CHAPTER V
PART-TIME TEACHING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PHD STUDENTS
A small amount of money is available for the Department’s undergraduate teaching needs,
which are in part met by senior graduate students. Part-time teachers may not be required
every term, and graduates do not have a formal entitlement to teaching. The Department does
recognize, however, that teaching undertaken at the right moment can provide one of the best
testing grounds for a graduate’s thinking, and afford an important opportunity for skills
training. For information on the type and range of undergraduate modules taught, see the
online listings at www.york.ac.uk/english/undergraduate/courses/modules/. Graduate
teaching of undergraduates, no matter how short the period and how it is funded, must always
be approved by the Head of the English Department. Staff members are not free to make their
own special arrangements.
A. KINDS OF TEACHING
There are three kinds of undergraduate teaching available to graduate students:
(a)
formal responsibility for the teaching of a group of students in seminars and/or
tutorials for periods of up to one term (paid at full graduate rates, except in the case of
graduates holding certain university awards);
(b)
serving as a (paid) teaching assistant to help a full-time member of staff teach his/her
group for a full term or part of a term, a specific number of hours being assigned;
(c)
unpaid participation in seminars and exceptionally in tutorials under the supervision
of the group tutor (known as shadowing). Shadowing is always a prerequisite for
teaching.
B. PROCEDURE
(a) Formal Teaching
Any postgraduate student, including those holding university awards, who wishes to apply for
teaching should email a completed application form to the Graduate Chair and Departmental
Manager when prompted to do so by an email early in the Summer term of the academic year
preceding that in which they wish to teach. A link to the form is online at
http://www.york.ac.uk/english/intranet/postgraduates/.
You should first check that you are eligible to apply (see C. below). If you expect to become
eligible for teaching after the Summer term, please do submit a form but clearly state on it
what you need to do and when you expect to do it. The Departmental Manager will then
email you to check on your progress should teaching become available in subsequent terms.
Your application needs to be resubmitted for each year in which you wish to be considered
for teaching. You must nominate two referees, one of whom must be your supervisor. You
should contact these referees and ask them to email the Graduate Chair before the deadline
specified in support of your application. The Chair will then submit this information, in
sufficient time for it to be taken into account by the Department Workloads Committee (made
up of the Head of Department, the Graduate Chair, the Chair of the Board of Studies and the
Departmental Manager), which normally meets in week 4 of the Summer term, and week 4 in
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the Autumn and Spring terms. The recommendations of the Workloads Committee are
formally approved by the next meeting of the Board of Studies. Offers will be determined by
the following considerations:
(i)
the teaching needs of the Department;
(ii)
the size of the part-time funding allocation for the year;
(iii)
the strength of the application and references;
(iv)
the progress achieved on the thesis.
Additionally, under the short-term teaching assistant scheme, tutors may approach individual
research students when they are looking for help with teaching two or three seminars.
Formal teaching may vary from ad hoc teaching (for example, replacing a member of staff for
one seminar) to responsibility for a seminar group for a whole term. Because the Department
wishes to make teaching experience available to as many applicants as possible, opportunities
to teach a seminar group for a whole term are rare, and are unlikely to be offered to
applicants without some successful teaching experience. See section C below on constraints.
The Part-Time Tutors Handbook will be made available online to all successful applicants.
(b) Assistant teaching
Teaching assistants will be attached to full time members of staff, usually on period modules.
Their mode of collaboration is worked out between individual tutors and their assistants, but
assistants might typically sit in on some seminars and teach some in the absence of the tutor
they are assisting. On papers where essays do not form part of the assessed work, teaching
assistants might mark one of the essays submitted by the students and return it to them in a 20
minute tutorial. Tutors discuss the teaching of the group with their assistants, and advise them
on teaching strategies. They fill in a pro-forma report and this will be placed on the file for
use in references written in support of job applications.
It is important that PhD students understand that this system will not allow the Department to
guarantee employment as teaching assistants even to eminently suitable PhD students who
are making excellent progress with their research. Opportunities to teach are dictated by the
needs of the teaching programme and are not the same between one module and another.
