wider excursions into the discipline or field of study.
The PhD as apprenticeship
The period spent studying for a PhD is long and in many countries it is getting longer. This is the time when professional attitudes and values are developed, although it is important to acknowledge the increasingly varied backgrounds and ages of students. Anne E Austin, in her research into the way US graduate schools socialise the next generation of academics, found that doctoral students often reported ‘mixed messages’, particularly about teaching:
They observed that statements made by institutional leaders about the importance of high quality teaching do not coincide with the ways their advisors or supervising faculty spend their time, with advice offered in casual hall conversations, or with university reward structures.31
Some students were indeed encouraged by their departments to value teaching, but this occurred within a wider culture that manifestly valued research more highly than teaching:
[T]he graduate experience - students’ daily experiences, conversations and observations – appears to socialize aspiring faculty primarily to a vision of faculty work that has dominated the academy for at least four decades. This preparation for the faculty career stands in direct contrast to the national discussion about the importance of various kinds of scholarship (including teaching and service/outreach), institutional calls to encourage a balance between teaching and research, and the likelihood that many graduates will find positions in master’s and bachelor’s granting institutions.32
There has been no similar in-depth research into the way PhD programs in Australia socialise postgraduate students into the academic profession. However, a major national survey of HDR students undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in 2011 provides some relevant clues. A large majority of respondents had considered an academic career, and more than half of them intended to pursue this ambition; of these, two-thirds were aiming for traditional teaching and research roles. However, only 6 per cent of PhD students surveyed wanted teaching to be the main part of their work as academics (compared to 25 per cent who said they would like to focus mainly on research); and only 37 per cent saw teaching as a very attractive factor in academic life (compared to nearly 60 per cent who see research as ‘very attractive’.)33
International comparative studies have found major differences in preferences for teaching and research, with Australian academics having among the highest rates of preferences for research over teaching, in contrast to their US counterparts who have one of the highest
31 Austin, op. cit., p. 7. 32 ibid., p. 15. 33 Edwards et al., op. cit., pp. 33–35.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 7
rates of preferences for teaching.34 Given these wide international variations in preferences for teaching and research, it seems reasonable to assume that Australian preferences are shaped by local socialisation experiences. Senior academics in Australia show even less preference for teaching than their more junior colleagues.
The dominance of research over teaching has been powerfully encouraged by the increasing marketisation of higher education on a global scale, and by the tyranny of research-based university rankings in these markets. Alongside these factors are increasingly unrealistic expectations about what academics should contribute, not only to research and teaching but also to communities, professions, industry and institutional management at all levels. The reification of research thus has material underpinnings.35
The ACER study of HDR students and their career plans also included a survey of university leaders that asked what factors they considered most important in their selection of recent HDR graduates for teaching and research positions. The only factor considered very important by this group was ‘having published refereed journal articles or books’. Having experience of university teaching was considered important by only about half of respondents, while having been trained to teach, or having demonstrated aptitude for it, was of little importance to anyone.36
Within such a culture, we should not be surprised that only 16 per cent of surveyed HDR students hoping for an academic career had undertaken any training in university teaching, even when it was available to them.37 We should not even be surprised by the fact that half of the HDR students surveyed considered themselves well prepared for teaching, despite their lack of any training in university teaching and learning.38 This might best be interpreted as evidence of a group not knowing what they don’t know. Many would have accumulated a great deal of practical experience by watching more senior colleagues teach, but it is unclear how much of this practice would have been reflective, let alone informed by a program of professional learning.
Some in Australia see the U.S. model of PhD training as superior, with its emphasis on broader coursework alongside the thesis, and the widespread employment of HDR students as teaching assistants. However, US commentators have been decrying the narrowness of the US model since before Boyer’s famous critique in 1990 and continue to do so today. The widely supported case for changing the US PhD was eloquently put in 2010 by Louis Menand:
Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it
34 Hamish Coates, Ian Dobson, Daniel Edwards, Tim Friedman, Leo Geodegebuure and Lynn Meek, The attractiveness of the Australian academic profession: a comparative analysis, ACER, 2009, pp. 21–22. 35 Both Sharon Bell (CDU) and Lyn Yates (University of Melbourne) have rightly insisted on the role of these wider forces, and the need to avoid suggesting that these are simple matters of ‘choice’. 36 Edwards et al., op.cit., p. 81. 37 16 per cent of respondents hoping for academic careers had had any training, ibid., p. 68. 38 ibid., p.x. Only 8 per cent felt they were unprepared for university teaching.
