Welcome to LITE Bites, an occasional podcast from Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence
at the University of Leeds.
Episodes will be hosted by members of the LITE team.
And we'll be showcasing the scholarship of teaching and learning from across the university.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the LITE Bites podcast.
It's Emma Peasland here.
I'm Research and Impact Officer in LITE or Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence at
the University of Leeds.
And today I'm really pleased to be joined by Chiara La Sala, who is an Associate Professor
in Italian.
Hi, Chiara.
Hi Emma.
Thanks a lot for inviting me.
It's great to have you along.
Thanks for coming today.
And you're here because you completed a Light Fellowship back in 2021.
And we actually worked together a little bit when you were doing that.
Yes.
I just joined Light as a research assistant.
And your fellowship was called The Enhancement of Pedagogic Practice Through the Engagement
of PGRs or Postgraduate Research Students in Teaching.
So I wondered if you wanted to start by perhaps telling us a little bit about your fellowship
research and why you wanted to do it and what it was that you wanted to investigate.
OK.
So the project was motivated by a wish to understand that if handout postgraduate research
students who are engaged in teaching, so I will refer to them as PGRTAs from now on.
So how the PGRTAs can influence and improve the pedagogic practice at Leeds University.
According to the code of practice, PGRs who are interested in teaching must receive appropriate
training and are strongly encouraged to attend the courses of professional development run
by ODMPL.
This is very important for the PGRs, this experience, because they build up a teaching
experience portfolio, which is very useful when they enter into a teaching career, an
academic career.
However, the project aimed to investigate what academic staff, more senior academic
staff can learn from PGRs with teaching and roles and responsibilities.
I think personally from my experience as a tutor that being a tutor is not a fixed condition.
It's something that you have to renegotiate all the time with the challenges and the contest
of the teaching life.
And PGRs can therefore act as the middle person between the academic staff and the undergraduates.
Yes, so perhaps that kind of more recent experience.
And that's really interesting actually that, and I think this happens quite often with
fellowships, it came about or the idea perhaps came about from your own experience.
Absolutely.
So I was a subject leader in Italian, so director of my subject area.
And one of my jobs was really to train, to recruit and train PGRTAs in a moment where
Italian actually had lots of gaps in the teaching because of senior member of staff being on
leave or other personal matters.
And I was a bit worried at the beginning, you know, giving all this teaching to PGRTAs
because it was an exceptional moment in Italian.
But I was very, very surprised straight away by how great they were and how really it wasn't
really a proper mentoring but actually a mutual relationship where we were learning from each
other.
So they were learning from me because I was more experienced, of course, and they had
things that they could take from me.
But I could take definitely quite a lot from them.
So yeah, and that was really the idea behind my project, a very practical situation which
actually inspired me to research into this area.
I like that.
And I think one of the things that you've said in some of your outputs is that your
project took that stance that you've just explained that a more senior member of staff
can gain a fresh outlook by working with PGRs.
So how did that influence your project in practice?
Well in practice really strengthened my idea to carry on focus groups with members of staff,
academic members of staff so that I could share my views, I could understand what was
going on in their department and again share best practice in the field.
Great.
So you've started to talk a little bit there about how you did your research.
So I wondered if you might expand on that and tell us the approach that you took.
Yes.
So basically, of course, because it was a practical idea, my project that the research
phase in which really I started researching on effective and innovative teaching, research
methods in education, class observation, because I knew that this was going to come up throughout
the practical phase of my project.
And basically, the project was structured in the following way.
So first I had focus groups across the university, focus groups with PGRTAs, with academic staff
and undergraduates.
I did not mix the three groups together because I didn't want them, each group to feel kind
of daunted or I thought the best way is to keep them separated.
And the focus groups were followed by the electronic surveys.
So basically what was really very useful in terms of focus groups is to extract the information,
the relevant keywords, the worries, the concerns of each group and to put them in a survey,
in electronic surveys, which was launched across the University of Leeds and what I
was going to get more quantitative data rather than qualitative data.
