Dr anna Hunter Senior lecturer in academic development Centre for excellence in learning and teaching Uclan

1. Whose student
experience is it anyway?
D R A N N A H U N T E R
S E N I O R L E C T U R E R I N A C A D E M I C D E V E L O P M E N T
C E N T R E F O R E X C E L L E N C E I N L E A R N I N G A N D T E A C H I N G
U C L A N
A C H U N T E R 1 @ U C L A N . A C . U K

2. Background to the research:
Anecdotal experience of staff as students on academic development
programmes
“Anecdata” drawn from critical discussion assessments and participant
feedback
Established research interest in academic identity
WP institution with a large number of vocational programmes; academic staff
often little or no experience of academia

3. Research questions:
What (if any) impact does being a student on a PGCert have on academics’
interactions/ relationships with their own students?
What is the impact of adding a student identity into the already complex
professional identities experienced by early career academics?
Is there evidence to suggest the existence of a “teaching-learning nexus”?
What can we learn from this to improve educational development support for
early career academics?

4. Theoretical background
Academic identity as fluid, complex (Quigley, 2011).
Expert-Novice paradigm (e.g. McArthur-Rouse, 2008)
Early Career Academics (ECA) experience liminality and isolation as a result
Loads (2010; 2016; 2017)
Fraser et. al. (2017) recommend using student transition typologies as a
framework for supporting ECA as they adapt and adopt new identities, but what
is the effect of treating academic staff as students, at the same institution?
Teaching-Research nexus (Neumann, 1992; 1994)
Disconnect between what ECAs expect and what they experience (Monk and
McKay, 2017)

5. Methodology
Ethical issues around interviewing current and recent participants
Semi structured interviews, with collaborative question design
Three main thematic questions:
• “what has it been like to be a student?”
• “has it changed how you think about the student experience at UCLan?”
• “how has your experience of being a student contributed to how you see your
identity as a lecturer?”

6. Initial findings
“As a student on the course, I was suddenly thrust into the role of a student”
“I guess I’m caught between two worlds”
“It’s possibly going back to old habits”
“I’d forgotten what it was like to be a student – that students have so many conflicting demands”
“You can definitely relate to the pressure that the students are under”
“If students miss a deadline it’s frustrating, but this course has been a reminder that you don’t
know the context, and you don’t know why”
“The course challenges experts of whatever field to put their expertise aside and think about the
student perspective, but the process of doing that is challenging, because we’re doing that with
our student hat on in your course”
“I think being on the course definitely just slots you in to a community of learning beyond your
school and faculty even, so it’s been nice, you know, that sense of belonging”

7. Questions for discussion
Does the “teaching-learning nexus” exist, and what does it look like in your setting?
Have you been a student at your own institution and how has this impacted on your practice?
Activity: design an activity that can be used with new academic staff to facilitate the transition
from expert professional to novice educator