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was a hundred years ago. Doctoral education is the horse that the university is riding to the mall. People are taught – more accurately, people are socialized, since the process selects for other attributes in addition to scholarly ability – to become expert in a field of specialized study; and then at the end of a long, expensive, and highly single-minded process of credentialization, they are asked to perform tasks for which they have had no training whatsoever; to teach their fields to non-specialists, to connect what they teach to issues that students are likely to confront in the world outside the university, to be interdisciplinary, to write for a general audience, to justify their work to people outside their discipline and outside the academy. If we want professors to be better at these things, then we ought to train them differently.39
In the US, with its hierarchy of degree awarding institutions, PhD candidates must study in the most research-intensive universities. A recent review of doctoral programs by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) pointed out that this means the future academic workforce is being socialised into the values of only one section of the higher education system – and the one that is least likely to value teaching highly. The review observed that, at doctorate-granting universities:
[a] coin of the realm is the reduced teaching load – even the term load conveys a perception of burdensomeness – while honour and professional recognition, not to mention greater compensation, are linked largely to research achievements.40
The risks associated with a conservative profession controlling the reproduction of its membership are well known. The progressive attitudes of academics in general may mislead us about the potential for the profession to look forward and engage creatively with their own, rapidly changing world of higher education. The recommendations of the MLA are stark:
The profession would do well to endorse a shift from a narrative of replication, in which students imitate their mentors, to one of transformation, since graduate programs should be centered on students’ diverse learning and career development needs.41
In Australia, any institution able to claim the title of university is permitted to enrol PhD students, meaning that doctoral experiences will be quite varied. In 1989, almost 70 per cent of Australian PhDs were awarded by Group of Eight universities, but by 2009, as the sector expanded under the Dawkins reforms, their share had dropped to 55.7 per cent.42 In a larger, more differentiated sector, the variation in doctoral experiences might be turned
39 Louis Menand The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, W.W. Norton, New York, 2010, pp. 157–8. 40 Modern Languages Association of America, Report of the MLA Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Languages and Literature, 2014, p. 7. 41 The Modern Language Association of America, op. cit., p. 2. 42 Dobson, op. cit., p. 99. As long as universities value publications above all else in appointing junior academics, it is unlikely that a PhD from a newer university with relatively little research track record will be worth as much as a PhD from a research intensive university.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 9
to good advantage. By contrast, in the US PhD students are socialised in an environment where the highest professional rewards go to the research professors ‘whose teaching and service are minimized’. As the MLA review concludes, this ‘cultural sensibility puts the new PhD at odds with an academic job market where candidates’ teaching is receiving greater emphasis and with a postsecondary education policy discussion where teaching is being reconceived in terms of student learning’.43
The PhD as preparation for teaching
Most academics are prepared for their appointment to the traditional teaching and research roles that still dominate Australian universities through a long process of supervised study that is focused on developing an independent researcher, capable of producing ‘significant and original research outcomes’.44 Even those who are appointed because of their professional or industry experience and expertise will find it difficult to make their way further up the academic hierarchy unless they too embark on a PhD.
The numbers of research only positions at Australian universities have been growing strongly in recent years (making up 15.5 per cent of all full-time or fractional full-time- equivalent positions by 2013)45, but we know that most doctoral students continue to aim for the traditional mix of teaching, research and service that defines the ‘ideal academic’. Indeed, it was suggested in 2000 that academics in Australia were spending 50 per cent of their working week on activities related to teaching.46 A 2007 survey asking different questions concluded that, on average, academics spent 16.7 per cent of their time teaching, almost 10 per cent on administration (probably teaching-related) and 16.1 per cent on research, with service and other activities making up the rest.47
These averages hide very wide variations in individual workloads, but it is clear that teaching remains a major element of most academic jobs. If the current government objective of creating more diversity among higher education providers along U.S. lines is successful then we can expect more academics to be spending more time teaching. Across the U.S. system with its wider range of institutional types, faculty members spend an average of 29 hours a week on teaching activities, while research ‘absorbs very little faculty time….Teaching, and to a lesser extent, governance and service, is the central activity in the lives of most working faculty members.’48
Anne E Austin suggests that as ‘socialization or a preparatory experience for the faculty career, the graduate experience is the crucial point in time to determine whether or not students are exposed to the types of skills and expectations likely to confront them on the
43 Modern Languages Association, op. cit., p. 7. 44 Australian Qualifications Framework 2013. 45 Teaching only, by contrast make up only 2.3 per cent. Department of Education Selected Higher Education Statistics – Staff 2013. 46 C. McInnis, The work roles of academics in Australian Universities, Canberra, AGPS 2000. 47 Coates et al., op. cit., p. 29. 48 Golde and Dore, op. cit., pp. 20–1.