The procedure for formal teaching should not preclude graduates and supervisors from
reaching informal arrangements for participating in seminars and tutorial teaching. This is the
best way of learning how to teach. All applicants should indicate whether they are interested
in this sort of induction.
(c) Shadowing
PhD students are entitled to request some training and teaching experience by becoming the
unpaid “shadow” of their supervisor or another member of staff for a term.
“Shadowing” is the rubric which designates all the activities which a postgraduate student
does when he or she participates in seminars (or, exceptionally, in tutorials) under the
supervision of a group tutor. In combination with taking classes on teaching skills which are
offered by the University and the Department, shadowing is the principal means whereby
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students acquire teaching skills before being assigned formal and paid responsibility for
teaching a group of students in seminars and tutorials. Shadowing is always a prerequisite for
teaching, but the Department cannot guarantee that paid teaching will always follow
shadowing.
The students will attend the seminars of a member of staff teaching a undergraduate period
module or an undergraduate special module. They will observe the seminar from the point of
view of the teacher; they will read some of the set texts on the course, and thereby extend the
range of what they will be able to teach. Unlike real shadows they will be able to speak; and
will be invited if they wish to lead the discussion in a seminar or two, in the presence of the
tutor. Tutor and shadow will discuss the teaching strategies they use to encourage students to
contribute, and to contribute usefully, to discussion. Students will also be instructed in
methods and criteria for assessment of student written and/or oral performance. At the end of
term tutors will complete a pro forma report in consultation with their shadows, to be placed
on file for future reference and references.
It is essential to the integrity of the shadowing process that shadowing follows undergraduate
level courses. It is impossible to shadow MA courses. The teaching and assessment of MA
courses is different from the teaching and assessment of undergraduate courses, and is not
transferable. The purpose of shadowing is to equip potential graduate tutors with
understanding of undergraduate teaching.
Interested students should email their supervisor outlining their qualifications and requesting
permission to take up shadowing. The email should also be copied to the Graduate Studies
Administrator. In the first instance it is expected that students will shadow their supervisors.
If for some reason a student wishes to shadow another member of academic staff, it is the
responsibility of the supervisor to make the necessary arrangements, consulting with the other
academic staff as seems appropriate.
Your request to shadow your supervisor will not automatically be accepted, for various
reasons. Your supervisor may feel that you are too behind with your research to use your time
on this scheme. We cannot crowd the seminar with shadows, however insubstantial; one at a
time will be enough, and someone else may have been accepted before you. No one,
however, will be allowed a second turn until everyone in their year and school who wants a
turn, and who is not critically behind with their research, has been offered one. In any
particular term your supervisor may not be teaching a course it makes sense for you to
shadow, and you may need to wait for a term of so. S/he may feel that a seminar group is
posing particular problems which will be made more difficult by the dark presence of a
shadow.
Whomever the student is shadowing is required to complete out a brief report on the student’s
progress at the end of the shadowing period, which must also include a clear view on whether
or not the student is ready for more teaching responsibilities or should be asked to engage in
another term (or other brief period) of further shadowing. This report must be filed with the
Graduate Studies Administrator, who in turn will make sure that a copy of it is provided to
the candidate’s supervisor. It is the supervisor who will then decide whether or not the
candidate is ready for undertaking formal responsibility for teaching. The supervisor’s
decision must take into account not only the candidate’s teaching skills, but also the level of
research progress which the candidate has made.
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We must emphasise that this is a training scheme. Shadows will not be substitute teachers or
additional teachers. They will never be asked to teach in the absence of a member of staff.
They will not be paid.
C. CONSTRAINTS AND ELIGIBILITY
All applicants for independent or collaborative teaching must accept that in allocating parttime teaching the Department has regard to the needs of undergraduates as well as graduates,
and that the former take precedence over the latter. The Department recognises that most
graduate students value the opportunity to gain experience of teaching at undergraduate level
very highly, and that they can offer a significant and valuable addition to the teaching made
available to undergraduates. The Department must ensure, however, that all undergraduates
have sufficient access to teaching by full time members of staff and experienced teachers. In
addition, for both the Department and graduate students the completion of postgraduate
research projects on time and to a high standard must be the top priority. The Department can
only make teaching available to graduate students who are making very good progress with
their research, and who we can feel confident will complete their projects successfully and on
time. Teaching will not be allocated if we believe that the considerable additional workload
that teaching involves will hinder punctual and satisfactory completion. If you are in any
doubt about whether the progress of your research will enable you to take on the
responsibilities of teaching you should discuss the matter with your supervisor and TAP
member(s).