And then the third phase was the teaching observation because after getting the data
from the electronic surveys where there was a section on good teaching, what is good teaching,
then it was easier for me to know what I had to investigate in the teaching observation
phase.
Excellent.
And that's really interesting that you had those kind of three groups of, I suppose you
could call them stakeholders.
So you had data from PGRs, from academic staff, but also from undergraduates.
Absolutely.
So did they all kind of cover the same thing in those focus groups so you could get the
perspective from the three groups or were there differences in your approaches?
Okay, well, no, in a way, I mean, I wanted to know what's good teaching.
Really, that's the fundamental question.
And if people, undergraduates, but also staff experienced any difference between teaching
delivered by more academic, sorry, more senior members of staff or PGRTA.
So the core question, I suppose, was what is good teaching?
And then I had to articulate kind of these big ideas into different questions.
So the questions actually for each focus groups, they were a bit different.
I had to tweak them according to the focus group I was...
The audience.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
And then they, of course, informed then that later phase of thinking about what is good
teaching.
You can then use that as a framework for observing.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
And that was also very important because before doing teaching observation, I had to think
about the teaching observation form where I was actually recording what is this good
teaching?
What are the characteristics of PGRTAs?
What are the characteristics of academic senior members of staff?
And so, yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
Right.
So perhaps you could move on to hearing a little bit about what you actually found out
from all of these methods.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think the main finding was, I mean, confirmed that PGRTAs are a great asset for the University
of Leeds and can influence and improve pedagogic practices.
Data gathered during my life fellowship show that PGRTAs were especially praised by undergraduates
and academic staff for creating online materials, differentiated resources for engaging students
in learning activities.
Students also appreciated their approachability and the standing of the undergraduate learning
experience.
And furthermore, academic staff appreciated the cutting edge research PGRTAs bring into
the classroom and work if they can provide.
So also a very practical consideration.
Then I can elaborate on more.
So that was really the crucial point.
And then there were other really findings, which I thought they were really important
too.
So basically the three groups, staff, PGRs and undergraduates, cannot benefit from the
engagement of PGRTAs.
Staff are exposed to a fresh perspective.
Undergraduates are exposed to a mixture of teaching methods.
And PGRs, of course, gain great professional development opportunities.
However, I noted the straight away that practices in PGR recruitment and training as well were
inconsistent across the University of Leeds.
And therefore one of my recommendations was that a transparent approach to recruitment,
consistent training, oversight and structure support for PGRTAs are needed to ensure the
quality of teaching and of the undergraduate experience across the university.
That's good.
So I think one thing that was really interesting there actually is that you mentioned that
staff valued the fact that the PGRs could bring kind of their cutting edge research.
Absolutely.
Was that an opportunity for PGRs to be sharing their research findings as they emerged from
the degree that they were studying?
Absolutely.
So this came very clearly, for instance, in seminars where PGRTAs could have a bit more
freedom to include their own resources, their own teaching materials, so that worked really
well.
And I have to say I never heard a complaint because what at the beginning was that with
the cost of studying in higher education rising and all the obviously concerns from the undergraduates
in the community, I said, you know, thinking about the PGR teaching, if I was going to
have any comments on the fact that students wanted to be taught just by senior and experienced
academic members of staff.
And actually this was a direct question in the focus group and it was really rejected
by the undergraduate group.
So yeah, and the mind, I mean, the focus groups were across the university.
So all the different schools and faculties we have here.
So that was quite a constant actually.
They like that mixture and they felt actually because the life fellowship was basically
I had to do it during the pandemic and the graduates felt that PGRTAs were really strong
in bringing in their digital skills in creating online interactive lectures.
So it sounds like there were benefits for everyone who was involved.
So for the PGRs, there's an opportunity to have a kind of professional development, to
have some teaching experience and to gather that for their kind of portfolio.
And then for the academics, they value that kind of cutting edge research being brought
into their classrooms and perhaps the more practical benefit of having a little bit of
workload relief.