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job.’49 This is the same thinking that lay behind the 1980 decision of the Australian Academic Salaries Tribunal to allow the employment of academic staff on an hourly basis, so that postgraduate students could be provided with an ‘academic apprenticeship’ that included teaching experience.50
Despite this, doctoral programs are widely seen by students as providing little in the way of professional preparation for university teaching.51 As the ACER study points out, ‘the focus on establishing a research track record is not a realistic preparation for the actual duties of most academic staff.’52 Across the sector the low level of participation by HDR students in any kind of formal preparation for university teaching suggests that it is simply not seen as important by those who design doctoral programs, or by those with whom students work most closely, such as their supervisors.53
This lack of interest is reflected in a discussion paper prepared by the Group of Eight in 2013, which entitled concludes that ongoing reform of the PhD is necessary in order to:
ensure a system that extends beyond a narrow emphasis on training for a particular career to one which creates well-rounded, research-capable people able to market and apply their knowledge, skills and undoubted intelligence in a wide variety of contexts.54
The ‘particular career’ for which the PhD in its current form is assumed to provide training is never held up to the light. The ‘traditional’ purpose of the PhD is acknowledged by the Group of Eight paper as being to provide ‘the training necessary to start on an academic career’, but this is left as an unproblematic claim while the paper moves on to discuss the growth of non-academic, non-research career destinations.55 Not surprisingly, of the approximately 39 potential attributes of PhD graduates that are proposed in this paper, only one relates to teaching, and it reflects a truly unreconstructed view of what makes for powerful learning: ‘An understanding of teaching skills and experience in using them’.56 We
49 Austin, op. cit., p., 3. 50 Robyn May, Glenda Strachan and David Peetz, ‘Workforce development and renewal in Australian universities and the management of casual academic staff’, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 10(3), 2013, p. 1. This provision was also designed to allow the sessional employment of ‘industry professionals’. 51 Edwards et al., op. cit., p x; Natalie Brown, Jo-Anne Kelder, Brigid Freeman and Andrea R. Carr, ‘A message from the chalk face – what casual teaching staff tell us they want to know, access and experience’, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 10(3), 2013; U.S. PhD students report similar concerns, see Golde and Dore, op. cit. 52 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 14. 53 There are of course a few honourable exceptions such as the Teaching Internship Schemes at The University of Western Australia. 54 Group of Eight, The Changing PhD: Discussion Paper, March 2013. 55 ibid., p. 5. 56 ibid., p. 56.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 11
can expect our PhD graduates to be no better off than their US counterparts, who are, it has been suggested, without ‘even a cursory knowledge of pedagogy and learning theory’.57
In the U.S. the expectation that PhD students will work as teaching assistants is widespread, whereas Australian and UK attitudes are more ambivalent. In Australia, HDR students with a scholarship are also restricted by taxation requirements to a maximum of 8 hours paid work per week. In the UK, a study of postgraduate teaching assistants in research-intensive bio- sciences and economics departments found that they received little encouragement to teach, and little support when they did.58
In Australia, it is commonly acknowledged that many supervisors discourage their students from teaching on the grounds that this will delay their completion, and distract them from their research. This is not an unreasonable attitude given the limits on funding for doctoral students, and employer preferences for publications above all. In reality, however, almost 60 per cent of the HDR students surveyed in the ACER study had paid employment with a university, and more than 70 per cent of these were employed to teach.59 They reported being motivated by financial need (60 per cent), a desire to develop teaching skills (40 per cent), and by an encouraging passion for teaching (40 per cent).60
A New Zealand longitudinal study of sessional tutors at Victoria University of Wellington found that they overwhelmingly saw tutoring as an ‘important step towards an academic career’, and two-thirds of them reported that the experience of tutoring had ‘increased their commitment to an academic career.’61
One of the most striking findings of the ACER survey of Australian HDR students was how few of them had participated in any training for higher education teaching. As noted earlier, even among those who had ambitions of an academic career, only 16 per cent reported participating in such training.62 In the same study the vast majority of the universities at which these students were enrolled reported that they offered training to sessional tutors, while substantially over-estimating the take up rate among their employees.63
While few of the HDR students surveyed had taken advantage of the institutional professional development opportunities on offer, there is no doubt that such opportunities are increasingly available. This paradox was also reported in a more detailed study of casual employees at the University of Tasmania, which found that 71 per cent were unaware of
57 M. Solem and K. Foote, ‘Concerns, attitudes, and abilities of early career geography faculty’ Annals of American Geographers, 94(4), 2004, quoted in Edwards et al., op.cit., p. 15. 58 Miesbeth Knottenbelt, Dai Hounsell and Carolin Kreber, Graduate Teaching Assistants as Novice Academic Practitioners: Perceptions and Experiences of Teaching, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, University of Edinburgh, April 2009. 59 Edwards et al,. op. cit., p. 61. 60 ibid., p. 63. 61 Kathryn A. Sutherland and Amanda Gilbert, ‘Academic aspirations amongst sessional tutors in a New Zealand University’, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 10(3), 2013, p. 5. 62 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 68. 63 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 68–9.
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professional development days for casual teaching staff. The authors concluded that there seemed to ‘be a disconnect between institutional stakeholders and casual teaching staff’.64
The disconnection between institutional provision of staff development opportunities and the take-up by HDR students may reflect a disconnection between the underlying logics at work. Institutional provision of training is largely aimed at the sessional workforce as a whole, which is far greater than the HDR student component. It is not developed with an eye to the longer-term careers of young doctoral students, but rather as a response to the massive growth in sessional teachers within the higher education workforce in general. Further, the provision of professional development in tertiary teaching and learning for sessional staff has resulted, in part, from strong external pressures for quality assurance in the sector, given that more than half of all undergraduate teaching is now done by casual employees. For example, eligibility for funding from the generous Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) hinged on a higher education provider showing that it offered systematic support for both sessional and full-time academic staff. Similarly, the quality of sessional teacher preparation and support was a focus of subsequent Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) audits.
