Did you know the BCC – hides all email recipients…
I like to document this, as its learning curve, and I am in my growth phase of this pgcert!
Hello,
Thank you for your interest in my research and for taking part in the technical focus group or the others who are also in this chain that will be interviewed.
The participant form will inform you of an insight into the theory behind gathering this research, it falls in line with my perspective future and my hybrid job role of working in a 3rd space (Whitchurch) we are not fully considered as academics yet on the other side of that we are also not indulging in purely service base supervision. As technical staff who are grade 3 transitioning to grade 4, and grade 4, teaching and learning specialists, we are in a unique position that reflects the balance of industry standards and creative teaching practices. What I prefer to refer to is the process and practice of teaching and learning, we are the ones who lead in this area.
Aims:
- Understand the technical staff’s goals and ambitions within their job roles.
- Determine and build a ‘technical career path’ that reflects staff engagement and development.
- Strategically develop an assistance program to encourage technical staff into, teaching and learning, research and knowledge exchange.
- Build an ambassador program that engages technical community development in skill-building levels 2/3 to 4.
- Align the technical career path with the UAL 2030 goals.
An ambitious adventure ahead of me (not like myself to encourage a challenge), this project is 10 weeks, but this is a passion project I have been working on this whole year during my PgCert. I have found misplacement in my job role with challenges of how technical teaching is not referred to or respected in the same world as academia, or that academics have full control over technical teaching and less and less is actually being taught of industry practice/standards.
The PgCert has allowed me as a technician (even though the academics there keep telling me, I’m not just a technician). The time to look into my job role and fully analyse the why and how of what I do. This has been reflectively rewarding and the peer-to-peer conversations have been empowering for me to challenge and put risk into my research. To allow you into my mind for 5 minutes;
Q1. What is a technician?
Q2. Do you teach more than 10 hours a week? (1-2-1 student engagement, large class formats or group-based).
Q3. What is a workshop, seminar and lecture and how do technicians fit into this?
Q4. Do technicians know what pedagogy is? (honestly, I didn’t).
Q5. Do I want to be a technician for the rest of my career?
Q6. Why do I have to give up my creativity to go into management or academia?
Now back to the focus group, (this is my longest email ever). There will be a series of engagement questions, by that I mean, resolution-based opportunities for open honest hypotheses around futures, jobs and building a technical community that is not management or academic that has a leadership, research and pedagogic future in creative institutions.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and consider being a part of my research. The prospective date will be the week of the 13th of November. Hopefully the 14th and the time will be roughly 60-90 minutes. If you still want to participate but can’t attend, I can send you the questions to answer, although true democracy is engaged in person if discussing the future of our careers.
If you have any questions, please get in touch!
All the best,