And then for the undergraduates, they enjoyed the fact that they found the PGRs were approachable
and relatable and maybe they tried using some different teaching approaches.
Does that summarise it?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
And so I'm curious then about how these findings that we've just kind of talked about have
been useful in practice since the end of your fellowship or what might be changing or has
changed or what your recommendations have been.
There were really practical benefits, I think, for the University of Leeds out of my life
fellowship.
So my work is actually feeding into a coming consideration of how we refresh our code of
practice on PGRs that teach and demonstrate since that code has only had minor revisions
since 2015.
So these changes include providing clear guidance on the training and support available and
that initial training is compulsory now for PGRs who teach before they commence in teaching
so that they are better prepared to teach and know where to access further support.
It will also inform ongoing work that cuts across the taught and research communities
in respect of the values that PGRs bring to our student education community.
So this is, I think, probably the most immediate impact deriving from my life fellowship.
So it sounds like there have been opportunities for you to work with perhaps people around
the training and things.
So we have ODNPL, Organisational Development and Professional Learning at Leeds.
Do they support that kind of work?
Absolutely.
So basically, thanks to the fellowship, I established a network which fills the support
gap for PGRTAs and joins many of the broken dots around the PGR professional development,
connecting the doctoral college, PGRTAs from different faculties and schools across the
University of Leeds and ODNPL.
So that's, I think, a very important outcome too because eventually PGR professional development
is not really, cannot rely just on one particular person or one particular school or department.
So connecting the broken dots around the professional development of PGRTAs, getting the support
and having lots of conversation with the doctoral college and with ODNPL as well as obviously
academic, senior academic members of staff and PGRs was very good.
And also I'm talking to other institutions.
So hopefully my work is informing also the practice outside the University of Leeds.
Now connected with the GTA Developer Network and I was invited to present my findings in
their first face-to-face conference in Manchester, the University of Manchester last year.
And I'm organizing an event at the end of March inviting one member of staff from London
School of Economics who works in academic professional development.
And since there was a collaboration with this person, I can tell you a bit more about this
collaboration which is one of the outputs of my fellowship.
So basically at the end, was it the end of my fellowship?
Well nearly at the end of my fellowship because I started in September.
In June I organized an event which was part of the festival of the doctoral college.
I was invited by the Dean, Professor Luke Windsor to organize an event around the professional
development of PGRs.
So and it was a one-day event again online because we were still in the middle of the
pandemic.
So that was an opportunity for me to present my findings to a larger audience.
And then we had a roundtable again connecting together different people who were working,
were interested in the development of PGRTAs.
And then the most exciting part of the day I think it was when PGRTAs presented on an
aspect of teaching during the pandemic.
So there was a call for papers and they had about eight, nine PGRTAs presenting.
And this was really, really rewarding experience for me to see actually PGRs who normally write
and present about their research.
Now they had to kind of switch direction a bit and think about how they would articulate
their teaching.
And one of the guests, one of the people who attended the event was an editor of Postgraduate
Pedagogies.
So after the event, we basically invited me to contribute to the journal with a special
issue of Postgraduate Pedagogies.
Excellent.
So there were, it sounds like some opportunities for your own professional development from
taking part in this fellowship.
Yes, not only mine, but also I think professional development of PGRTAs because they had to
write about their teaching experience.
And again, this was a different scale because they were used to write about their own research,
but writing about their teaching was something different.
It was really an interesting process for me because I edited the volume.
The volume is called Digital Learning Experiences and COVID-19 Insights and Perspectives from
GTA.
So I edited the volume and wrote the introductory chapter, which was also another opportunity
to present my findings.
But anyway, part of the editing was looking at the articles of the PGRs before sending
them to peer review.
And yes, it was an interesting experience because it was a new exercise for them.
But eventually, very successful.
I think all the papers except for one passed the peer review.
And now it's out there.
And another development from this event is like a chain of events, set in motion is since
the volume is out, we want to promote it.
So I invited one of the editors and we're doing an event in Leeds at the end of March.