If institutional provision of training has arisen in response to industrial and external audit pressures, it is perhaps not surprising that local-level awareness and take-up have been relatively low. At the departmental level such training is often experienced as a major pressure on the sessional employment budget, especially where the local culture sees teaching as something that can largely be learned on the job.65 The widespread unwillingness of departments and schools to pay sessional teachers for time spent in professional development is a major disincentive to their participation. A 2013 national survey of casual academic staff in Australian universities found that less than one-third were fully paid for the professional development they undertook, while half of them attended course meetings on an unpaid basis.66
Once again it is important to acknowledge the material constraints under which the vast majority of departments and schools have been operating in recent years. As part of a larger casual workforce, PhD students are generally deployed to teach on the basis of departmental needs rather than as part of a structured program of teaching development. Sessional contracts are often offered at very short notice once subject enrolments have been finalised, allowing almost no time for serious preparation. They may also involve a very limited and repetitive range of teaching duties, not conducive to the development of deeper knowledge about learning or of a wide range of teaching strategies. HDR students are thus very unlikely to teach within a context that focuses on their needs as apprentices in this field. As Anne E Austin discovered in her analysis of the experience of US teaching assistants, ‘when teaching opportunities occur, they are often not organized systematically to ensure growth or appropriate preparation.’67
64 Brown et al., op. cit., pp. 8, 14. 65 Edwards et al., op. cit., p. 81. 66 May et al., op. cit., p. 15. 67 Austin, op. cit., p. 12.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 13
There are, however, honourable exceptions to these generalisations. In some science disciplines with very large and diverse first-year enrolments, coordinators have developed sophisticated approaches to teaching with large numbers of well-prepared and supported sessional tutors. 68 The appointment of teaching-focused academics to coordination and leadership roles in these areas may lead to more systematic and structured support and professional development for HDR students working as tutors, though it is important to note that this may still conflict with supervisor preferences. At the institutional level, the University of Western Australia’s Teaching Internship scheme is well known, while Queensland University of Technology has created an even more ambitious development program specifically for doctoral students called Teaching Advantage, aimed at ‘preparing future academics’.
Nonetheless, the data gathered by the ACER study of Australia’s current HDR students provides a sobering snapshot of the future academic workforce as one that has not spent time learning how to teach in higher education. Their approach to teaching is likely to be based on how they themselves were taught, and on their observations of the current practices of the existing, ageing workforce. Yet these graduates will become academics in a world where teaching is being transformed by powerful forces - by technology, by a far greater diversity of students and educational missions, and by growing demands for demonstrable improvements in generic skills and employability.
Challenges in the new policy environment
Current policy developments in Australian higher education are bringing a new urgency to this ongoing debate about the PhD. Just when this qualification has become almost the universal requirement for academics, our system of higher education is being transformed. Universal participation in higher education will be achieved with a wider range of higher education providers, while many observers are calling for ‘teaching-focused’ universities and polytechnics. Academic roles are becoming more differentiated along the teaching- research spectrum, and a wide range of specialists and ‘third-space professionals’ are blurring the traditional boundaries between academics and other kinds of education experts.69 Future growth in higher-education appointments may not be in research- intensive universities but in newer kinds of universities, polytechnics, private colleges and TAFE institutes.
What role should the PhD play in the preparation of this future higher-education workforce? Should it retain its current form and be required only of those working in research-intensive institutions, or only of those for whom disciplinary research is part of the position description? Or could the PhD be renewed in a more flexible form that would allow it to remain the basic qualification for anyone who are responsible for designing programs of higher education study? Should consideration be given to new more differentiated forms of
68 Joanne Smissen, ‘Teaching teams in First Year Biology: Facilitating the transition from research student to teacher’, Deakin University case study in Training, Support and Management of Sessional Teaching Staff, Teaching and Educational Development Institute, The University of Queensland, 2003. 69 Celia Whitchurch, ‘Shifting identities and blurring boundaries: the emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK higher education’, Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4), 2008.
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higher degree? These questions raise related questions about the future of the masters degree by research, which is already losing international relevance in the Bologna framework of degrees.70 Within Australia, has credential creep turned it into just a testing ground for those would-be doctoral students who have not completed an honours year, or who are otherwise unable to provide convincing evidence of their aptitude for the long, hard, solo slog of the PhD?
All would agree that higher education teachers need to be able to keep up with developments in their field. Yet higher education cannot be reduced to the ‘transmission’ of certain kinds of knowledge (in terms of either quantum or level). It is also about helping students to develop into independent learners in their field, capable of contributing to the existing knowledge of their discipline or field of study – in other words, students who know how to do research. As Lea and Simmonds argue from the UK experience of HE in Further Education Colleges, ‘the qualitative dimensions to “capturing HEness” are in need of further critical scrutiny’. For them ‘the contestability of knowledge’, linked to institutional and individual autonomy, are the core characteristics of higher education. 71
It could be argued, as Boyer did, that the PhD is the way in which the necessary depth of disciplinary knowledge for university teaching is gained, along with an understanding of how new knowledge is created in that discipline. But it has also been persuasively argued (including by Boyer himself) that doctoral research has become increasingly narrow and potentially disconnected from the undergraduate curriculum. Given the history and evolution of the PhD it is not surprising that we already have serious commentators suggesting that a PhD is unnecessary for those teaching at the new kinds of higher- education provider.72
How then should the required scholarly characteristics of higher education be demonstrated?
