In the traditional university subjects, the jargon of transferable skills has been ever-present for a while now. For a teacher this is a pretty tough tightrope to walk, whether to train your students to be useful and confident members of society or to teach them history, or English literature, or whatever your subject area is. My husband who is a teacher but not in the university sector asks me how I feel knowing that many students have chosen my subject because it is easy and they can pass it, rather than through any love of history. How can I reconcile my love for all things historical with teaching people who just want to get through three years at university for all sorts of social and economic reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the subject?
Archive for November, 2007
Subject knowledge versus transferable skills
Thursday, November 29th, 2007Setting exams: as tough as taking them?
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007Exam Questions invented: 40 (for two different courses)
Advice from colleagues: priceless!
This is the time of year when many academics turn their attention to exams. While that season is blissfully distant for unsuspecting students, we are slaving away trying to create a challenging but do-able exam paper for our young charges to face in May or September. You might think I am protesting too much, but it’s actually really difficult devising an exam paper that brings out the best in the students. You don’t want to mislead or trick them, scare or depress them, but equally you want to encourage the best students to shine by thinking ‘outside the box’.
“Leaving on a Jetplane…?”
Thursday, November 15th, 2007Friends in the job market now: lots, too many to mention!
Friends considering working overseas: almost all of them.
I was having a chat with one of my pals who currently works for a Russell Group university and he was telling me he’d just applied for a permanent job in Western Australia. How exciting, I thought, although this may curtail our habit of getting together every few months for a pint and to put the historical world to rights! It did get me thinking though, when it became clear that not only had he never been to Australia, had never really had the urge to go and wasn’t 100% sure that he wanted to go now. This got me thinking about the sorts of life-changing decisions that can be made in an almost blasé manner when applying for jobs.
Its [sic] a typo!
Thursday, November 8th, 2007Did you see my deliberate error in the title there? Moving on from last week’s blog I thought I would address the question of how we as higher education practitioners react to our students’ ability to write good, proper, accurate English. While this may at first sight have little to do with the job market, I think it is a rather vital part of becoming a successful candidate for most positions to be able to express oneself in written English.
Moving and Marking
Thursday, November 1st, 2007Essays awaiting marking: 15 (it may not sound like a lot, but when they are identical, that is a lot of words to plough through!)
Books/papers/folders lost during the house move: too many to mention!
Apologies to my readers for not making a blog entry for a while. As for many people, the onset of my first permanent job has brought many other changes in my life, including getting on the property ladder. Some might deem it foolish to buy a house when I have just started my new long-awaited dream job, but this is the way it happens for many young academics I think.