The following constraints must also be observed:
(a)
No first-year graduate is eligible for part-time teaching. (Taught MA or MA by
Research students will not be employed in any circumstances).
(b)
Graduate students are required to spend one term shadowing a course before taking
on sole teaching responsibility.
(c)
Graduate students are required to participate in the session “An Introduction to
Teaching and Learning (Arts and Humanities)”, provided by the University’s
Researcher Development Team, before taking on sole teaching responsibility. A
record of participation will be entered into the student’s file.
(d)
Students must have had their PhD registration confirmed before they are permitted to
teach, although they may undertake shadowing and training before their confirmation.
D. UNIVERSITY GRADUATE AWARD HOLDERS
Graduate students who hold the university awards allocated by this department are in a
special category, in that they owe us, as per the terms of their award, a certain number of
teaching hours per week.
However, award-holders who have not yet had their PhD registration confirmed will not be
given direct responsibility for a group of students: rather they may be used as teaching
assistants (see A. (c) above) to work under the direction of the full-time member of staff
whose workload they are serving to reduce. The precise form which this assistance will take
is left to the discretion of the staff-member in consultation with the graduate student in
question.
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NB. Award-holders must follow the application procedure detailed above. See B.
PROCEDURE.
E. MENTORING
It is the responsibility of the convenor of the undergraduate module to assign a mentor to
each graduate student undertaking paid teaching for that module. Where a graduate student is
taking a seminar for only part of a term, the mentor will normally be the member of staff
responsible for the seminar. At the end of the term in question, the mentor will write a report
on each graduate teacher in his/her care, and give a copy to the module convenor, who is
responsible for collecting all these reports. The module convenor will pass on one copy of
each report to the Graduate Chair and another to the chair of the departmental Teaching
Committee.
The mentor and graduate student should discuss the student’s teaching plan before the
beginning of term, and the progress of the course at mid term. They should also discuss the
preparation of reports on undergraduate progress, and feedback on the student’s teaching.
Either the student or the mentor may initiate these discussions. In general, the mentor should
be available to discuss any problems or questions about the course that may arise.
The mentor will observe the graduate student’s teaching if requested. Graduate students may
also invite other graduate teaching assistants to observe their teaching on a voluntary basis.
In the case of short-term teaching assistants, the member of staff being assisted will act as
mentor.
F. RESOURCES
The Department’s Co-ordinator for Part-Time Tutors will provide guidance and support in
addition to that given by module tutors/convenors. The Department’s Handbook for PartTime Tutors is online at www.york.ac.uk/english/intranet/staff/handbook-part-time/ and you
may
also
view
the
Department’s
online
Staff
Handbook
at
www.york.ac.uk/english/intranet/staff/handbook/. Both documents are accessible only to
students currently engaged as tutors. Useful information is also available from the
University’s Researcher Development Team.
Postgraduate teachers may use the department’s photocopying facilities for teaching
materials. Any postgraduate teacher who experiences difficulty in obtaining the required
books for their teaching – because of unavailability or expense – should consult the convenor
of the course well in advance.
G. GRADUATE TEACHING RECORDS
The Graduate Chair is responsible for maintaining and updating the files relating to teaching
by graduates, the documentation consisting of:
(a)
the formal application by a student with the supervisor’s comment;
(b)
the Graduate Chair’s overview documents;
(c)
the mentors’ reports.
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H. APPLYING FOR ACADEMIC JOBS
The Department is keen to offer support to its PhD students and graduates in the increasingly
competitive academic job market. Details of the support offered can be found online at
www.york.ac.uk/english/intranet/postgraduates/jobs/.
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