Many would argue that academic excellence and respect for scholarship should remain the distinctive characteristics of the higher-education environment.73 These standards should not become the preserve of an elite, while lesser standards are established for newer higher-education teachers. As the recent MLA review of US doctoral education argues:
High intellectual standards can be sustained through creative flexibility (of the curriculum, the dissertation, and career preparation). Adaptable doctoral programs can deliver the desired depth, expertise, scope and credentials.74
70 Margaret Kiley, Where are our doctoral candidates coming from and why?, ALTC Report, 2011, p. 13. 71 John Lea & Jonathan Simmons, ‘Higher education in further education: capturing and promoting HEness’, Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 17(2), 2012, pp. 179–193. 72 Comment from the Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton at OLT National Conference, Sydney June 2014. 73 The question of how ‘scholarship’ is defined is discussed in my previous OLT Discussion Paper, Why scholarship matters in higher education, OLT, 2014. 74 MLA op. cit., p. 1.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 15
Indeed, working as a tutor has the potential to help postgraduate students develop as scholars not just in their discipline, but in terms of taking a scholarly approach to teaching and ‘to all aspects of their academic role’.75
What might be done about the PhD – and who might do it.
There has been much written in the U.S. about the need to reform the nature of doctoral programs, but relatively little in Australia. There is, however, a great deal of activity within different institutions aimed at widening doctoral training in various ways, with the development of ‘structured programs’ alongside the research work itself.76 This has been driven by a number of factors: the recognition that most PhD graduates will not be able to find ongoing employment as academics or career researchers; the recognition that a significant number are interested in other kinds of careers; an acknowledgment that many of those who are now interested in undertaking a PhD have not had a sufficiently rigorous preparation in research; and an interest in ‘enabling’ programs that will get HDR students off to a flying start and promote the timely and successful completions that bring much needed funding into departments and schools.
In response to these pressures some universities have introduced personal training needs analyses for each candidate, and the associated development of a ‘learning plan’, while others have created transferable or generic skills programs of various kinds. The Group of Eight discussion paper mentioned earlier identifies 11 generic skills that it suggests should be developed in PhD graduates,77 while others have pointed to the transferability of doctoral-level skills to other contexts.
Many universities have established institution-wide graduate research schools that focus not just on supporting candidates to completion of their dissertation but on a range of other kinds of professional development. Monash University for example promotes the Monash PhD as ‘more than a thesis’.
The Monash PhD is one of Australia's first PhDs with career enhancement built into the doctorate. It's a PhD that will prepare you for work beyond your degree.
In January 2013, we introduced a range of dedicated, discipline-specific PhDs. Each has been designed to deliver knowledge specific to your field, along with professional development that builds a range of transferable skills desired by employers in industry, academia, government and the community.78
Louis Menand, with his deep knowledge of U.S. doctoral programs in the humanities, is sceptical of some of the thinking behind suggestions that the PhD be reinvented as something more practical, and relevant to non-academic work.
75 Sutherland and Gilbert, op. cit., p. 7. 76 For a review of these developments in Australia see Margaret Kiley, Coursework in Australian doctoral education: What’s happening, why and future directions?, OLT Final Report, 2014. 77 Group of Eight, op. cit., pp. 56–7. 78 http://www.monash.edu.au/migr/why-monash/phd/ . It is striking how this language has turned the PhD into a series of products or services that are ‘delivered’ to the student who will have their skills built for them.
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These efforts are a worthy form of humanitarianism; but there is no obvious efficiency in requiring people to devote ten or more years to the mastery of a specialized are of scholarship on the theory that they are developing skills in research, or critical thinking, or communication. Professors are not themselves, for the most part, terribly practical people, and practical skill is not what they are trained to teach. They are trained to teach people to do what they do and to know what they know. Those skills and that knowledge are not self-evidently transferable. The ability to analyze Finnegan’s Wake does not translate into an ability to analyze a stock offering.79
In reality, we know relatively little about the career significance of doctoral education for those who end up working outside higher education or mainstream research. We know even less about the personal significance. (If, as the Abbott government has suggested, fees are to be charged to PhD students, we may expect some much more serious thinking about the ‘value’ of the degree to individuals.)
What is striking about the graduate research school websites and other reviews of emerging PhD coursework or structured programs in Australian universities is the absence of any reference to professional development in teaching and learning.80 There is almost no evidence that anyone considers PhD programs to have a major role to play in preparing graduates for employment as higher-education teachers, or indeed as the higher-education workforce of the future.
To suggest that PhD programs need to do more than train expert researchers is not to ignore the time pressures that exist for students to complete their dissertations within a reasonable period. But it is necessary first of all to review the purpose of the PhD, before evaluating the amount of time that should be spent on the different components of this training.81 It seems unlikely that a one-size fits all approach is going to be useful for anyone. The higher-education sector has come to rely on the PhD as preparation for an academic career in which teaching is a central responsibility. There is a great deal of work to be done to better understand what doctoral training on a large scale might achieve in preparing the future higher-education workforce.