So in this event, we will promote the volume and we will invite PGRs, TA's who contributed
to the volume to talk about it really, that experience in this particular exercise.
Marvellous.
And you mentioned in I think in the title to that special issue, GTA and that's Graduate
Teaching Assistants.
Yes, sorry.
This is actually a problem which probably is.
So the discrepancies even is in the kind of terminology and it's not just at university
level, but also across the UK.
So Leeds talks about PGR, TA's, but then the convention in the journal was graduate
that is GTA's.
And some universities or perhaps some disciplines talk about demonstrators.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, similar.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Excellent.
I'm curious to think about what you might do differently if you had your time over.
And I know that you did your fellowship during the pandemic, so I can imagine that would
have a bearing on it.
But yeah, if you were going to start again, would you do anything differently?
Only because of the pandemic, I had to make a kind of I had to approach the project very
differently because I couldn't do anything face to face as I was expecting.
So the focus groups and the teaching of celebrations really were the faces that were affected by
it.
Obviously with the electronic surveys, they were going to be online.
So the pandemic did not affect that stage.
So that was like the major kind of tweak I had to do.
However, things worked out well because doing things online, I realized it's not bad at
all.
So, for instance, for the focus groups, it was easy to have availability of the participants
because they were doing it from home.
Maybe they were getting a report during the pandemic.
So actually, the recruitment was quite successful.
The challenge was mainly how to really communicate with the different schools, with the different
faculties, because I was used to my own schools, I could reach out much more easily.
But reaching out, understanding the contact points for each different school and faculty,
that was challenging.
Perhaps it's a good idea to, if you have, like me, a project involving human participants,
to get ready with the ethics because actually it did worry me at the beginning.
I thought I knew what I was going to do and I sent everything out.
And then I had to make some, well, there were questions.
I don't think it was rejected or anything, but I had to kind of elaborate and explain
more clearly some points.
So perhaps the ethics is something that is, and I understand that things are getting more
and stricter in this direction, if I may say.
Rightly so, because if you involve human participants, you have to do things properly and make sure
that everybody feels safe and can withdraw from the project anytime.
So this is something I was very happy, really, to be honest, with the phases of the project.
I think when I was thinking about it, and maybe in the proposal too, I thought the teaching
observation was going to be the first phase.
Okay.
Okay, followed by, and then I had to think, I said, you know what?
I think if I start with focus groups, then I get the qualitative data which I can use
to elaborate the survey, the questions for the survey, where I'm going to get more quantitative
data.
So although there wasn't a survey, an opportunity to write comments.
And then I'm going to be in the position really to know what I'm going to observe.
Yeah.
Because...
You get to find out what great teaching looks like from your participants rather than by
observing it.
Exactly.
That would have been much more challenging, wouldn't it?
It's just going there in the dark and say, what I am observing.
So in this way, I felt I put myself in a better position to have some guidance and more understanding
of what I wanted to find out.
Marvelous.
Okay.
Well, I think it sounds like it's been, well, it doesn't sound like it.
It has been a really interesting fellowship, but also it sounds like you've had the opportunity
to actually influence policy and practice at the university.
So that's brilliant to hear.
And yeah, I just want to thank you for coming along and having this conversation today.
It's been great to hear about the research again, but also to hear about, like I say,
how that's been influencing how things work with PGRTAs at Leeds.
Thank you very much for, first of all, to light again, to give me the opportunity to
do this fantastic experience.
Really, it was a fantastic experience.
It gave me a break from teaching and really it was probably the only time in my life where
I had an academic year to devote to research, which I really, really appreciated.
Even when I did a PhD, I could do that because I did it on a part-time basis.
I'm happy to continue now the conversations with the Doctoral College, with all the MPL,
to have the opportunities to reach out and contribute to conversations in this field
with other institutions and colleagues across the UK, and maybe more internationally too
in the future.
Brilliant.
Well, I wish you all the best with that continued collaboration and work in this area.
And thanks again, Chiara.
Thank you, Emma.
Thanks.