As an exemplar of the kind of forward thinking and externally aware review process that is needed in Australia, we have the recent work of the MLA in the US (much of which is relevant to the humanities more broadly). The recommendations of the MLA’s taskforce on doctoral study, articulated with a sense of urgency, reflect its four overarching goals for doctoral education:
79 Menand, op. cit., pp. 150–1. 80 See for example The University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of New South Wales, The University of Queensland, Griffith University, and University of Tasmania among others! This is entirely consistent with the rather narrow mission statement of the Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Research, which is ‘to promote excellence in research training and scholarship and to promote high standards for all higher degree by research programs nationally.’ 81 Australia does well in completion times compared to US and this is important – but not if it leaves students disadvantaged in terms of career preparation.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 17
Pursue and maintain academic excellence Preserve accessibility Broaden career paths Focus on graduate students’ needs
Central to the MLA’s critique of current doctoral programs is its focus on the changing academic job market and employment prospects, and what it describes as the historic ‘devaluation of teaching in the Research University’.82
In 2005 the chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education concluded a lengthy review of doctoral education in the UK with similar sentiments.
What continues to be absent from the discussion is the doctorate itself and its purpose. Why do institutions offer it as an award? Why do students want to follow doctoral programmes? Why do employers wish to employ candidates with doctorates? Why does Government wish to fund the delivery of doctoral programmes? These remain as matters for discussion. Perhaps worryingly – place a group which represents each of those perspectives together and ask the question and there will be as many answers as people in the group. The key question must be ‘does this matter?’ The answer must be: it does.83
While the PhD represents a qualification defined by a particular level of intellectual achievement, the purpose of the degree may vary greatly by disciplinary area, and the work done by the MLA in its particular field of study (modern languages and literature) needs to be replicated in other disciplinary areas. Central to any review of the PhD should be the academic community itself, at the level of broad disciplinary groupings.84
At the university level, the focus might be on developing a ‘curriculum’ associated with each PhD program: ‘one in which a career in the academy is given as much focus as careers outside, and which focuses on the changing underlying technology of teaching’. As one DVC Research describes it, echoing oft-repeated criticisms about attitudes to undergraduate teaching, ‘we need to move the PhD from a relationship that happens behind closed doors to one that openly and properly identifies the characteristics of the incoming students and their desired skills, knowledge and practices at exit point for the jobs they will undertake.’85
82 MLA op. cit., pp. 5–8. 83 Howard Green, ‘Doctoral education in the UK: trends and challenges’, Review Paper prepared for Forces and Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Internationally Conference, CIRGE, University of Washington, September 2005, para 13.9. 84 The American Historical Association has recently announced a $1.6 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to work with four history departments to reform the PhD curriculum in different ways. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/20/historians-association-and-four-doctoral-programs-start- new-effort-broaden-phd#sthash.ck9anA0y.dpbs. 85 Feedback on a draft of this discussion paper from Professor Robyn Owens, DVC Research, University of Western Australia, June 2014. The concept of ‘an integrated doctoral curriculum’ is also put forward by Kiley in Coursework in Australian doctoral education.
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The scale of this challenge should not be underestimated. A provocative 2010 article in The Economist titled ‘Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic’ (and subtitled ‘Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time’), pointed to the rapid growth of PhD graduates across the world and the declining academic opportunities that await them. It argued that ‘PhD courses are so specialized that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia’.86 What was distinctive about the article, however, was the argument that universities have a material interest in the problem that they have helped create. They ‘have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour’. In the US a ‘graduate assistant at Yale might earn [US] $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was [US] $109,000 in 2009’.87 In Australia, similar observations have been made about the growing reliance on sessional teachers, many of whom are PhD students.
The Economist article persuasively suggests that ‘the interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with those of PhD students’.88 This is a claim that has been made in the Australian context as well, notably by Professor Rob Castle in his foreword to a major report on the sector’s reliance on sessional teachers:
To maintain for permanent staff the ideal of being teaching and research academics, we have had to rely on sessional staff…In many ways the lifestyle of the traditional teaching research academic is totally dependent on the contribution of sessional staff, in the way that Victorian middle class lifestyles were dependent on the domestic servant. They slept in the attic, ate in the kitchen and you grumbled constantly that what they did was actually not quite what you wanted. But nonetheless, they were absolutely essential to your being and your lifestyle. I think this applies equally to many sessional staff today.89
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
Clarify the specific role of doctoral programs in preparing the academic workforce of the future
In the U.S. the Council of Graduate Schools90 and the Association of American Colleges and Universities secured funding for a decade-long partnership to focus on transforming ‘the way aspiring faculty members are prepared for their careers’.91 Out of this came the
86 The Economist, ‘The disposable academic: why doing a PhD is often a waste of time’, 16 December 2010 (http://www.economist.com/node/17723223/print). 87 ibid., p. 2. 88 This is an argument powerfully put by The Economist, op. cit. 89 Rob Castles, Foreword to A. Percy, M. Scoufis, S. Parry, M. Hicks, I. McDonald, K. Martinez, N. Szorenyi- Reischl, Y. Ryan, S. Wills and L. Sheridan, The RED Report, Recognition – Enhancement – Development: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education, ALTC, Sydney 2008. 90 U.S. Graduate Schools are of course totally different from Australian Graduate Research Schools. 91 http://www.preparing-faculty.org/
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 19
Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) programs which ‘provide doctoral students… with opportunities to observe and experience faculty responsibilities at a variety of academic institutions with varying missions, diverse student bodies, and different expectations for faculty.’92 PFF programs are organised by a cluster of different kinds of institutions, from community colleges to research universities, emphasizing how expectations regarding the full range of responsibilities (teaching, research and service) differ in different campus settings.
Rather than simply accepting the research university’s culture of a hierarchy of institutions, PPF programs are explicitly designed to help PhD students learn about the academic profession ‘through exposure to the full range of professional responsibilities in the variety of academic institutions – such as liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and community colleges – that may become their homes.’93
Within the context of the rapidly changing Australian higher education system, we might consider what opportunities could be created for doctoral students to learn more about the increasing diversity of institutions and their cultures.
Recommendation 2
Undertake case-study analysis (by field of study, for example) to test the argument that the PhD has become over-specialised in focus, and to identify ways in which appropriate breadth might be introduced.
The MLA review acknowledged that ‘an extended research project should remain the defining feature of doctoral education’.94 The implicit assumption that this experience of disciplinary research will provide a foundation for the teaching of the discipline has, however, been widely challenged, particularly in light of increasing specialisation and fragmentation in many fields of study. To overcome this, Boyer suggested that alongside specialist research, an integrative component should be included in the thesis that required all candidates to:
put their special area of study in historical perspective and that time during graduate study also be devoted to social and ethical concerns. In such a program, the scholar should find metaphors and paradigms that give larger meaning to specialized knowledge.95
In the same spirit, the far-reaching ‘Re-envisioning the Ph.D’ project in the US included the recommendation to balance ‘the deep learning of the disciplinary doctorate with the variety
92 ibid. 93 PFF p. 4. emphasis added. 94 Ibid., p. 2. 95 Boyer op. cit., p. 68. Boyer also suggests that graduate education should pay attention to the scholarship of application, to think about the usefulness of knowledge, and ‘to reflect on the social consequences of their work’, p. 69.
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of interdisciplinary challenges’, and to produce ‘scholar-citizens who see their special training connected more closely to the needs of society and the global economy.’96
In the US the practice of oral examinations can be mobilised to encourage scholarly breath. In Australia consideration would need to be given to incentives for integrative work that would not become rigid and burdensome.
Recommendation 3
Define the ways in which doctoral training should offer a structured program in scholarly teaching for those committed to an academic career.
If the PhD is seen as a critical element in the preparation of postgraduate students for academic life, there is widespread agreement that its major weakness is in preparing them to teach. Like the MLA review, the Preparing Future Faculty projects assume that employers of academics ‘increasingly also expect new faculty to be excellent teachers’ (as opposed to gradually picking it up on the job), and see teaching as a key area of employment opportunities for PhD graduates. This is a position that is strongly endorsed by many other observers of U.S. higher education.97 The 2013 annual meeting of the American Historical Association focused on the question of whether PhD programs adequately prepare students for ‘the oldest alternative profession’ of teaching. As a history professor from Rutgers University pointed out, ‘her own generation of professors was “raised by wolves” in terms of teaching.’98
Anne E Austin concludes from her in-depth study of how well US graduate programs prepare students to become academics that:
all students who aspire to be faculty members should have opportunities to think deeply about teaching (including philosophical assumptions that guide teaching, diverse teaching strategies, characteristics of learners, curriculum development, and the implications of technology for teaching and learning).99
This is a far cry from the notion of ‘teaching skills’ in the Group of Eight discussion paper, or the on-the-job training approach known as ‘sitting next to Nellie’ that is still so common among our HDR students.100
96 Jody Nyquist and Donald H. Wullff, ‘Recommendations from National Studies on Doctoral Education’, Re- envisioning Project Resources, http://depts.washington.edu/envision/project_resources/national_recommend.html. This project was supported by a wide range of university leaders and received over $500,000 in funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts. 97 Katz, op. cit.; Bain, op. cit., p. 177. 98 Colleen Flaherty, ‘Educator or Historian’, Inside Higher Ed, 7 January 2013, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/07/aha-session-focuses-role-teaching- discipline#.UO0YIyyLugc.email. 99 Austin, op. cit., p. 21. 100 The Dictionary of Human Resource Management describes it as ‘poor-quality on-the-job training where a trainee is not instructed by a qualified trainer but instead is expected to learn how to do the job by observing someone who has been doing the job for years (i.e. Nellie). Such training is not planned or systematic, but
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 21
The MLA review also argues for the importance of teaching from several perspectives, including an analysis of the changing academic labour market and the relative decline of tenure track positions in research universities:
Given the current structure of the academic workforce and assuming that in the future more positions in the academy are likely to be teaching-intensive, with relatively less of an emphasis on research, it is clear that many of our doctoral programs should be modified to prepare our students appropriately, placing greater emphasis on the development of skills in teaching.101
But whether doctoral students imagine careers at research universities or liberal arts colleges, regional universities or two-year schools, the MLA believes that in all of them, ‘the emphasis on effective teaching will continue to grow, and only those graduate students with strong preparation as teachers will succeed’.102 Within this context, it recommends that ‘pedagogical training should introduce students to the wide range of institutions in higher education, diverse in mission, history and student demographics.’103 Even within research- intensive universities new teaching knowledge is needed for the development of a massive open on-line course (MOOC) in areas of particular institutional research strength.
More radically still, at Stanford University a new fellowship opportunity has been developed for doctoral students in the humanities and arts, in collaboration with the Graduate School of Education, to prepare graduates for high-school teaching. Those who are awarded one of these H-STEP fellowships are promised that they ‘will join a community of scholar-teachers whose rare combination of pedagogical skills and content knowledge will improve student learning.’104
The MLA review also argues that teaching experience develops skills that are also valuable in other kinds of careers: ‘The ability to teach can be understood as an attribute of leadership, and doctorate recipients can use the pedagogical skills acquired during graduate study to become agents of change.’105 A similar conclusion about the wider value of learning to teach was reached at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. After more than a decade of research on the tutor experience, the authors found ‘that a scholarly approach to tutoring has benefits for the tutors…regardless of their future careers.’106
As noted earlier, the Australian higher-education system does not have the variety of institutions that characterises the US system, but it is just that variety that successive instead is haphazard and variable. Although the trainee might glean much of Nellie's expertise, he or she will also pick up her bad habits. And although Nellie might well be personable, she does not necessarily have the skills to train others.’ 101 MLA Taskforce op. cit., p. 6. 102 Ibid., p. 10. 103 Ibid., p. 16. 104 ibid., p.27. In Australia this will seem an unlikely career option, given the history of teacher training at relatively low qualification levels. 105 ibid. 106 Sutherland and Gilbert, op. cit., p. 9.
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Australian governments are now trying to introduce. Because of this, there are good reasons to reflect on these analyses and recommendations and their possible relevance here.
Australian universities generally offer formal training programs for higher-education teaching, but we know that few HDR students enrol in these. We also know that senior staff place little value on such training when defining their selection criteria for new academics.107 Some observers may be tempted to respond by urging that it become a requirement for PhD students who teach - or who hope to teach in the future - to undertake some sort of formal training in higher-education teaching, even a graduate certificate in higher education. Boyer, however, argued that ‘this two-track approach is not desirable.’108 The models he recommended all require postgraduate students to learn about teaching within their disciplines, ideally mentored by senior colleagues who are recognized for the quality of their teaching. In this scenario not only does the postgraduate student learn most effectively, but the process stimulates wider discussion about teaching where it is most needed, namely within the department or discipline.
In Australia there would appear to be similarly little support for embedding any formal coursework on university teaching into doctoral programs, for a number of reasons. First, there is the widespread belief noted earlier that it simply is not necessary or important at this point in an academic career. Second, there is widespread concern about the quality and efficacy of the kinds of programs that are currently offered. These views often reflect an underlying belief that the PhD is primarily a research qualification. 109 Third, there is a range of views on how best to embed increasing levels of professional development in teaching over the structure of the early career, including the importance of contextualising this training within the chosen discipline.110
Conclusion
There has been remarkably little public debate about the PhD in Australia, despite the transformations that are occurring in higher education as it shifts from a system of elite to mass and now universal participation. Indeed, there has never been a serious review of the role that this highest academic qualification plays in preparing the academic workforce. The challenges facing those who teach in higher education are substantial (such as fewer resources, more diverse students, de-centred disciplines, new technologies and an ageing workforce), yet, the critical early years of academic identity formation involve low grade teaching experiences, and a widely accepted disconnection between research and teaching. The long doctoral apprenticeship does not contribute in any systematic way to what
107 Edwards et al., op. cit. 108 Boyer op.cit., pp. 70–1. Over the 25 years since Boyer’s intervention attention has rightly been focused on the wider range of careers now being taken up by PhD graduates, and there seems little sense in requiring all doctoral students to learn about teaching if they are aiming to be a research scientist with CSIRO for example. 109 Edwards et al., op.cit., p. 77. 110 For an interesting summary of the issues see the UQ Promotions arguments against requiring teaching focused academics to complete a Graduate Certificate in HE or similar pedagogy based qualification, Report of the Central Confirmation and Promotions Committee on University Community Feedback from a Teaching Focused Discussion Paper, The University of Queensland, 2013, p. 6.
Becoming a university teacher: the role of the PhD 23
Shulman called the two professional identities of the academic, discipline expert and educator.111
Many Australian universities are reviewing their PhD programs to ensure that they include the development of generic skills with a view to improving the employment opportunities of graduates, and in recognition of the mismatch between the numbers of PhD graduates and opportunities for academic employment. There is no reason that these reviews should not be widened to include the questions raised in this discussion paper. There is a role here for the deans and directors of graduate studies, and equally for professional disciplinary associations, as well as for groups such as the deans of arts, social sciences and humanities, and deans of science.
At the local level, there are important exemplars of good practice to be found among those dedicated to improving teaching and learning in large-scale team-taught subjects that rely on the labour of postgraduate students. This is a debate that needs to bring those responsible for the quality of research and research training together with those responsible for improving the quality of teaching and learning to develop a shared vision for the PhD in Australia.
Acknowledgements
Many people took the time to read drafts of this discussion paper and to provide comments, feedback and criticism, and I particularly wish to thank Sharon Bell, Abby Cathcart, Darrell Evans, Liz Johnson, Kerri-Lee Krause, Robyn Owens, Judyth Sachs and Lyn Yates. Thanking them should not be taken to imply that they all agree with the arguments presented here, however; they don’t. I would also like to thank Natalie Laifer and Nicci Riley from the Office for Learning and Teaching for continuing to make my secondment a real pleasure.
References
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